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Rights of Man
The Thinker's Library, No. 63.
RIGHTS OF MAN
BASING AN ANSWER TO MK. BURKE’S ATTACK
ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
BY
THOMAS PAINE
SECKETAHY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO CONGRESS IN THE AMERICAN WAR,
AND
AUTHOR OF THE WORKS ENTITLED "COMMON SENSE” AND
"A LETTER TO THE ABBE RAYNAL”
EDITED BY
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER
WITH AN introduction SY
“LONDON:
WATTS & CO.,
5 & 6 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4
First published in this form, IQ37
Printed and Published in Great Britain by C. A. Watts & Co. Liniiti
5 6f 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C,4
INTRODUCTION
By G. D. H. Cole
In 1792 the British Government prosecuted Thomas
Paine for the “ libel ” contained in his famous book,
Rights of Man. That prosecution was, in fact, the
beginning of the great repression of British Radical
opinion which followed the French Revolution, and
succeeded for a time in crushing out Radicalism as an
organized movement. Paine, indeed, was not present
at his own trial : nor did he ever serve the sentence
which was imposed upon him. For in 1792 Paine was in
France, a member of the National Assembly and an
honoured citizen of the new revolutionary state, though
he was soon to fall from favour on account of his
opposition to the execution of Louis, and to be driven
from France as from England, to seek a new home in the
American Republic which he had helped so manfully
in the days of its struggle for independence.
Paine was famous long before he published his classic
answer to Burke’s onslaught upon the French Revolution.
He had become famous for his stand in the American
War; and his American writings, especially Common
Sense and The Crisis, had played a notable part in
assisting the colonists to carry their revolt against
George III and his ministers to a triumphant con-
INTRODUCTION
vi
elusion. But these earlier works were not widely known
in England until the publication of Rights of Man had
made its author the most read, most beloved, and most
hated political writer in Great Britain,
Pari I of Rights of Man appeared in 1791 — an
answer to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France,
which was itself an answer to the once-famous discourse
of Dr. Richard Price upon Civil Liberty. Price, too,
the foremost among Nonconformist divines, had de-
fended the American colonists and, in 1788, had joined,
under the auspices of the Revolution Society, in com-
memorating the " Glorious Revolution ” of 1688.
Burke, Whig as he was, had defended the Americans,
though he deplored the separation which British mis-
handling of the dispute with the colonies had made in
his view unavoidable. But the French Revolution was
another matter. The English Revolution of 1688 had
seated a landed aristocracy firmty in political power :
the French Revolution of a century later threatened
to sweep aristocracy and its privileges utterly away. To
Burke the Whig any society without a ruling aristocracy
and a strongly established Church seemed mere anarchy ;
j for in his view Church and aristocracy were indis-
I pensable upholders of morality and of the social
I tradition which held society together. The social
( system, he maintained, rested on a custom and tradition
of greatness of which the aristocrats were the necessary
guardians. It did not rest upon reason, and it was
ruinous presumption on men’s part to suppose that by
reasoning they could make a State. States and societies
grew, and were not made ; and no generation of men had
INTRODUCTION
vii
any right to lay impious hands upon them, or to seek to
re-fashion them by the feeble light of reason. It was
the sacred duty of each generation to hand on to the
^ next the precious social heritage which had come down
to it; and aristocracy alone would secure that this
heritage should be kept intact,
i T o this tirade against the sans-culottes and the Rational-
ists who were seeking to build up the new France,
Paine made answer; and his answer became, from
the moment of its publication, the cherished classic of
the common people. Wliere Godwin, with his Political
Justice, spoke only to an educated few, Thomas Paine,
with his Rights of Man, spoke plainly to the poor, in
words which the artisan and the small shopkeeper could
readily understand. His book went into edition after
edition within a few months of its issue. After it had
i been proscribed, one man after another went to prison
for the crime of reprinting it or offering it for sale;
and when at last the repression was for a time relaxed
after 1815, there was at once a fresh spate of reissues,
again to be continued when the new repression Acts of
1817 and 1819 h3,d once more made the circulation of
,, Paine's “seditious" and “blasphemous" writings a
crime to be visited with condign punishment.
Thomas Paine’s book deserved its reception. It
deserved to be taken as the bible of the poor because
' it was the first book in English political literature to set
out the case of the common people from the standpoint
of the common people themselves. Paine, ex-staymaker "I
and ex-exciseman, was of the people ; he Imew how to
speak to them as one of themselves. For this same reason, )
INTRODUCTION
viii
his book deserved the suppression which it received at
the hands of the governing classes. For it was really
dangerous to them, as Godwin’s Political Justice and the
host of other Radical writings of the time were not.
It was dangerous, because it not only formulated the
poor man’s rights in plain and unambiguous terms,
but also set forth, for the first time, a Radical programme
of social reform which offered the poor tangible benefits
to fight for as well as abstract rights.
This Radical programme, the very first of its kind
in England, is contained in Part II of Rights of Man,
which appeared in 1792, when the enormous pamphlet
controversy aroused by Burke’s Reflections and by
Part I was already in full swing. In Part I Paine had
been principally concerned to do two things — to defend
the French Revolution against Burke's aspersions,
and to link his defence to a plain statement of ultimate
political rights on behalf of the British people. In
Part II, after a further upholding of those rights against
his critics, he turned to the declaration of positive
projects of social reform; and these projects of his
have to-day a ring of modernity which sets them far
apart from every other writing of the time. For Paine,
a century and a half ago, was proclaiming the need for
universal public education, for children’s allowances and
for old age pensions (to begin, be it noted, at 50, and to
rise at 60 to a higher scale), for the public provision of
work at wages for the unemployed, and for the financing
of these measures by means of a progressive income tax,
rising to 20s. in the pound upon the largest incomes.
Therewith Paine was setting down, in plain English,
INTRODUCTION
ix
hi s criteriQJi olthe right admsf:mfint of thp-snrial sysfiqm
“ When it can be said by any country in the world,
My poor are happy : neither ignorance nor distress is
to be found among them : my jails are empty of prisoners,
my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the
taxes are not oppressive : the rational world is my
friend, because I am the friend of happiness. When
these things can be said, then may that country boast
its constitution and its government."
Words like these put Paine in a category by himself
among the great Radical pioneers. He was, indeed, no
Socialist ; for when he wrote Socialism was still unborn.
But he believed in using the State as a practical in-
strument for the promotion of the welfare of its citizens ;
and he was certain this would not be done except on a
basis of complete democratic equality, and also that,
given democratic equality as the basis of society, it
would be done. He believed utterly in democratic
representation. " By engrafting representation upon
democracy, we arrive at a system of government capable
of embracing and confederating all the various interests
and every extent of territory or population." He was
certain that democracy would promote peace and happi-
ness, and lead on to “ universal security, as a means to
universal commerce.”
Therewith he believed deeply in human freedom.
Toleration of differences was not enough for him.*
" Intolerance is the Pope armed with fire and faggot,!
toleration is the Pope selling or granting indulgences." I
He demanded, not mere toleration, but a positive
recognition that differences are beneficial and creative.
X INTRODUCTION
and equal rights for all, irrespective of their divergent
opinions. The State might be entitled to punish acts :
it could never, under any circumstances, have the right
to prosecute or penalize opinions. It was man’s natural
right to hold what views he pleased ; and civil, or State,
rights could never abrogate natural rights, out of which
alone they could arise.
This is the language of the eighteenth-century en-
lightenment. But Paine put it to a new use. Voltaire
and Rousseau had stopped far short of advocating full
democracy, or of putting their faith in the creative
power of the common people. There had been, in effect,
among the common people no movement, no stirring of a
creative force, to which they could look. There was but
the very beginning of such a movement when Paine
wrote ; but he had the wits and the courage to recognize
it, and his writings helped more than any other man’s
to give it shape and direction in its early struggles.
Well might Thomas Hardy’s London Corresponding
Society, the first political association of working men in
England, offer fervent thanks and congratulations to
Paine for his Rights of Man, and many other of the
societies that were springing up echo these sentiments.
Every movement needs a gospel; and Paine's Rights of
Man was for at least two generations the gospel of the
working-class Radicals of Great Britain.
Nor are its challenge and its appeal outworn to-day,
when again the world is face to face with a struggle
between fundamental forces. Paine's writings can no
longer serve us for a gospel; for the issues have too
much changed shape. Each age must find its own
INTRODUCTION
xi
social gospel, and get it expressed in its own language
and in terms of its own most pressing problems. But tbe
gospels of the past are not dead — and the interpretation
which Paine put upon the forces underlying the great
French Revolution has a very living message for to-day.
The French Revolution did not in fact achieve that
democracy which he proclaimed as its objective, and
as the sole legitimate foundation for any social system.
It only helped, after a prodigious struggle, to clear the
ground for the planting of the democratic seed. And to-
day, wherever the crop of democracy begins to grow,
there are stiU reactionaries and oppressors eager to cut it
down. Wliat Paine fought for in America and France
and England in the eighteenth century we have still to
fight for now — and as manfully, if we are not to suffer
defeat. In that struggle, we cannot afiord to miss the
inspiration of our own past, of the thinkers and doers
and fighters who made possible the great advances
which the common people has achieved. Those gains of
the long campaign for human happiness are now in
desperate danger; for Fascism is threatening every-
where to sweep the very foundations of democracy and
freedom of thought away. We sorely need a new
Paine to hearten us, and unite us in the cause of decency
and reason. But the old Paine, too, can help to give us
courage, and to reinforce our faith in the cause of the
common man.
May 31, 1937’
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
Thomas Paine’s writings have been before the world for
the past hundred years, and as long as men love liberty
and earnest, straightforward speech, so long will the
words of Thomas Paine be read.
