PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

IX

himself only, but for the Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was declared to be written.

I put this letter into the hands of Mr. Burke almost three years ago, and left it with him, where it still re mains; hoping, and at the same time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of him, that he would find some opportunity of making a good use of it, for the purpose of removing those errors and prejudices, which two neighboring nations, from the want of knowing each other, had entertained, to the injury of both.

When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

With respect to a paragraph in this work, alluding to Mr. Burke's having a pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at least two months; and as a person is often the last to hear what concerns him the most to know, I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke may have an opportunity of contradicting the rumor, if he thinks proper.

THOMAS PAINE.

RIGHTS OF MAN.

PART FIRST.

A

MONG the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French revolution is an extraordinary instance. Neither the people of France, nor the National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified on that of policy.

There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French nation and the National Assembly. Every thing which rancor, prejudice, ignorance, or knowledge could suggest, are poured forth in the copious fury of near four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr. Burke was writing, he might have written on to as many thousands. When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man and not the subject that becomes exhausted.*

*It is but simple justice to state that Burke's work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, (which has become nearly obsolete,) fully deserves this caustic criticism of Mr. Paine.

By his liberal views in regard to the American Revolution, Mr. Burke had won the confidence of the friends of representative government in both Europe and America, but when he became a pensioner of the British Government, and advocated the despotic

Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr.

Burke believe there would be

views of the aristocratic classes, he speedily lost the influence and consideration he had previously enjoyed.

He based his sophistical argument in favor of hereditary government on the declaration of the English Parliament of 1688 to William and Mary, that—“The Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterity forever,” — as though any people or parliament had the right or power to restrict, curtail, and control through succeeding ages the natural and inalienable rights and liberties of unborn millions. And, apparently not satisfied with this outrageous sophism, Mr. Burke further contends that the English people would take up arms to perpetuate this aristocratic system of usurpation forever.

Mr. Paine contends that Burke never thoroughly understood the French Revolution, which excited his astonishment; "but," says Paine, "it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution previously existing in France. The mind of the nation had changed beforehand, and the new order of things had naturally followed the new order of thoughts." These thoughts are to be found “in the writings of the French philosophers during these periods," and he mentions Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, the Abbé Raynal, Quesnay, Turgot, and their friends, as prominent revolutionary writers; and to their works may be added the political writings of Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, and others in favor of representative government during and preceding the American Revolution.

Several of the reforms advocated by Mr. Paine were adopted by the English government on the first appearance of the Rights of Man, and the beneficent influence of this great work is still apparent at the present day. The subject of graduated taxation,—the attempt to lift the burden of taxation from the shoulders of the laboring classes and place it upon the wealthy members of the community where it really belongs, may serve as an illustration of the fact. This measure, so ably advocated by Mr. Paine, has met the approval of many prominent political writers of the present day, who now echo with great volubility and apparent originality the views advanced by Thomas Paine one hundred years ago.

The world is undoubtedly indebted to Mr. Edmund Burke for the appearance of Paine's Rights of Man. Burke's ill-advised attack on the principles of the French Revolution was unquestionably the active, inciting cause the impelling motive-for the appearance of Paine's greatest and grandest work; and for this reason, if for no other, the paid hireling of the British aristocracy—the talented, the eloquent, but weak and vacillating Burke-deserves at least our pity and remembrance.- American Publisher.

any revolution in France. His opinion then was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it, nor fortitude to support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning it.

Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the best-hearted men that lives), and the two societies in England known by the name of the Revolution Society, and the Society for Constitutional Information.

Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took place in 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says, "The political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights:

I. To choose our own governors.

2.

To cashier them for misconduct.

3. To frame a government for ourselves."

Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons, but that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation.—Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists in the nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists any where; and, what is still more strange and marvellous, he says, "that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men should take up arms, and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.

The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England have no such rights, and that such

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