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Set of essays by Thomas Paine

Rights of Man (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It was published in two parts in March 1791 and February 1792.

Paine was a very strong supporter of the French Revolution that began in 1789; he visited France the following year. Many British thinkers supported it, including Richard Price, who initiated the Revolution Controversy with his sermon and pamphlet drawing favourable parallels between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution. Conservative intellectual Edmund Burke responded with a counter revolutionary attack entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which strongly appealed to the landed class and sold 30,000 copies. Paine's Rights of Man was printed by Joseph Johnson for publication on 21 February 1791, then withdrawn for fear of prosecution.

Paine argues that the interests of the monarch and his people are united, and insists that the French Revolution should be understood as one which attacks the despotic principles of the French monarchy, not the king himself, and he takes the Bastille, the main prison in Paris, to symbolise the despotism that had been overthrown. The fuller development of this position seems to have been worked out one night in France after an evening spent with Thomas Jefferson, and possibly Lafayette, discussing a pamphlet by the Philadelphia conservative James Wilson on the proposed federal constitution.

Rights of Man concludes in proposing practical reformations of English government such as a written constitution composed by a national assembly, in the American mould; the elimination of aristocratic titles, because democracy is incompatible with primogeniture, which leads to the despotism of the family; a national budget without allotted military and war expenses; lower taxes for the poor, and subsidised education for them; and a progressive income tax weighted against wealthy estates to prevent the re emergence of a hereditary aristocracy.

Principally, Rights of Man opposes the idea of hereditary government—the belief that dictatorial government is necessary, because of man's corrupt, essential nature. Although other late 18th century writers such as James Murray and Major John Cartwright criticized the outsized role played by the aristocracy in the government, Paine was arguably the first to advocate the eradication of titles and hereditary government. In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Edmund Burke says that true social stability arises if the nation's poor majority are governed by a minority of wealthy aristocrats, and that lawful inheritance of power (wealth, religious, governing) ensured the propriety of political power being the exclusive domain of the nation's élite social class—the nobility. Rights of Man denounces Burke's assertion of the nobility's inherent hereditary wisdom; countering the implication that a nation has not a right to form a Government for governing itself. Paine refutes Burke's definition of Government as "a contrivance of human wisdom". Instead, Paine argues that Government is a contrivance of man, and it follows that hereditary succession and hereditary rights to govern cannot compose a Government—because the wisdom to govern cannot be inherited.

Edmund Burke's counter revolutionary Reflections on the French Revolution delineates the legitimacy of aristocratic government to the 1688 Parliamentary resolution declaring William and Mary of Orange—and their heirs—to be the true rulers of England. Paine puts forward two arguments against this view. Firstly, he argues that "Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it." Secondly, Paine counters that the institution of monarchy should not be historically traced from 1688, but from 1066, when William of Normandy forcibly imposed his Norman rule upon Englishmen. Thomas Paine's intellectual influence is perceptible in the two great political revolutions of the eighteenth century. He dedicated Rights of Man to George Washington and to the Marquis de Lafayette, acknowledging the importance of the American and the French revolutions in his formulating the principles of modern democratic governance. Thus, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) can be encapsulated so: (1) Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility; (2) The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression; and (3) The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; neither can any individual, nor any body of men, be entitled to any authority, which is not expressly derived from it. These capsulations are akin to the self evident truths concept that the U. S. Declaration of Independence expresses.

In the closing chapters of Rights of Man, Paine addresses the condition of the poor and outlines a detailed social welfare proposal predicated upon the redirection of government expenditures. From the onset, Paine asserts all citizens have an inherent claim to welfare. Unlike such writers as James Burgh who sought to limit assistance to the better behaved segments of the poor, Paine declares welfare is not charity, but an irrevocable right. Paine's understanding of welfare seemingly follows his idea of political government. He notes, "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured". In congruence with his previous works, Paine emphasizes the compatibility between individual rights and societal wellbeing. He fervently contends that crippling poverty undermines the rights of an individual, and consequently the legitimacy of government. Not surprisingly then, Paine staunchly opposed and criticizes the English Poor Laws in place at the time, claiming the laws are highly ineffective and primitive in nature. He argues for their complete abolition, and in their place the enactment of a welfare program that assists the young, old, and struggling individuals. Paine contended the remedy for financing such a large welfare endeavor would be to cut military expenditures of the state and redirect the funds towards the people of the state. Instead, Paine suggests, the surplus of tax revenue could be reintegrated back into society with the formation of a welfare program. He also estimates that near £4 million, out of £17 million in total tax revenues from customs and excise duties, could be salvaged from the government's expenditure and redirected and redistributed to the people of the nation.

Education is a foundational cornerstone of Paine's welfare plan. Paine claims, "A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed". In the same vein, Paine also suggest women should receive maternity benefits immediately after the birth of a child. Paine's describes the workhouse as being a building, or buildings, with the capability of holding a minimum of 6,000 people. Paine's acquaintance Mary Wollstonecraft, whom he met via their common publisher, wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men as one of the first responses to Burke's attack on Richard Price. Her work was in print in December 1790, and was well reviewed. She extended the arguments in the book for which she is best remembered, the 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.