The task of editing this issue of the Rights of Man
has not been exactly a light one, for on comparing the
modern editions with one of 1791 I found them veryr
faulty ; words are left out altogether, wrong words
substituted for right, whole paragraphs (amounting in
all to several pages) omitted, and even a sentence inter-
polated. The interpolated sentence was evidently
originally intended as a footnote, but in printing it
became carried into the text, where, as an utterance of
the year 1791, it is singularly out of place. On com-
paring some of the early editions I found that these also
varied a little, the variations in some cases being due to
Paine’s own corrections. In order to present the best
reading possible, I have consulted the ist edition (John-
son’s, 1791), the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 8th (Jordan’s,
1791 and 1793), Symonds' cheap edition (1792) — which
I am informed by M. D. Conway was carefully revised by
Paine himself — a Dublin edition (P. Byrne, i/Qi), the
2nd French edition (Buisson, 1793), Carlile’s (1819), a
New York edition (1830), a Glasgow edition (1833),
Cousins’s (1837), Edward Truelove's, James Watson's
edition (published by himself, Holyoake & Co., and
Frederick Farrah), the Freethought Publishing Com-
pany’s (1883), J. M. Wheeler's (1891), and M. D. Conway's
(1894). Fourteen of these I have compared word for
word, and the remainder I have looked through most
carefully. The earliest in which I found verbal altera-
tions (probably for the most part due to careless press
reading) was the Watson edition ; those which followed
ytii
xiv
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
(I do not include Mr. Tnielove’s, which is undated, nor
Mr. Conway’s) contain not only the errors of the Watson
edition, but variations peculiar to themselves, of which
the most remarkable is the omission of most of the notes
and a number of paragraphs from the text. I have noted
in their places the more important variations, but I began
to find the words " This paragraph [or “ this note ”]
omitted from the modem editions” become very
irritating to the eye, and therefore after and including
p. 102 all such omissions are simply marked with an
asterisk.
The present issue is based upon the Johnson, Jordan,
and Symonds editions. I have given due regard to
Paine’s own corrections, but in those cases where the
strength of the passage seemed rather to lose than to
gain by the alteration I have adhered to the original text,
following the author's inspiration rather than his reflec-
tion. The original orthography, the characteristic punc-
tuation, and the use or absence of capital letters, is
restored in order to put the Rights of Man before its
readers to-day as nearly as possible as it appeared in
1791. The construction of sentences could not be
modernized without destroying the power of the book, and
eighteenth-century constmction v/edded to nineteenth-
century orthography did not make a harmonious whole.
By restoring the original spelling and the original phrasing
the general effect is altogether strengthened, and the
reader is brought more closely in touch with the times
in which the book was written.
In Part II. I have indicated aU the passages included
in the Attomey-GeneraTs Information upon which Paine
was tried in 1792. This, as far as I am aware, has never
been done in any previous edition,
I am indebted to John M. Robertson and others for
the loan of rare editions of the Rights of Man.
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER.
TO
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.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolu-
tion, it was natural that I should consider him a friend to
mankind ; and as our acquaintance commenced on that
ground, it would have keen 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 when-
ever 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 circumstance 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 neigh-
bourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if
Courts were disposed to set honestly about it, or if
countries were enlightened enough not to be made the
dupes of Courts. The people of America had been l)red
up in the same prejudices against France, which at that
time characterised the people of England ; but experience
xvii
xviii PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
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.
TOen 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 senti-
ments and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the
madness of war, and the wretched impolicy of two nations
like England and France, continually v/orrying 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 be-
tween 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 know-
ledge 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 remo\dng those errors and prejudices
which two neighbouring nations, from the want of know-
ing 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 in-
veteracy, as if he were afraid that England and France
would cease to be enemies. That there are men in all
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION xix
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 rumour, if he thinks
proper.
THOMAS PAINE.
RIGHTS OF MAN
Among 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 rancour, prejudice, ignorance or knowledge
could suggest, is 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
phrenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject,
that becomes exhausted.
Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and dis-
appointed 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 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
RIGHTS OF MAN
name of the Revolution Society and the Society for
Constitutional Information.
3 Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of Novem-
ber, 1789, being the anniversary of what is called in
England the Revolution, which took place 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 ;
1. 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 wJiole :
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 anywhere;
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
rights do not now exist in the nation, either in whole or
in part, or an5where at aU, is of the same marvellous and
monstrous kind with what he has already said ; for his
arguments are that the persons, or the generation of
persons, in whom they did exist, are dead, and with
them the right is dead also. To prove this, he quotes a
declaration made by parliament about a hundred years
ago, to William and Maiy, in these words : " The Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name
of the people aforesaid [meaning the people of England
then living], most humbly and faithfully them-
selves, their /^e&s and posterities, for ever.” He also
RIGHTS OF MAN
3
quotes a clause of another act of parliament made in the
same reign, the terms of which, he says, “ bind us [mean-
ing the people of that day], our heirs and our posterity, to
them, their heirs djxdi posterity, to the end of time.”
Mr. Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by
producing those clauses, which he enforces by saying
that they exclude the right of the nation for ever. And
not yet content with malving such declarations, repeated
over and over again, he further says, ” that if the people
of England possessed such a right before the Revolution
[which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only
in England, but throughout Europe, at an early period],
yet that the English Nation did, at the time of the
Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for
themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever.”
As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn
from his horrid principles (if it is not prophanation to
call them by the name of principles) ^ not only to the
Eng(lish nation, but to the French Revolution and the
National Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated
and illuminating body of men with the epithet of
usurpers, I shall, sans ceremonie, place another system of
principles in opposition to his.
The English parliament of 1688 did a certain thing,
which, for themselves and their constituents, they had a
right to do, and which it appeared right should be done :
but, in addition to this right, %vhich they possessed by
delegation, they set tip another right by assumption, that
of binding and controuling posterity to the end of time.
The case, therefore, divides itself into tv/o parts; the
right which they possessed by delegation, and the
right which they set up by assumption. The first is
admitted ; but with respect to the second, I reply —
There never did, there never will, and there never can,
exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any
generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right
^ This parenthetical remark is omitted in the Jordan’s 6 th
edition (1791), in Symonds’ (1792), and in manj^ later ones. It is,
however, retained by Carlhe (1819), Cousins (iSjy), and Truelove.
RIGHTS OF MAN
4
or the power of binding and controuling posterity to the
“ end of time,” or of commanding for ever how the world
shall be governed, or who shall govern it ; and therefore
all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers
of them attempt to do what they have neither the right
nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in
themselves null and void. Every age and generation
must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and
generations which preceded it. The vanity and pre-
sumption of governing beyond the grave is the most
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no
property in man : neither has any generation a property
mth^generations'wincfi~areToTollovr" ~TEe~parliament
ofthe people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more
right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or to controul them in any shafe whatever, than the
parliament or the people of the present day have to
dispose of, bind or controul those who are to live a hundred
or a thousand years hence. Eveiy generation is, and must
be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions
require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be
accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and
his wants cease with him; and having no longer any
participation in the concerns of this world, he has no
longer any authority in directing who shall be its
governors, or how its government shall be organized, or
how administered.
I am not contending for nor against any form of
government, nor for nor against any party, here or else-
where, That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has
a right to do. Mr. Burke says. No. Where, then, does
the right exist ? I am contending for the rights of the
living, and against their being willed awa}?-, and controuled
and contracted for, by the manuscript assumed authority
of the dead; and Mr, Burke is contending for the
authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the
living. There was a time when kings disposed of their
crowns by will upon their death-beds, and consigned the
people, like beasts of the field, to whatever successor they
appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely to be
RIGHTS OF MAN
5
remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be believed ;
but the parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke
builds his political church are of the same nature.
The laws of every country must be analogous to some
common principle. In England no parent or master,
nor all the authority of parliament, omnipotent as it
has called itself, can bind or controul the personal free-
dom even of an individual beyond the age of twenty-one
years. On what ground of right, then, could the parlia-
ment of 1688, or any other parliament, bind all posterity
for ever ?
Those who have quitted the world, and those who have
not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other as
the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive.
What possible obligation, then, can exist between them ;
what rule or principle can be laid down that of two non-
entities, the one out of existence and the other not
in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should
controul the other to the end of time ?
In England it is said that money cannot be taken out
of the pockets of the people without their consent. But
who authorised, or who could authorise, the parliament of
1688 to controul and take away the freedom of posterity
(who were not in existence to give or to withhold their
consent), and limit and confine their right of acting in
certain cases for ever ?
A greater absurdity cannot present itself to the under-
standing of man than what Mr. Burke offers to his
readers. He tells them, and he tells the world to come,
that a certain body of men who existed a hundred years
ago, made a law, and that there does not now exist in
the nation, nor ever will, nor ever can, a power to alter it.
Under how many subtilties or absurdities has the divine
right to govern been imposed on the credulity of man-
kind ! Mr. Burke has discovered a new one, and he has
shortened his journey to Rome by appealing to the power
of this infallible parliament of former days; and he
produces what it has done as of divine authority, for that
power must certainly be more than human which no
human power to the end of time can alter.
6
RIGHTS OF MAN
But Mr. Burke has done some service, not to his cause,
but to his country, by bringing those clauses into public
view. They serve to demonstrate how necessary it is at
all times to watch against the attempted encroachment
of power, and to prevent its running to excess. It is
somewhat extraordinary that the offence for which
James II. was expelled, that of setting up power by
assumption, should be re-acted, under another shape and
form, by the parliament that expelled him. It shews
that the rights of man were but imperfectly understood
at the Revolution ; for certain it is that the right which
that parliament set up by assumption (for by delegation
it had not, and could not have it, because none could give
it) over the persons and freedom of posterity for ever,
was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James
attempted to set up over the parliament and the nation,
and for which he was expelled. The only difference is
(for in principle they differ not) that the one was an
usurper over the living, and the other over the unborn ;
and as the one had no better authority to stand upon than
the other, both of them must be equally null and void,
and of no effect.
From what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the
right of any human power to bind posterity for ever?
He has produced his clauses, but he must produce also
his proofs that such a right existed, and shew how it
existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for what-
ever appertains to the nature of man cannot be anni-
hilated by man. It is the nature of man to die, and he
will continue to die as long as he continues to be born.
But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of political Adam, in
whom all posterity are bound for ever ; he must, there-
fore, prove that his Adam possessed such a power, or
such a right.
The weaker any cord is the less will it bear to be
stretched, and the worse is the policy to stretch it, unless
it is intended to break it. Had anyone proposed the
overthrow of Mr. Burke’s positions, he would have pro-
ceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified
the authorities, on purpose to have called the right of
RIGHTS OF MAN
7
them into question ; and the instant the question of right
was started, the authorities must have been given up.
It requires but a very small glance of thought to
perceive that altho' laws made in one generation often
continue in force through succeeding generations, yet
that they continue to derive their force from the consent
of the living. A law not repealed continues in force,!
not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is non
repealed ; and the non-repealing passes for consent. «
But Mr. Burke’s clauses have not even this qualifica-
tion in their favour. They become null, by attempting to
become immortal . The nature of them precludes consent.
