AS Epitomes
Thomas Paine: The Rights Of Man
Abstract
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Contents Updated: Wednesday, 20 February, 2008
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, Norfolk, 29 January, 1737. He gave himself a good education, and became an exciseman, but after being dismissed from this service he went to America in 1774, where he began to write. His pamphlet, Common Sense, issued in 1776, favoured the independence of the colonies, and won him great popularity. During the subsequent war he fought in the colonial army and received a government appointment, from which he was later dismissed. He came to England in 1787, but the publication of The Rights of Man led to his fleeing from this country. In 1792, he was elected a member of the French Convention. He died on 8 June, 1809.
Although he was long considered a violent revolutionary, Tom Paine may more accurately be described as an idealistic radical. When he was a member of the French convention his support and sympathy were given to the Girondins, and his two treatises on the Rights of Man (published in 1790 and 1792) contain vigorous assertions of democratic principles rather than revolutionary doctrines. They were written to answer the florid Whig rhetoric of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. These works of Paine express and attempt to justify, earnestly, sincerely and with a demagogic vigour, the ideals that inspired the French Revolution. The clearness and strength of the language—in spite of its occasional Biblical tone—are reminiscent of that of Rousseau's Social Contract, and made Paine's treatises the gospel of the English radicals, who did not appreciate the flowery sophistries of Burke's work.
Natural and Civil Rights
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke or irritate each other, Mr Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is an extraordinary instance. There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English language with which he has not loaded the French nation and the National Assembly. Considered as an attempt at political argument, his work is a pathless wilderness of rhapsodies, in which he asserts whatever he pleases, without offering evidence or reasons for so doing. With his usual outrage, he abuses the Declaration of the Rights of Man published by the National Assembly as the basis of the French Constitution.
But does he mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then will be, “What are those rights, and how came man by them originally?”.
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity respecting the rights of man is that they do not go far enough into antiquity, they stop in some of the intermediate stages and produce what was then done as a rule for the present day. Mr Burke, for example, would have the English nation submit themselves to their monarchs for ever, because an English parliament did make such a submission to William and Mary, not only on behalf of the people then living, but on behalf of their heirs and posterities—as if any parliament had the right of binding and controlling posterity, or of commanding for ever how the world should be governed.
If antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced successively contradicting each other, but if we proceed on, we shall at last come out right, we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man! Man was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. All histories of creation agree in establishing one point, the unity of man, by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and that all men are born equal, and with equal natural rights. Those natural rights are the foundation of all their civil rights.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are the rights of the mind, and also those rights of acting as an individual for his own happiness which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection. It follows, then, that the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
Governments
Let us now apply these principles to governments. These may all be comprehended under three heads. First, superstition, secondly, power, thirdly, the common interests of society and the common rights of man.
When a set of artful men pretended to hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up the back stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the government of superstition. This sort of government lasted as long as this sort of superstition lasted. After these, a race of conquerors arose whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power. Governments thus established last as long as the power to support them lasts, but, that they might avail themselves of every engine in their favour, they united fraud to force, and set up an idol which they called “Divine Right”, and which twisted itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called “Church and State”. The key of S Peter and the key of the treasury became quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude worshipped the invention.
We have now to review the governments which arise out of society. If we trace government to its origin, we discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people. In those which have arisen out of the peopJe, the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, have entered into a compact with each other to produce a government, and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise. This compact is the constitution, and a constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. Wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none.
A constitution is a thing antecedent to government, and a government is only its creature. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government. Can, then, Mr Burke produce the English constitution? He cannot, for no such thing exists, nor ever did exist. The English government is one of those which arose out of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose over the people, and though it has been much modified since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.
France and England Compared
I now proceed to draw some comparisons between the French constitution and the governmental usages in England.
- The French constitution says that every man who pays a tax of sixty sous per annum is an elector. What will Mr Burke place against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same time more capricious, than the qualifications of electors are in England?
- The French constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected every two years. What will Mr Burke place against this? Why, that the nation has no right at all in the case, and that the government is perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point.
- The French constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the expense? In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling a head.
