Thomas Paine wrote the first part of The Rights of Man in 1791 as a response to the furious attack on the French Revolution by the British parliamentarian Edmund Burke in his pamphlet Reflections on the Revolution in France, published the previous year. Paine carefully dissects and counters Burke’s arguments and provides a more accurate description of the events surrounding the revolution of 1789. He then reproduces and comments on the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens” promulgated by the National Assembly of France. The manuscript of The Rights of Man was placed with the publisher Joseph Johnson, but that publisher was threatened with legal action by the British Government. Paine then gave the work to another publisher, J. S. Jordan, and on the advice of William Blake, Paine went to France to be out of the way of possible arrest in Britain. The Rights of Man was published in March 1791, and was an immediate success with the British public, selling nearly a million copies. A second part of the book, subtitled “Combining Principle and Practice,” was published in February 1792. It puts forward practical proposals for the establishment of republican government in countries like Britain. The Rights of Man had a major impact, leading to the establishment of a number of reform societies. After the publication of the second part of the book, Paine and his publisher were charged with seditious libel, and Paine was eventually forced to leave Britain and flee to France. Today The Rights of Man is considered a classic of political writing and philosophy. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man" has been celebrated, criticized, maligned, suppressed, and co-opted, but Hitchens marvels at its forethought and revels in its contentiousness. In this book, he demonstrates how Paine's book forms the philosophical cornerstone of the U.S.

Upon publication in 1791-92, the two parts of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man proved to be both immensely popular and highly controversial. An immediate bestseller, it not only defended the French revolution but also challenged current laws, customs, and government. The Routledge Guidebook to Paine’s Rights of Man provides the first comprehensive and fully contextualized introduction to this foundational text in the history of modern political thought, addressing its central themes, reception, and influence. The Guidebook examines: the history of rights, populism, representative governments, and challenges to monarchy from the 12th through 18th century; Paine’s arguments against monarchies, mixed governments, war, and state-church establishments; Paine’s views on constitutions; Paine’s proposals regarding suffrage, inequality, poverty, and public welfare; Paine’s revolution in rhetoric and style; the critical reception upon publication and influence through the centuries, as well as Paine’s relevance today. The Routledge Guidebook to Paine’s Rights of Man is essential reading for students of eighteenth-century American and British history, politics and philosophy, and anyone approaching Paine’s work for the first time.

At the present day, when there is renewed interest in the concept of human rights and in the application of this concept to the problems of government,! it may be instructive to review an eighteenth-century dispute which was concerned precisely with these themes. Nor should the investigation be any less interesting because the disputants were Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine: both these men have also been the object of renewed attention and study in recent years. Critical work on the biography and bibliography of Paine is being done by Professor Aldridge and Col. Richard Gimbel respectively;2 while Burke is being well looked after, not only by the able team of experts who, under the leadership of Professor Copeland, are engaged in producing the critical edition of his Correspondence, but also by such individual scholars as D. C. Bryant, C. B. Cone, T. H. D. Mahoney, 3 P. J. Stanlis, C. Parkin, F. Canavan, and A. Cobban. But though Burke and Paine are being studied separately, little work appears to have been done on the relationship between them, apart from an 4 essay by Professor Copeland published more than twelve years ago. It is hoped that the present study, while it does not claim to add anything to the facts about Burke and Paine already known to his- 1 See Nehemiah Robinson, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.