"They destroy the right which they might have, by
grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Im-
mortal power is not a human right, and therefore cannot
be a right of parliament. The parliament of 1688 might
as wen have passed an act to have authorized themselves
to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever.
All, therefore, that can be said of those clauses is that
they are a formality of words, of as much import as if
those who used them had addressed a congratulation to
themselves, and in the oriental stile of antiquity had said :
O Parliament, live for ever !
The circumstances of the world are continually
changing, and the opinions of men change also ; and as
government is for the living , and not^for the dead^ it is
the living only that has any ripitiiiit!^ That which may
be thought right and found convenient in one age may
be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another.
In such cases, Who is to decide, the living, or the dead ?
As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke’s book are
employed upon these clauses, it will consequently follow
that if the clauses themselves, so far as they set up an
assumed usurped dominion over posterity for ever, are
unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void ; that
all his voluminous inferences, and declamation dra%yn
therefrom, or founded thereon, are null and void also;
and on this ground I rest the matter.
We now come more particularly to the affairs of France.
Mr. Burke’s book has the appearance of being written
8 RIGHTS OF MAN
as instruction to the French nation ; but if I may permit
myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited to the
extravagance of the case. It is darkness attempting to
illuminate light.
While I am writing this there are accidentally before me
some proposals for a declaration of rights by the Marquis
de la Fayette (I ask his pardon for using his former
address, and do it only for distinction's sake) to the
National Assembly, on the nth of July, 1789, three days
before the taking of the BastiUe ; and I cannot but re-
mark with astonishment how opposite the sources are
from which that gentleman and Mr. Burke draw their
principles. Instead of referring to musty records and
mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living
are lost, " renounced and abdicated for ever,” by those
who are now no more, as Mr. Burke has done, M. de la
Fayette applies to the living world, and emphatically says,
“ Call to mind the sentiments which Nature has engraved
in the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force
when they are solemnly recognized by all : For a nation
to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it ; and to be
free, it is sufficient that she wills it.” How dry, barren,
and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke labours ;
and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these
clear, concise, and soul-animating sentiments ! Few
and short as they are, they lead on to a vast field of
generous and manly thinking, and do not finish, like Mr.
Burke’s periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the
heart.
As I have introduced the mention of M. de la Fayette,
I will take the liberty of adding an anecdote respecting
his farewel address to the Congress of America in 1783,
and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr.
Burke’s thundering attack on the French revolution.
M. de la Fayette went to America at an early period of
the war, and continued a volunteer in her service to the
end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise
is one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in
the history of a young man, scarcely then twenty years
RIGHTS OF MAN
9
of age. Situated in a country that was like the lap of
sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it,
how few are there to be found who would exchange such a
scene for the woods and wildernesses of America, and
pass the flowery years of youth in unprofitable danger and
hardship ! But such is the fact. When the war ended,
and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he
presented himself to Congress, and contemplating, in his
affectionate farewel, the revolution he had seen, expressed
himself in these words : “ May this great monument
raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and
an example to the oppressed 1 ’ ' When this address
came to the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in
France, he applied to Count Vergennes to have it inserted
in the French Gazette, but never could obtain his consent.
The fact was that Count Vergennes was an aristocratical
despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American
revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread
the example of the French revolution in England ; and
Mr. Burke’s tribute of fear (for in this light his book must
be considered) runs parallel with Count Vergennes'
refusal. But to return more particularly to his work —
“ We have seen,” says Mr. Burke, “ the French rebel
against a mild and lawful Monarch, with more fury,
outrage, and insult, than any people has been known to
rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant.” This is one among a thousand
other instances, in which Mr. Burke shews that he is
ignorant of the springs and principles of the French
revolution.
It was not against Louis XVI., but against the despotic
principles of the government, that the nation revolted.
These principles had not their origin in him, but in the
original establishment, many centuries back; and they
were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the
Augean stable of parasites and plunderers too abominably
filthy to be cleansed, by anything short of a complete
and universal revolution. When it becomes necessary
to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the
measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived.
lo RIGHTS OF MAN
and there remained no choice but to act with determined
vigour, or not to act at all. The King was known to be
the friend of the nation, and this circumstance was
favourable to the enterprise. Perhaps no man bred up in
the stile of an absolute King, ever possessed a heart so
little disposed to the exercise of that species of power
as the present King of France. But the principles of the
government itself still remained the same. The Monarch
and the Monarchy were distinct and separate things;
and it was against the established despotism of the
latter, and not against the person or principles of the
former, that the revolt commenced, and the revolution
has been carried.
Mr. Burke does not attend to the distinction between
fmn and principles ; and, therefore, he does not see that
a revolt may take place against the despotism of the
latter, while there lies no charge of despotism against
the former.
The natural moderation of Louis XVI. contributed
nothing to alter the hereditary despotism of the
monarchy. All the tyrannies of former reigns, acted
under that hereditary despotism, were still liable to be
revived in the hands of a successor. It was not the
respite of a reign that would satisfy France, enlightened
as she was then become. A casual discontinuance of the
practice of despotism, is not a discontinuance of its
principles', the former depends on the virtue of the
individual who is in immediate possession of the power ;
the latter, on the virtue and fortitude of the nation. In
the case of Charles I. and James II. of England, the
revolt was against the personal despotism of the men;
whereas in France, it was against the hereditary despotism
of the established government. But men who can con-
sign over the rights of posterity for ever on the authority
of a mouldy parchment, like Mr. Burke, are not qualified
to judge of this revolution. It takes in a field too vast
for their views to explore, and proceeds with a mightiness
of reason they cannot keep pace with.
^ But there are many points of view in which this revolu-
tion may be considered. When despotism has estab-
RIGHTS OF MAN
II
lished itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not
in the person of the King only that it resides. It has
the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal
authority ; but it is not so in practice and in fact. It has
its standard everywhere. Every office and department
has its desnotisnq., founded upon cuatn-rn and usagf».
gverv place has its BastiUe. and every Bastille its desp ot.
The original hereditary despoHsm resident in the person
of the King, divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand
shapes and forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by
deputation. This was the case in France ; and against
this species of despotism, proceeding on through an
endless labyrinth of office tiU the source of it is scarcely
perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens
itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannises
under the pretence of obeying.
When a man reflects on the condition which France
was in from the nature of her government, he will see
other causes for revolt than those which immediately
connect themselves with the person or character of
Louis XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thou-
sand despotisms to be reformed in France, which had
grown up under the hereditary despotism of the monarch,
and became so rooted as to be in a great measure inde-
pendent of it. Between the monarchy, the parliament,
and the church there was a rivalsMp of despotism;
besides the feudal despotism operating locally, and the
ministerial despotism operating everywhere. But Mr.
Burke, by considering the King as the only possible
object of a revolt, spealcs as if France was a viUage, in
which everything that passed must be known to its com-
manding officer, and no oppression could be acted but
what he could immediately controul. Mr. Burke might
have been in the BastiUe his whole life, as well under
Louis XVI. as Louis XIV., and neither the one nor the
other have known that such a man as Mr. Burke existed.
The despotic principles of the government were the same
in both reigns, though the dispositions of the men
were as remote as tyranny and benevolence.
What Mr. Burke considers as a reproach to the
12
RIGHTS OF MAN
French revolution (that of bringing it forward under a
reign more mild than the preceding ones) is one of its
highest honours. The revolutions that have taken place
in other European countries, have been excited by
personal hatred. The rage was against the man, and he
became the victim. But, in the instance of France we
see a revolution generated in the rational contemplation
of the rights of man, and distinguishing from the
beginning between persons and principles.
But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles
when he is contemplating governments. “Ten years
ago,” says he, “ I could have felicitated France on her
having a government, without inquiring what the nature of
that government was, or how it was administered,” Is
this the language of a rational man ? Is it the language
of a heart feehng as it ought to feel for the rights and
happiness of the human race? On this ground, Mr.
Burke must compliment all the governments in the world, '
while the victims who su:ffer under them, whether sold ;
into slavery, or tortured out of existence, are wholly i
forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. *
Burke venerates ; and under this abominable depravity
he is disqualified to judge between them. Thus much
for his opinion as to the occasions of the French revolu- ;
tion. I now proceed to other considerations.
I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, ;
because as you proceed along the shore, gay and flowery I
as Mr. Burke's lan^age, it continually recedes and f
presents itself at a (hstance before you ; but when you |
have got as far as you can go, there is no point at all.
Just thus it is with Mr. Burke's three hundred and fifty-
six pages. It is therefore difficult to reply to him. But
as the points he wishes to establish may be inferred
from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that we must
look for his arguments.
As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has
outraged his own imagination, and seeks to work upon
that of his readers, they are very well calculated for .
theatrical representation, where facts are manufactured
for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce,
RIGHTS OF MAN
13
through the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect.
But Mr. Burke should recollect that he is writing History,
and not Plays, and that his readers will expect truth,
and not the spouting rant of high-toned declamation.
When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a
publication intended to be believed that “ Th& age of
chivalry is gone ! ^ that the glory of Europe is extinguished
for ever ! that the unbought grace of life [if anyone knows
what it is], the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly
sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone ! " and all this
because the Quixote age of chivaky nonsense is gone,
what opinion can we form of his judgment, or what
regard can we pay to his facts ? In the rhapsody of his
imagination he has discovered a world of windmills, and
his sorrows are that there are no Quixotes to attack them.
But if the age of aristocracy, like that of chivalry, should
fall (and they had originally some connection), Mr.
Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may continue his
parody to the end, and finish with exclaiming : “ Othello’s
occupation's gone I ”
Notwithstanding Mr. Burke’s horrid paintings, when
the French revolution is compared with the revolutions of
other countries, the astonishment will be that it is marked
with so few sacrifices ; but this astonishment will cease
when we reflect that principles, and not persons, were the
meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the
nation was acted upon by a higher stimulus than what
the consideration of persons could inspire, and sought a
higher conquest than could be produced by the downfall
of an enemy. Among the few who fell there do not appear
to be any that were intentionally singled out. They all
of them had their fate in the circumstances of the
moment, and were not pursued with that long, cold-
blooded, unabated revenge which pursued the un-
fortunate Scotch in the affair of 1745.
Through the whole of Mr. Burke’s book I do not observe
that the Bastille is mentioned more than once, and that
^ The words ” is gone ” must have accidently dropped out at
some time, and most of the modern editions are without them,
although the sentence is thus obviously incomplete. — H. B, B.
