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 have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be
found out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise
in the neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if
Courts were disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were
enlightened enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of
America had been bred up in the same prejudices against France,
which at that time characterised the people of England; but experience
and an acquaintance with the French Nation have most effectually shown
to the Americans the falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not
believe that a more cordial and confidential intercourse exists
between any two countries than between America and France.

  When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of
Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I
became much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister,
a man of an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments
and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and
the wretched impolicy of two nations, like England and France,
continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of a mutual
increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be assured I had not
misunderstood him, nor he me, I put the substance of our opinions into
writing and sent it to him; subjoining a request, that if I should see
among the people of England, any disposition to cultivate a better
understanding between the two nations than had hitherto prevailed, how
far I might be authorised to say that the same disposition prevailed
on the part of France? He answered me by letter in the most unreserved
manner, and that not for 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 remains; hoping, and at
the same time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of
him, that he would find some opportunity of making good use of it, for
the purpose of removing those errors and prejudices which two
neighbouring 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.