It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the crown or in the parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money in all countries. In reviewing the history of the English government, an impartial bystander would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Abolishing Titles
The French constitution says, “There shall be no titles”, and, of consequence, “nobility” is done away, and the peer is exalted unto man. Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character which degrades it. If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles, they would not have been worth a serious and formal destruction.
Let us examine the grounds upon which the French constitution has resolved against having a house of peers. Because:
- in the first place, aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice, due to the unnatural and iniquitous law of primogeniture.
- Secondly, because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries, and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man, and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.
- Thirdly, because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.
- Fourthly, because it is continuing the uncivilized principle of government founded on conquest, and the base idea of man having property in man and governing him by personal right.
The French constitution hath abolished or renounced toleration and intolerance also, and hath established universal right of conscience. Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. Who art thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a king, a bishop, a church, a state, or a parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes and there is no earthly power can determine between you.
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries. The revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into men. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature, once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge, and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
When we survey the wretched condition of man under the monarchical and hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that these systems are bad and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of governments is necessary. And it is not difficult to perceive, from the enlightened state of mankind, that hereditary governments are verging to their decline, and that revolutions on the broad basis of national sovereignty and government by representation are making their way in Europe, it would be wisdom to anticipate their approach and produce revolutions by reason and accommodation rather than commit them to the issue of convulsions.
The Old and New Systems
The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is in attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently understood. Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word “government”. It may. therefore, be of use in this day of revolutions to discriminate between those things which are the effect of government and those which are not.
A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of civilized community upon each other, create that chain of connexion which holds it together. The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs and govern itself.
All the great laws of society are laws of nature. They are followed and obeyed because it is the interest of the parties to do so, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may impose. But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the operations of government! It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the world would have commenced by any other means than a total violation of every principle, sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin of all the present old governments is buried implies the iniquity and disgrace with which they began.
Government on the old system is an assumption of power for the aggrandisement of itself, on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The one now called the old is hereditary, either in whole or in part, and the new is entirely representative. It rejects all hereditary government, first as being an imposition on mankind, secondly, as inadequate to the purposes for which government is necessary. All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.
To inherit a government is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds. Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Monarchical government appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading strings, or on crutches. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculoils figure of government than hereditary succession.
The representative system takes society and civilization for its basis, nature, reason and experience for its guide. The original simple democracy was society governing itself without the aid of secondary means. By ingrafting representation upon democracy we arrive at a system of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various interests and every extent of territory and population, and with advantages as much superior to hereditary government as the republic of letters is to hereditary literature.
Considering government in the only light in which it should be considered, that of a National Association, it ought to be so constructed as not to be disordered by any accident happening among the parts, and, therefore, no extraordinary power should be lodged in the hands of any individual. Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world had it not been for the abuses it protects. It is the master fraud, which shelters all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself friends, and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of courtiers.
One of the greatest improvements that have been made for the perpetual security and progress of constitutional liberty is the provision which the new constitutions make for occasionally revising, altering and amending them. The best constitutions that could now be devised may be far short of that excellence which a few years may afford. There is a morning of reason rising upon man on the subject of governments that has not appeared before.
The Reform of England
As it is necessary to include England in the prospect of general reformation, it is proper to inquire into the defects of its government. It is only by each nation reforming its own that the whole can be improved and the full benefit of reformaticm enjoyed. When in countries that are called civilized we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows something must be wrong in the system of government.
Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor? The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition. Bred up without morals, and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity.
The first defect of English government I shall mention is the evil of those Gothic institutions, the corporation towns. As one of the houses of the English parliament is, in a great measure, made up of elections from these corporations, its vices are but a continuation of the vices of its origin.
I proceed in the next place to the aristocracy. The house of peers is simply a combination of persons in one common interest. No better reason can be given why a house of legislation should be composed entirely of men whose occupation consists in letting landed property than why it should be composed of brewers, of bakers, or any other separate class of men. What right has the landed interest to a distinct representation from the general interest of the nation?
I proceed to what is called the crown. It signifies a nominal office of a million sterling a year, the business of which consists in receiving the money. Whether the person be wise or foolish, sane or insane, a native or a foreigner, matters not.
Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two revolutions of America and France. By the former freedom has a national champion in the western. world, and by the latter in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.