14 RIGHTS OF MAN
with a kind of implication as if he were sorry it was
pulled down, and wished it were knilt up again. We
have rebuilt Newgate/’ says he, “ and tenanted the
mansion ; and we have prisons almost as strong as the
Bastille for those who dare to libel the queens of France.
As to what a madman like the person called Lord George
Gordon ^ might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a
bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy a rational considera-
tion. It was a madman that libelled, and that is
sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity for
confining him, which was the thing that was wished for.
But certain it is that Mr. Burke, who does not call himself
a madman (whatever other people may do), has libelled in
the most unprovoked manner, and in the grossest stile
of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in
the British House of Commons 1 From his violence and
his grief, his silence on some points and his excess on
others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr. Burke is
sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power
of the Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.
Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating
reflection that I can find throughout his book, has he
bestowed on those who lingered out the most wretched
of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of
prisons. It is painful to behold a man emplojdng his
talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to
Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the
reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy
^ Since writing the above, two other places occur in Mr. Burke’s
pamphlet in which the name of the Bastille is mentioned, but in
the same manner. In the one he introduces it in a sort of obscure
question, and asks : “ Will any ministers who now serve such a
king, with but a decent appearance of respect, cordially obey the
orders^ of those whom but the other day, in his name, they had
comrnitted to the Bastille? ” In the other the taking it is
mentioned as implying criminality in the French guards, who
assisted in demolishing it. " They have not," says he, " forgot
the taking the king's castles at Paris.” This is Mr. Burke, who
pretends to write on constitutional freedom — Author.
2 Initials only are used in Jordan's and Symonds's editions. —
RIGHTS OF MAN
15
resemblance of it striking his- imagination. He pities
the plumage, but forgets the dying bird . Accnstomed
to Mss the aristo hand that hath purloined him
from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art,
and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero
or his heroine must be a tragedy-victim ej^iring in
show, and not the real prisoner of misery, sliding into
death in the silence of a dungeon.
As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction
of the Bastille (and his silence is nothing in his favour),
and has entertained his readers with reflections on
supposed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I will give,
since he has not, some accoimt of the circumstances
which preceded that transaction. They will serve to
show that less mischief could scarcely have accompanied
such an event when considered with the treacherous and
hostile aggravations of the enemies of the revolution.
The mind can hardly picture to itself a more tre-
mendous scene than what the city of Paris exliibited at
the time of taking the Bastille and for two days before
and after, nor perceive the possibility of its quieting so
soon. At a distance this transaction has appeared only
as an act of heroism standing on itself, and the close
political connection it had with the revolution is lost
in the brilliancy of the achievement. But we are to
consider it as the strength of the parties brought man
to man, and contending for the issue. The Bastille was
to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants. The
downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of
despotism, and this compounded image was become as
figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and
Giant Despair.
The National Assembly, before and at the time of
taking the Bastille, was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles
distant from Paris. About a week before the rising of
the Parisians, and their taking the Bastflle, it was dis-
covered that a plot was forming, at the head of which
w^as the Count d’ Artois, the king’s youngest brother,
for demolishing the National Assembly, seizing its
members, and thereby crushing, by a coup de main, all
RIGHTS OF MAN
l6
hopes and prospects of forming a free government. For
the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this
plan did not succeed. Examples are not wanting to
show how dreadfully vindictive and cruel are all old
governments, when they are successful against what they
call a revolt.
This plan must have been some time in contemplation :
because, in order to carry it into execution, it was
necessary to collect a large military force round Paris,
and cut off the communication between that city and
the National Assembly at Versailles. The troops
destined for this service were chiefly the foreign troops in
the pay of France, and who, for this particular purpose,
were drawn from the distant provinces where they were
then stationed. When they were collected to the
amount of between twenty-five and thirty thousand, it
was judged time to put the plan into execution. The
ministry who were then in office, and who were friendly
to the revolution, were instantly dismissed and a new
ministry formed of those who had concerted the project,
among whom was Count de Broglio, and to his share was
given the command of those troops. The character of
this man as described to me in a letter which I communi-
cated to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and
from an authority which Mr. Burke well knows was good,
was that of “ a high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable
of eve^ mischief."
While these matters were agitating, the National
Assembly stood in the most perilous and critical situation
that a body of men can be supposed to act in. They
I were the devoted victims, and they knew it. They had
i the hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but
I military authority they had none. The guards of Broglio
surrounded the hall where the assembly sat, ready, at
the word of command, to seize their persons, as had been
done the year before to the parliament of Paris. Had the
National Assembly deserted their trust, or had they
exhibited signs of weakness or fear, their enemies had
been encouraged and the country depressed. \^en the
situation they stood in, the cause they were engaged in
RIGHTS OF MAN
17
and the crisis then ready to burst, which should deter-
mine their personal and political fate and that of their
country, and probably of Europe, are taken into one
view, none but a heart callous with prejudice or corrupted
by dependence can avoid interesting itself in their success.
The archbishop of Vienne was at this time president of
the National Assembly — a person too old to undergo
the scene that a few days or a few hours might bring
forth. A man of more activity and bolder fortitude was
necessary, and the National Assembly chose (under the
form of a vice-president, for the presidency still resided
in the archbishop) M. de la Fayette ; and this is the only
instance of a vice-president being chosen. It was at the
moment that this storm was pending (July iith) that a
declaration of rights was brought forward by M. de la
Fayette ; and this is the same which is alluded to in page
8. It was hastily drawn up, and makes only a part of
the more extensive declaration of rights agreed upon and
adoj)ted afterwards by the National Assembly. The
particular reason for bringing it forward at this moment
(M. de la Fayette has since informed me) was that, if the
National Assembly should fall in the threatened destruc-
tion that then surrounded it, some trace of its principles
might have the chance of surviving the wreck.
Everything now was drawing to a crisis. The event
was freedom or slavery. On one side, an army of nearly
thirty thousand men ; on the other, an unarmed body of
citizens ; for the citizens of Paris, on whom the National
i Assembly must then immediately depend, were as
unarmed and as undisciplined as the citizens of London
are now. The French guards had given strong symptoms
of their being attached to the national cause ; but their
numbers were small, not a tenth part of the force that
Broglio commanded, and their officers were in the
i interest of Broglio.
Matters b eing now ripe for execution , the new ministry
made their appearance in office. The reader will carry
in his mind that the Bastille was taken the 14th July;
the point of time I am now speaking of is the 12th.
Immediately on the news of the change of ministry
RIGHTS OF MAN
X8
reaching Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and
places of entertainment, shops and houses, were shut
up. The change of ministry was considered as the prelude
of hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.
The foreign troops began to advance towards the city.
The Prince de Lambesc, who commanded a body of
German cavalry, approached by the Place of Louis XV.,
which connects itself with some of the streets. In his
march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword.
The French are remarkable for their respect to old age ;
and the insolence with which it appeared to be done,
uniting with the general fermentation they were in,
produced a powerful effect, and a cry of “To arms !
To arms ! ” spread itself in a moment over the city.
Arms they had none, nor scarcely any who knew the
use of them ; but desperate resolution, when every hope
is at stake, supplies, for a while, the want of arms. Near
where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn up, were large
piles of stones collected for building the new bridge,
and with these the people attacked the cavalry. A
party of French guards, upon hearing the firing, rushed
from their quarters and joined the people; and night
coming on, the cavalry retreated.
The streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for
defence, and the loftiness of the houses, consisting of
many stories, from which great annoyance might be
given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises ; and
the night was spent in providing themselves with every
sort of weapon they could make or procure : guns,
swords, blacksmiths' hammers, carpenters’ axes, iron
crows, pikes, halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs, etc., etc.
The incredible numbers with which they assembled the
next morning, and the stiU more incredible resolution
they _ exhibited, embarrassed and astonished their
enemies. Little did the new ministry expect such a
salute. Accustomed to slavery themselves, they had
no idea that Liberty was capable of such inspiration, or
that a body of unarmed citi2ens would dare to face the
military force of thirty thousand men. Every moment
of this day was employed in collecting arms, concerting
RIGHTS OF MAN
19
plans, and arranging themselves into the best order
which such an instantaneous movement could afford.
Broglio continued lying round the city, but made no
further advances this day, and the succeeding night
passed with as much tranquillity as such a scene could
possibly produce.
But defence only was not the object of the citizens.
They had a cause at stake, on which depended their
freedom or their slavery. They every moment expected
an attack, or to hear of one made on the National
Assembly; and in such a situation, the most prompt
measures are sometimes the best. The object that now
presented itself was the Bastille ; and the dclat of carrying
such a fortress in the face of such an army, could not
fail to strike terror into the new ministry, who had
scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted
correspondence this morning, it was discovered that the
Mayor of Paris, M. DefSesselles, who appeared to be in
their interest, was betraying them ; and from this dis-
covery, there remained no doubt that Broglio would
reinforce the Bastille the ensuing evening. It was
therefore necessary to attack it that day; but before
this could be done, it was first necessary to procure a
better supply of arms than they were then possessed of.
There was, adjoining to the city, a large magazine of
arms deposited at the Hospital of the Invalids, which
the citizens summoned to surrender; and as the place
was neither defensible, nor attempted much defence,
they soon succeeded. Thus supplied, they marched to
attack the Bastille ; a vast mixed multitude of all ages,
and of all degrees, armed with all sorts of weapons.
Imagination would fail in describing to itself the appear-
ance of such a procession, and of the anxiety of the
events which a few hours or a few minutes might produce.
What plans the ministry were forming, were as unknown
to the people within the city, as what the citizens were
doing was unknown to the ministry; and what move-
ments Broglio might make for the support or relief of the
place, were to the citizens equally as unknown, AU
was mystery and hazard.
20
RIGHTS OF MAN
That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm
of heroism, such only as the highest animation of liberty
could inspire, and carried in the space of a few hours,
is an event which the world is fully possessed of. I am
not undertaking a detail of the attack, but bringing into
view the conspiracy against the nation which provoked
it, and which fell with the Bastille. The prison to which
the new ministry were dooming the National Assembly,
in addition to its being the high altar and castle of
despotism, became the proper object to begin with.
This enterprize broke up the new ministry, who began
now to fly from the ruin they had prepared for others.
The troops of Broglio dispersed, and himself fled also.
