The Rights Of Man
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Paine, Thomas
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 533287
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 4
subject: government
subject: nation
subject: man
subject: burke
subject: england
subject: prayer
subject: natural
subject: consider
subject: friend
subject: mankind
subject: paine
subject: thomas
subject: rights
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: paine-rights-399.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: paine-rights-399.htm
sort title: Rights Of Man, The
full text: 1792 THE RIGHTS OF MAN by Thomas Paine 1792 PART THE FIRST BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION George Washington PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SIR, I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of SIR, Your much obliged, and Obedient humble Servant, THOMAS PAINE The Author's Preface to the English Edition From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that opinion than to change it. At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood in France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition on the rest of the world. I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr. Burke, as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed other expectations. I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more hav…