Mr. Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but
he has never once spoken of this plot against the National
Assembly, and the liberties of the nation ; and that he
might not, he has passed over all the circumstances that
might throw it in his way. The exiles who have fled \
from France, whose case he so much interests himself
in, and from whom he has had his lesson, fled in conse-
quence of the miscarriage of this plot. No plot was
formed against them ; they were plotting against others ;
and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment ^
they were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke
say, that if this plot, contrived with the subtilty of an
ambuscade, had succeeded, the successful party would i
have restrained their wrath so soon ? Let the history of
all old governments answer the question.
Whom has the National Assembly brought to the
i scaffold? None. They were themselves the devoted 1
I victims of this plot, and they have not retaliated ; why, |
f then, are they charged with revenge they have not j
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole !
people, in which all degrees, tempers, and characters are '
confounded, delivering themselves by a miracle of |
exertion from the destruction meditated against them, is [
it to be expected that nothing will happen? When
men are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced
with the prospect of new ones, is the calmness of
philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked
RIGHTS OF MAN
21
for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the
greatest is that which himself has committed. His
book is a volume of outrage, not apologized for by the
impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space of
ten months ; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation, no life,
no interest at stake.
More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their
opponents ; but four or five persons were seized by the
populace and instantly put to death ; the Governor of
the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was detected
in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon,
one of the new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law,
who had accepted the office of intendant of Paris, Their
heads were stuck upon spikes,^ and carried about the
city ; and it is upon this mode of p\mishment that Mr.
Burke builds a great part of his tragic scenes. Let us
therefore examine how men came by the idea of
punishing in this manner.
They learn it from the governments they live under,
and retaliate the punishments they have been accus-
tomed to behold. The heads stuck upon spikes, which
remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon
spikes at Paris; yet this was done by the English
government. It may perhaps be said that it signifies
nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead ;
but it signifies much to the living; it either tortures
their feelings or hardens their hearts, and in either case
it instructs them how to punish when power falls into
their hands.
Lay then the axe to the root, an d teach governments
humanity . It is their sanguinary punishments which
'corraplmankind. In England the punishment in certain
cases is by hanging, drawing, and quartering : the heart
of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former government,
the punishments were not less barbarous. Who does
not remember the execution of Damien, torn to pieces
1 In some modern editions " pikes ” is substituted here and in
the following paragraph for " spikes.” — ^H. B. B,
32
RIGHTS OF MAN
by horses ? The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited
to the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge ;
and by the base and false idea of governing men by
terror, instead of reason, they become precedents. It
is over the lowest class of mankind that government by
terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it
operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough
to feel they are the objects aimed at; and they inflict
in their turn the examples of terror they have been
instructed to practise.
There is in all European countries a large class of
people of that description, which in England is called
the " mob” Of this class were those who committed |
the burnings and devastations in London in 1780, and |
of this class were those who carried the heads upon
spikes in Paris. Foulon and Berthier were taken up in
the country, and sent to Paris, to undergo their examina-
tion at the Hotel de Ville; for the National Assembly,
immediately on the new ministry coming into office,
passed a decree, which they communicated to the King
and Cabinet, that they (the National Assembly) would
hold the ministry, of which Foulon was one, responsible
for the measures they were advising and pursuing ; but *
the mob, incensed at the appearance of Foulon and
Berthier, tore them from their conductors before they
were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and executed them on
the spot. Why then does Mr. Burke charge outrages of
^ this kind on a whole people ? As well may he charge the
I riots and outrages of 1780 on all the people of London,
I or those in Ireland on all his countr5rmen. >
I But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings '
■' and derogatory to the human character should lead to
other reflections than those of reproach. Even the
beings who commit them have some claim to our con-
sideration. How then is it that such vast classes of |
mankind as are distinguished by the appellation of the
vulgar, or the ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old
countries ? The instant we ask ourselves this question,
reflection feels an answer. They arise, as an unavoidable
consequence, out of the ill construction of all old govern-
RIGHTS OF MAN
*3
ments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is
by distortedly exalting some men, that others are dis--
tortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature. A
vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the
background of the human picture, to bring forward,
with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aris-
tocracy. In the commencement of a revolution, those
men are rather the followers of the camp than of the
standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how
to reverence it.
I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations
for facts, and I then ask him if they do not establish the
certainty of what I here lay down ? Admitting them to
be true, they show the necessity of the French revolu-
tion, as much as any one thing he could have asserted.
These outrages were not the effect of the principles of
the revolution, but of the degraded mind that existed
before the revolution, and which the revolution is calcu-
lated to reform. Place them then to their proper
cause, and take the reproach of them to your own side.
It is to the honour of the National Assembly and the
city of Paris that, during such a tremendous scene of
arms and confusion, beyond the controul of all authority,
they have been able, by the influence of example and
exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more
pains taken to instruct and enhghten mankind, and
to make them see that their interest consisted in their
virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been dis-
played in the revolution of France. I now proceed to
make some remarks on Mr. Burke’s account of the
expedition to Versailles, October the 5th and 6th.
I can consider Mr. Burke’s book in scarcely any other
light than a dramatic performance; and he must, I
think, have considered it in the same light himself, by
the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting some
facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery
bend to produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his
account of the expedition to Versailles. He begins tins
account by omitting the only facts which as causes are
known to be true; everything beyond these is con-
24 RIGHTS OF MAN
jecture even in Paris; and then he works up a tale
accommodated to his own passions and prejudices.
It is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke’s book that
he never speaks of plots against the revolution ; and it is
from those plots that all the mischiefs have arisen. It
suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences without
their causes. It is one of the arts of the drama to do so.
If the crimes of men were exhibited with their suffer-
ings, the stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the
audience would be inclined to approve where it was
intended they should commiserate.
After all the investigations that have been made into
this intricate affair (the expedition to Versailles), it
stiU remains enveloped in all that kind of mystery which
ever accompanies events produced more from a concur-
rence of awkward circumstances than from fixed design.
While the characters of men are forming, as is always
the case in revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion,
and a disposition to misinterpret each other ; and even
parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes
concur in pushing forward the same movement with
very different views, and with the hopes of its producing
very different consequences. A great deal of this may
be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the
issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.
The only things certainly known are that considerable
uneasiness was at this time excited at Paris by the delay
of the King in not sanctioning and forwarding the decrees
of the National Assembly, particularly that of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the
fourth of August, which contained the foundation prin-
ciples on which the constitution was to be erected. The
kindest, and perhaps the fairest conjecture upon this
matter is, that some of the ministers intended to make
remarks and observations upon certain parts of them
before they were finally sanctioned and sent to the
provinces; but be this as it may, the enemies of the
revolution derived hope from the delay, and the friends
of the revolution uneasiness.
During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps,
RIGHTS OF MAN
25
which was composed as such regiments generally are,
of persons much connected with the Court, gave an
entertainment at Versailles (October i) to some foreign
regiments then arrived; and when the entertainment
was at the height, on a signal given the Garde du Corps
tore the national cockade from their hats, trampled it
under foot, and replaced it with a counter-cockade
prepared for the purpose. An indignity of this kind
amounted to defiance. It was like declaring war ; and
if men will give challenges they must expect conse-
quences. But aH this Mr. Burke has carefuUy kept out
of sight. He begins his account by saying : “ History
will record that on the morning of the 6th October,
1789, the King and Queen of France, after a day of
confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down under
the pledged security of public faith to indulge nature in
a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose.”
This is neither the sober stile of history, nor the intention
of it. It leaves everything to be guessed at and mis-
taken . One would at least think there had been a battle ;
and a battle there probably would have been had it not
been for the moderating prudence of those whom Mr.
Burke involves in his censures. By his keeping the
Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has afforded
himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and
Queen in their places, as if the object of the expedition
was against them. But to return to my account —
This conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might well be
expected, alarmed and enraged the Parisians. The
colours of the cause, and the cause itself, were become
too united to mistake the intention of the insult, and
the Parisians were determined to call the Garde d%i
Corps to an account. There was certainly nothing of
the cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of
the day to demand satisfaction, if such a phrase may be
used, of a body of armed men who had voluntarily given
defiance. But the circumstance which serves to throw
this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of
the revolution appear to have encouraged it as well
as its friends. The one hoped to prevent a civil war by
26
EIGHTS OF MAH
checking it in time, and the other to make one. The
hopes of those opposed to the revolution rested in
making the King of their party, and getting him from
Versailles to Metz, where they expected to collect a force
and set up a standard. We have, therefore, two
different objects presenting themselves at the same
time, and to be accomplished by the same means ; the
one to chastise the Garde du Corps, which was the object
of the Parisians ; the other to render the conclusion of such
a scene an inducement to the King to set off for Metz.
On the 5th of October a very numerous body of
women, and men in the disguise of women, collected
round the Hotel de Vihe or town-hall of Paris, and set
off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde-
du Corps', but prudent men readily recollect that
mischief is more easily begun than ended; and this
impressed itself with the more force from the suspicions
already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade.
As soon, therefore, as a sufficient force could be collected,
M. de la Fayette, by order from the civil authority of
Paris,- set off after them at the head of twenty thousand'
of the Paris militia. The revolution could derive no
benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By
an amiable and spirited manner of address he had
hitherto been fortunate in calming disquietudes, and in
this he was extraordinarily successful; to frustrate,
therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the
King's quitting Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and
p to prevent at the same time the consequences that
4 might ensue between the Garde du Corps and this
f, phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to
the King, that he was on his' march to Versailles, by the
orders of the civil authority of Paris, for the purpose
of peace and protection, expressing at the same time
the necessity of restraining the Garde du Corps from
firing upon the people.^
He arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at
1 1 am warranted in asserting this, as I had it personally from
M. de la Fayette, with whom I lived in habits of friendship for
fourteen years. — Author,
RIGHTS OF MAN
27
night. The Garde du Corps was drawn up, and the
people had arrived some time before, but everything
had remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now
consisted in changing a scene of danger into a happy
event. M. de la Fayette became the mediator between
the enraged parties; and the King, to remove the
uneasiness which had arisen from the delay already
stated, sent for the President of the National Assembly,
and signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and
such other parts of the constitution as were in readiness.
It was now about one in the morning. Everything
appeared to be composed, and a general congratulation
took place. By the beat of the drum a proclamation
was made that the citizens of Versailles would give the
hospitality of their houses to their fellow-citizens of
Paris. Those who could not be accommodated in this
manner remained in the streets, or took up their quarters
in the churches; and at two o’clock the King and
Queen retired.
In this state matters passed till the break of day,
when a fresh disturbance arose from the censurable
conduct of some of both parties, for such characters
there will be in all such scenes. One of the Garde du
Corps appeared at one of the windows of the palace,
and the people who had remained during the night in
the streets accosted him with reviling and provocative
language. Instead of retiring, as in such a case prudence
would have dictated, he presented his musket, fired, and
killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus
broken, the people rushed into the palace in quest of
the offender. They attacked the quarters of the Garde
du Corps within the palace, and pursued them throughout
the avenues of it, and to the apartments of the King.
On this tumult, not the Queen only, as Mr. Burke has
represented it, but every person in the palace was
awakened and alarmed; and M. de la Fayette had a
second time to interpose between the parties, the event
of which was that the Garde du Corps put on the national
cockade, and the matter ended as by oblivion, after the
loss of two or three lives.
28
RIGHTS OF MAN
During the latter part of the time in which this con-
fusion was acting, the King and Queen were in public
at the balcony, and neither of them concealed for safety’s
sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters being thus
appeased, and tranquility restored, a general acclamation
broke forth of Le Roi a Paris — Le Roi a Paris — ^The
King to Paris. It was the shout of peace, and im-
mediately accepted on the part of the King, By this
measure all future projects of trepanning the King to
Metz, and setting up the standard of opposition to the
constitution, were prevented, and the suspicions extin-
guished. The King and his family reached Paris in the
evening, and were congratulated on their arrival by
M. BaiUy, the Mayor of Paris, in the name of the citizens.
Mr, Burke, who throughout his book confounds things,
persons, and principles, as in his remarks on M, Bailly’s
address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly
for calling it ” un bon jour,” a good day. Mr, Burke
should have informed himself that this scene took up
the space of two days, the day on which it began with
every appearance of danger and mischief, and the day
on which it terminated without the mischiefs that
threatened; and that it is to this peaceful termination
that M. Bailly alludes, and to the arrival of the King
at Paris. Not less than three hundred thousand jjersons
arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles to
Paris, and not an act of molestation was committed
during the whole march.
Mr. Burke, on the authority of M. Tally ToUendal, a
deserter from the National Assembly, says, that on
entering Paris, the people shouted “ Tons Us eveques a la
lanterne.” All Bishops to be hanged at the lanthorn
or lamp-posts. It is surprising that nobody should
hear this but Tally ToUendal, and that nobody should
believe it but Mr, Burke. It has not the least con-
nection with any part of the transaction, and is totally
foreign to every circumstance of it. The bishops had
never been introduced before into any scene of Mr.
Burke’s drama why then are they, all at once, and
altogether, tout d coup, ct tons ensemble, introduced now ?
RIGHTS OF MAN
29
Mr. Burke brings forward his bishops and his lanthom-
like figures in a magic lanthom, and raises his scenes by
contrast instead of connection. But it serves to show,
with the rest of his book, what little credit ought to be
given where even probability is set at defiance, for the
purpose of defaming; and with this reflection, instead
of a soliloquy in praise of chivalry, as Mr. Burke has
done, I close the account of the expedition to Versailles. ^
I have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless
wilderness of rhapsodies, and a sort of descant upon
governments, in which he asserts whatever he pleases,
on the presumption of its being believed, without offering
either evidence or reasons for so doing.
Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion,
certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must
be established, admitted, or denied. Mr. Burke, with
his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, published by the National Assembly of France
as the basis on which the constitution of France is
built. This he calls “ paltry and blurred sheets of paper
about the rights of man."' Does Mr. Burke mean to
deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he
must mean that there are no such things as rights
anywhere, and that he has none himself; for who is
there in the world but man ? But if Mr. Burke means
to admit that man has rights, the question then will
be ; What are those rights, and how came man by
them originally?
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn
from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they
do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go
the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate
stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce
what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This
is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into
antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opinion and
practice prevailing ; and if antiquity is to be authority,
1 An accoiant of the expedition to Versailles may be seen in
No. 13 of the Revolution de Paris containing the events from the
3rd to the loth of October, 1789. — Author,
RIGHTS OF MAN
30
a thousand such authorities may be produced, suc-
cessively contradicting each other; but if we proceed
on, we shall at last come out right ; we shaU come to
the time when man came from the hand of his Maker.
What was he then ? Man. Man was his high and only
title, and a higher cannot be given him. But of titles
I shall speak hereafter.
We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin
of his rights. As to the manner in which the world
has been governed from that day to this, it is no farther
any concern of ours than to make a proper use of the
errors or the improvements which the history of it
presents. Those who lived a hundred or a thousand
years ago, were then moderns, as we are now. They had
their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we
also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of
antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people
who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence,
may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a
precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand
years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by
proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority
against authority all the way, till we come to the divine
origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our
inquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a
home. If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen
at the distance of an hundred years from the creation,
it is to this source of authority they must have referred,
and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian
principle of religion, yet it may be worth observing, that
the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then
not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I
will answer the question. Because there have been
upstart governments, thrusting themselves between and
presumptuously working to un-make man.
If any generation of men ever possessed the right of
dictating the mode by which the world should be
governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed;
RIGHTS OF MAN
31
and if that generation did it not, no succeeding genera-
tion can show any authority for doing it, nor set any up.
The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights
of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man)
relates, not only to the living individuals, but to genera-
tions of men succeeding each other. Every generation
is equal in rights to the generations which preceded it,
by the same rule that every individual is born equal
in rights with his contemporary.
Every history of the creation, and every traditionary
account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world,
however they may vary in their opinion or belief of
certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point,
the unity of men ; by which I mean that men are all of
one degree, and consequently that all men are bora
equal, and with equal natural rights, in the same manner
as if posterity had been continued by creation instead
of generation, the latter being the only mode by which
the former is carried forward; and consequently every
child born into the world must be considered as deriving
its existence from God. The world is as new to him as
it was to the first man that existed, and his natural
right in it is of the same kind.
The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken- as
divine authority or merely historical, is fully up to this
point, the unity or equality of man. The expressions
admit of no controversy. “ And God said, Let us make
man in our own image. In the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them." The
distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other dis-
tinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority,
it is at least historical authority, and shows that the
equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine,
is the oldest upon record.
It is also to be observed that all the religions known
in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man,
on the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether
in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be
supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are
the only distinctions. Nay, even the laws of govern-
RIGHTS OF MAN
32
ments are obliged to slide into this principle, by making
degrees to consist in crimes and not in persons.
It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the
highest advantage to cultivate. By considering man in
this light, and by instructing him to consider himself in
this light, it places him in a close connection with all his
duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which
he is a part ; and it is only when he forgets his origin,
or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his Urth and family,
that he becomes dissolute. It is not among the least of
the evils of the present existing governments in all parts
of Europe that man, considered as man, is thrown back
to a vast distance from his Maker, and the artificial
chasm filled up with a succession of barriers, or sort of
turnpike gates, through which he has to pass. I will quote
Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up
between Man and his Maker. Putting himself in the
character of a herald, he says : “ We fear God — we look
with awe to kings — ^with affection to parliaments — ^with
duty to magistrates — ^with reverence to priests, and
with respect to nobility." Mr. Burke has forgotten to
put in “ chivalry." He has also forgotten to put in
Peter.
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates,
through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the
other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two
points. His duty to God, which every man must feel;
and with respect to his neighbour, to do as he would be
done by. If those to whom power is delegated do well,
they will be respected; if not, they will be despised;
and with regard to those to whom no power is delegated,
but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing
of them.
Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part)
of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider
the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates
from the other. 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. His natural rights are the foundation
RIGHTS OF MAN
33
of all his civil rights. But in order to pursue this dis-
tinction with more precision, it will be necessary to
mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are
those which appertain to man in right of his existence.
Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of
the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an indi-
vidual for his own comfort and happiness, which are
not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil
rights are those which appertain to man in right of his
being a member of society. Every civil right has for
its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the
individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual
power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this
kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
From this short review it will be easy to distinguish
between that class of natural rights which man retains
after entering into society and those which he throws
into the common stock as a member of society.
The natural rights which he retains are all those in
which the Corner to execute is as perfect in the individual
as the right itself. Among this class, as is before men-
tioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of, the
mind; consequently religion is one of those rights.
The natural rights which are not retained, are all those
in which, though the right is perfect in the individual,
the power to execute them is defective. They answer
not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a right
to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of
the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it. But
what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to
redress ? He therefore deposits this right in the comnion
stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which
he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own.
Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor
in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
From these premisses two or three certain conclusions
will follow :
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural
34
RIGHTS OF MAN
Secondly, That civil power properly considered as
such is made up of the aggregate of that class of the
natural rights of man, which becomes defective in the
individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose,
but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the
purpose of every one.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggrega.te
of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual,
cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are
retained in the individual, and in which the power to
execute it is as perfect as the right itself.
We have now, in a few words, traced man from a
natural individual to a member of society, and shown,
or endeavoured to show, the quality of the natural rights
retained, and of those which are exchanged for civil
rights. Let us now apply these principles to govern-
ments.
In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy
to distinguish the governments which have arisen out of
society, or out of the social compact, from those which
have not ; but to place this in a clearer light than what
a single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a
review of the several sources from which governments
have arisen and on which they have been founded.
They may be all comprehended under three heads.
First, Superstition, Secondly, Power. Thirdly, The
common interest of society and the common rights of
man.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second
of conquerors, and the third of reason.
When a set of artful men pretended, through the
medium of oracles, to hold intercourse with the Deity,
as familiarly as they now march up the back-stairs in
European courts, the world was completely under the
government of superstition. The oracles were consulted,
and whatever they were made to say became the law;
and this sort of government lasted as long as this sort of
superstition lasted.
After these a race of conquerors arose, whose govern-
ment, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded
IlIGHi;S OF MAN 35
in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre.
Governments thus established last as long as the power
to support them lasts ; but that they might avail them-
selves of every engine in their favour, they united fraud
to force, and set up an idol which they called Divine
Right, and which, in imitation of the Pope, who affects
to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to the
Founder of the Christian rehgion, twisted itself after-
wards into an idol of another shape, called Church and
State. The key of St. Peter and the key of the Treasury
became quartered on one another, and the wondering
cheated multitude worshipped the invention.
When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when
I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to
blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its
character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern
mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves
and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who
axe thus imposed upon.
We have now to review the governments which arise
out of society, in contradistinction to those which arose
out of superstition and conquest.
It has been thought a considerable advance towards
establishing the principles of Freedom to say that
government is a compact between those who govern and
those who are governed; but this cannot be true,
because it is putting the effect before the cause ; for as
man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not
exist, and consequently there could originally exist no
governors to form such a compact with. The fact
therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each
in his o-\vn personal .and sovereign right, entered into _ a
compact with each other to produce a government : and
this is the only mode in which governments have a right
to arise, and the only principle on which they have a
right to exist.
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what govern-
ment is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
In doing this we shall easily discover that governments
36 RIGHTS OF MAN
must have arisen either out of the people ox over the
people. Mr. Burke has made no distinction. He
investigates nothing to its source, and therefore he con-
founds everything; but he has signified his intention
of undertaking, at some future opportunity, a com-
parison between the constitutions of England and
France. As he thus renders it a subject of controversy
by throwing the gauntlet, I take him up on his own
ground. It is in high challenges that high truths have
the right of appearing; and I accept it with the more
readiness because it afiords me, at the same time, an
opportunity of pursuing the subject with respect to
governments arising out of society.
But it will be first necessary to define what is meant
by a constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the
word; we must fix also a standard signification to it.
A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.
It has not an ideal, but a re^ existence ; and wherever
it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none.
A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and
a government is only the creature of a constitution.
The constitution of a country is not the act of its govern-
ment, but of the people constituting its government.
It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and
quote article by article; and which contains the prin-
ciples on which the government shall be established, the
manner in which it shall be organized, the powers it
shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of parlia-
1 ments, or by what other name such bodies may be called ;
f the powers which the executive part of the government
' shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the
complete organization of a civil government, and the
principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall
be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government
what the laws made afterwards by that government are
to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does
not make the laws, neither can it alter them ; it only
acts in conformity to the laws made : and the govern-
ment is in like manner governed by the constitution.
Can, then, Mr, Burke produce the English Consti-
RIGHTS OF MAN
37
tution? If he cannot, we may fairly conclude that
though it has been so much talked about, no such thing
as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and conse-
quently that the people have yet a constitution to form.
Mr. Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I
have already advanced — ^namely, that governments
arise either out of the people or over the people. The
English Government is one of those which arose out of
a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it
arose over the people; and though it has been much
modified from the opportunity of circumstances since
the time of William the Conqueror, the country has
never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a
constitution.
I readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined
going into the comparison between the English and
French constitutions, because he could not but perceive,
when he sat down to the task, that no such a thing as a
constitution existed on Ms side the question. His
book is certainly bulky enough to have contained all
he could say on this subject, and it would have been the
best manner in which people could have judged of their
separate merits. Why then has he declined the only
thing that was worth while to write upon? It was
the strongest ground he could take, if the advantages
were on Ms side, but the weakest if they were not ; and
his declining to take it is either a sign that he could not
possess it or could not maintain it.
Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in parliament,
that when the National Assembly first met in three
Orders (the Tiers Etats, the Clergy, and the Noblesse),
France had then a good constitution. TMs shews
among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does
not understand what a constitution is. The persons
so met were not a constitution, but a convention, to make
a constitution.
The present National Assembly of France is, strictly
speaking, the personal social compact. The members
of it are the delegates of the nation in its original
character; future assemblies will be the delegates of
RIGHTS OF MAN
38
the nation in its organized character. The authority of
the present assembly is different from what the authority
of future assemblies will be. The authority of the
present one is to form a constitution ; the authority of
future assemblies will be to legislate according to the
principles and forms prescribed in that constitution;
and if experience should hereafter show that alterations,
amendments, or additions are necessary, the constitution
will point out the mode by which such things shall be
done, and not leave it to the discretionary power of the
future government.
A government on the principles on which constitu-
tional governments arising out of society are established,
cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it
would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it
pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shews
there is no constitution. The act by which the English
Parliament empowered itself to sit seven years, shews
there is no constitution in England. It might, by the
same self-authority, have sat any greater number of
years, or for hfe. The biU which the present Mr. Pitt
brought into Parliament some years ago, to reform
parliament, was on the same erroneous principle. The
right of reform is in the nation in its original character,
and the_ constitutional method would be by a general
convention elected for the purpose. There is, moreover,
a paradox in the idea of vitiated bodies reforming
themselves.
From, these preliminaries I proceed to draw some
coniparisons. I have already spoken of the declaration
of rights ; and as I mean to be as concise as possible, I
shall proceed to other parts of the French constitution.
The constitution of France says. That every man who
pays a tax of sixty sous ‘per annum ( 2 s. 6d. English) is
an elector. What article will Mr. Burke place against
this ? Can anything be more limited, and at the same
time more capricious, than the qualifications of electors
are in England ? Limited — ^because not one man in an
hundred (I speak much within compass) is admitted to
vote. Capricious — because the lowest character that
RIGHTS OF MAN
39
can be supposed to exist, and who has not so much as
the visible means of an honest livelihood, is an elector
in some places : while in other places, the man who pays
very large taxes, and has a known fair character, and the
farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred
pounds a year, with a property on that farm to three or
four times that amount, is not admitted to be an elector.
Everything is out of nature, as Mr. Burke says on another
occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of follies are
blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Con-
queror and his descendants parcelled out the country
in this manner, and bribed some parts of it by what
they call charters to hold the other parts of it the better
subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many
of those charters abound in Cornwall ; the people were
averse to the government established at the conquest,
and the towns were garrisoned and bribed to enslave
the country. All the old charters are the badges of this
conquest, and it is from this source that the capricious-
ness of elections arises.
The French constitution says, That the number of
representatives for any place shall be in a ratio to the
number of taxable inhabitants or electors. What article
will Mr. Burke place against this? The county of
Yorkshire, which contains nearly a million of souls,
sends two county members; and so does the county
of Rutland, which contains not an hundredth part of
that number. The town of Old Sarum, which contains
not three houses, sends two members ; and the town of
Manchester, which contains upwards of sixty thousand
souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle
in these things ? ^ Is there anjdhing by which you can
trace the marks of freedom, or discover those of wisdom ?
No wonder then Mr, Burke has declined the comparison,
and endeavoured to lead his readers from the point by a
wild, unsystematical display of paradoxical rhapsodies.
1 At tMs point tlie following sentence has been interpolated at
some period : “It is admitted that all this is altered, but there is
much to be done yet, before we can have a fair representation of
the people." This, although suitable enough as an editor’s note,
is curiously out of place in the text. — H, B. B.
40
RIGHTS OF MAN
The French constitution says. That the National
Assembly shall be elected every two years. What
article will Mr, Burke place against this? Why, that
the nation has no right at aU in the case; that the
government is perfectly arbitrary with respect to this
point ; and he can quote for his authority the precedent
of a former parliament.
The French constitution says. There shall be no game
laws, that the farmer on whose lands wild game sh^l be
found (for it is by the produce of those lands they are
fed) shall have a right to what he can take ; that there
shall be no monopolies of any kind — that all trade shall
be free and every man free to follow any occupation by
which he can produce an honest livelihood, and in any
place, town, or city throughout the nation. What will
Mr. Burke say to this ? In England, game is made the
property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and
with respect to monopolies, the country is cut up into
monopolies. Every chartered town is an aristocratical
monopoly in itself, and the qualification of electors
proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this
freedom? Is this what Mr, Burke means by a con-
stitution ?
In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from
another part of the country is hunted from them as if
he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman is not free
of his own country ; every one of those places presents
a barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman
— ^that he has no rights. Within these monopolies are
other monopolies. In a city, such for instance as Bath,
which contains between twenty and thirty thousand
inhabitants, the right of electing representatives to
Parliament is monopolized by about thirty-one persons.
And within these monopolies are still others, A man
even of the same town, whose parents were not in cir-
cumstances to give him an occupation, is debarred, in
niany cases, from the natural right of acquiring one, be
his genius or industry what it may.
Are these things examples to hold out to a country
regenerating itself from slavery, like France? Cer-
RIGHTS OF MAN
41
tainly they are not, and certain am, I, that when the
people of England come to reflect upon them they wiH,
like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppres- ‘
sion, those traces of a conquered nation. Had Mr.
Burke possessed talents similar to the author of On
the Wealth of Nations, he would have comprehended
all the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form
a constitution. He would have reasoned from minutise
to magnitude. It is not from his prejudices only, but
from the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is unfitted
for the subject he writes upon. Even his genius is
without a constitution. It is a genius at random, and
not a genius constituted. But he must say something.
He has therefore mounted in the air like a balloon, to
draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they
stand upon.
Much is to be learned from the French constitution.
Conquest and tyranny transplanted themselves with
William the Conqueror from Normandy into England,
and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May,
then, the example of all France contribute to regenerate
the freedom which a province of it destroyed !
The French constitution says that to preserve the
national refjresentation from being corrupt no member
of the National Assembly shall be an officer of the-
government, a placeman or a pensioner. What will.
Mr. Burke place against this ? I v^l whisper his answer
Loaves and Fishes, Ah ! this government of loaves and;,
fishes has more mischief in it than people have yet-
reflected on. The National Assembly has made the-
discovery, and it holds out the example to the world.,,
Had governments agreed to quarrel on purpose to fleece ■
their countries by taxes, they could not have succeeded .
better than they have done.
Everything^ in the English government appears to-
^ " Everything ” was altered to " Many things '' in the Jordan
editions, and this reading has been followed by most of the later -
editors. P. Byrne, of Dublin (1791), however, kept to the original,
and Conway [Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. ii) says also that
‘ ' Burke in his ' Appeal ' was careful to quote the original sentence/- '
— H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
42
me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is
said to be. The parliament, imperfectly and capriciously
elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed to hold the
national purse in trust for the nation ; but in the manner
in which an English Parliament is constructed it is lilce
a man being both mortgager and mortgagee, and in the
case of misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting
in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the
supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies
when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of
those supplies to those who voted them, it is themselves
accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of Errors
concludes with the Pantomime of Hush. Neither the
ministerial party nor the opposition will touch upon this
case. The national purse is the common hack which
each mounts upon. It is like what the country people
call “ Ride and tie — ou ride a little way, and then I.” ^
They order these things better in France.
The French constitution says that the right of war
and peace is in the nation. Wiere else should it reside
but in those who are to pay the expence ?
In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor
shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling a piece :
so are the lions ; and it would be a step nearer to reason
to say it resided in them, for any inanimate metaphor
is no more than a hat or a cap. We can aU see the
absurdity of worshipping Aaron's molten calf, or
Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image; but why do men
continue to practise themselves the absurdities they
despise in others?
It may with reason be said that in the manner the
English nation is represented it signifies not where the
right resides, whether in the crown or in the parliament.
^ It is a practice in some parts of the conntry, when two travellers
have hut one horse, which, like the national purse, will not carry-
double, that the one mounts and rides two or three miles ahead
and then ties the horse to a gate and -walks on. When the second
traveller arrives he takes the horse, rides on, and passes his
companion a mile or two, and ties again, and so on — Ride and
He. — Author,
RIGHTS OF MAN
43
War is the common harvest of all those who participate
in the division and expenditure of public money, in all
countries. It is the art of conquering at home) the
object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue
cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be
made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the
English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander,
not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would
declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but
that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Mr. Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is
a part of the English Government; and though he
professes himself an enemy to war, he abuses the French
constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds up
the English Government as a model, in aU its parts, to
France; but he should first know the remarks which
the French make upon it. They contend in favour of
their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed in England
is just enough to enslave a country by more productively
than by despotism, and that as the real object of all
despotism is revenue, a government so formed obtains
more than it could do either by direct despotism, or in
a full state of freedom, and is, therefore, on the ground
of interest, opposed to both. They account also for the
readiness which always appears in such governments
for engaging in wars by remarking on the different
motives which produce them. In despotic governments
wars are the effect of pride ; but in those governments in
which they become the means of taxation, they acquire
thereby a more permanent promptitude.
The French constitution, therefore, to provide against
both these evils, has taken away the power of declaring
war from kings and ministers, and placed the right
where the expence must faU.
When the question of the right of war and peace was
agitating in the National Assembly, the people of Eng-
land appeared to be much interested in tlie event, and
highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William
the Conqueror, as a conqueror y held this power of war
RIGHTS OF MAN
44
and peace in himself, and his descendants have ever
since claimed it under him as a right.
Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the
parliament at the revolution to bind and controul the
nation and posterity for ever, he denies at the same time
that the parliament or the nation had any right to alter
what he calls the succession of the crown in anything
but in part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking
this ground he throws the case back to the Norman
Conquest, and by thus running a line of succession
springing from William the Conqueror to the present
day, he makes it necessary to inquire who and what
William the Conqueror was, and where he came from,
and into the origin, history and nature of what are called
prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning,
and the fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated
to discover it. Let, then, Mr. Burke bring forward his
William of Normandy, for it is to this origin that his
argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in
running this line of succession, that another line parallel
thereto presents itself, which is, that if the succession
runs in the line of the conquest, the nation runs in the
line of being conquered, and it ought to rescue itself
from this reproach.
But it will perhaps be said that tho’ the power of
declaring war descends in the heritage of the conquest,
it is held in check by the right of the parliament to with-
hold the supplies. It will always happen when a thing
is originally wrong that amendments do not make it
right, and it often happens that they do as much mischief
one way as good the other, and such is the case here,
for if the one rashly declares war as a matter of right,
and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a
matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse,
than the disease. The one forces the nation to a combat,
and the other ties its hands; but the more probable
issue is that the contest will end in a collusion between
the parties, and be made a screen to both.
On this question of war, three things are to be con-
sidered. First, the right of declaring it; secondly.
RIGHTS OF MAN
45
expence of supporting it; thirdly, the mode of con-
ducting it after it is declared. The French constitution
places the right where ih&' expence must fall, and this
union can only be in the nation. The mode of con-
ducting it after it is declared, it consigns to the executive
department. Were this the case in all countries, we
should hear but little more of wars.
Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French
constitution, and by way of relieving the fatigue of
argument, I will introduce an anecdote which I had
from Dr. Franklin.
While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from
America during the war, he had numerous proposals
made to him by projectors of every country and of every
kind, who wished to go to the land that fioweth with
milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there
was one who ohered himself to be king. He introduced
his proposal to the Doctor by letter, which is now in
the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of Paris — stating first,
that as the Americans had dismissed or sent away^
their King, that they would want another. Secondly,
that himself was a Norman. Thirdly, that he was of a
more ancient family than the Dukes of Normandy, and
of a more honourable descent, his line having never
been bastardized. Fourthly, that there was already a
precedent in England of kings coming out of Normandy,
and on these grounds he rested his offer, enjoining that
the Doctor would forward it to America. But as the
Doctor neither did this, nor yet sent him an answer, the
projector wrote a second letter in which he did not, it is
true, threaten to go over and conquer America, but only
with great dignity proposed that if his offer was not
accepted, an acknowledgement of about £30,000 might
be made to him for his generosity ! Now, as aU argu-
ments respecting succession must necessarily connect
that succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke’s argu-
ments on this subject go to shew that there is no English
origin of kings, and that they are descendants of the
^The word lie used was renvoye, dismissed or sent away. —
Author.
C
RIGHTS OF MAN
46
Norman line in right of the Conquest. ^ It may there-
fore be of service to his doctrine to make this story
known and to inform him, that in case of that natural
extinction to which aU mortality is subject, kings may
again be had from Normandy, on more reasonable
terms than William the Conqueror; and consequently
that the good people of England at the Revolution of
1688, might have done much hetter, had such a generous
Norman as this known their wants, and they had known
his ! The chivalry character which Mr. Burke so much
admires, is certainly much easier to make a bargain with
than a hard dealing Dutchman. But to return to the
matters of the constitution.
The French constitution says. There shall he no titles ;
and, of consequence, all that class of equivocal generation
which in some countries is called " aristocracy ” and in
others " nobility ” is done away, and the peer is exalted
into MAN.
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a
title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it
marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which
degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive of
man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of
women in things which are little. It talks about its
fine blue ribbon like a girl, and shows its new garter like
a child. A certain writer, of some antiquity, says :
“ When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I
became a man, I put away childish things."
It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that
the folly of titles has fallen. It has outgrown the baby
deaths of Co^mt and Duke, and breeched itself in man-
hood. France has not levelled, it has exalted. It
has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. The puny-
ism of a senseless word like Duke, Count or Earl has
ceased to please. Even those who possessed them have
disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets,
have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man,
^ The conclusion of this paragraph commencing " it may
therefore be of service ” is omitted in several modern editions. —
H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
47
thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gew-
gaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles
drawn by the magician’s wand, to contract the sphere of
man’s felicity. He lives immured within the Bastille
of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of
man.
Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in
France? Is it not a greater wonder that they should
be kept up anywhere? What are they? What is
their worth, and "what is their amount"? When
we think or speak of a Judge or a General, we associate
with it the ideas of office and character; we think of
gravity in one and bravery in the other; but when we
use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it.
Through all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an
animal as a Duke or a Count ; neither can we connect
any certain idea with the words. Whether they mean
strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man,
or the rider or the horse, is all equivocal. What respect
then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and
which means nothing? Imagination has given figure
and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the
fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy,
and are a chimerical nondescript.
But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to
hold them in contempt, all their value is gone, and none
will own them. It is common opinion only that makes
them anything, or nothing, or worse than nothing.
There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take
themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them.
This species of imaginary consequence has visibly de-
clined in every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit
as the world of reason continues to rise. There was a
time when the lowest class of what are called nobility
was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a
man in armour riding throughout Christendom in quest
of adventures was more stared at than a modern Duke.
The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by
being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its
fate. The patriots of France have discovered in good
RIGHTS OF MAN
48
time that rank and dignity in society must take a new-
ground. The old one has fallen through. It must now
take the substantial ground of character, instead of
chimerical ground of titles ; and they have brought their
titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to
Reason.
If no mischief had annexed itself to the folty of titles
they would not have been worth a serious and formal
destruction, such as the National Assembly have decreed
them ; and this makes it necessary to inquire further into
the nature and character of aristocracy.
That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries
and nobility in others arose out of the governments
founded upon conquest. It was originally a military
order for the purpose of supporting military government
(for such were all governments founded in conquest) ;
and to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose
for which it was established, all the younger branches of
those families were disinherited and the law of ‘primo-
genituresMp set up.
The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself
to us in this law. It is the law against every other law
of nature, and Nature herself calls for its destmction.
Establish family justice and aristocracy falls. By the
aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of
six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never
more than one child. The rest are begotten to be de-
voured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and
the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.
As everything which is out of nature in man affects,
more or less, the interest of society, so does this. All
the children which the aristocracy disowns (which are
all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like oiphans
on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but at
a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in
governments and courts are created at the expence of
the public to maintain them.
With what kind, of parental reflections can the father
or mother contemplate their younger offspiing? By
nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs ;
RIGHTS OF MAR
49
but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans.
They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one
line, and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore,
therefore, parents to their children, and children to their
parents — relations to each other, and man to society —
and to exterminate the monster Aristocracy, root and
branch — ^the French constitution has destroyed the law
of Primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster;
and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one
point of view. We have now to consider it in another.
But whether we view it before or behind, or sideways,
or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is still a
monster.
In France aristocracy had one feature less in its
countenance than what it has in some other countries.
It did not compose a body of hereditary legislators. It
was not “ a corporation of aristocracy*' for such I have
heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of
Peers. Let us then examine the grounds upon which
the French constitution has resolved against having such
a House in France.
Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned,
aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in
an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their
ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very
source. They begin life by trampling on all their
younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every
land, and are taught and educated so to do. With
what ideas of justice or honour can that man enter a
house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the
inheritance of a whole family of children or doles out to
them some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift ?
Thirdly. Because , the idea of hereditary legislators
is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, orliefed i-
‘Eafy iuries ; and as absurd as ah Eereditarv matlae -
maticianTTyr an Jier editarv' wise man ; and a.s ridiculo^
' ^^''aini^eJiia.ry piSet-laure ate.^
FourtEly; Kcause aTBoHjTof men, holding themselves
RIGHTS OF MAN
50
accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by
anybody.
Fifthly. Because it is continuing the uncivilised
principle of governments founded in conquest, and the
base idea of man having property in man, and governing
him by personal right.
Sixthly. Because aristocracy has a tendency to
deteriorate the human species. By the universal
oeconomy of nature it is known, and by the instance of
the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a
tendency to degenerate, in any small number of persons,
when separated from the general stock of society, and
inter-marrying constantly with each other. It defeats
even its pretended end, and becomes in time the opposite
of what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of nobility;
let him show what it is. The greatest characters the
world have known have risen on the democratic floor.
Aristocracy has not been -able to keep a proportionate
pace with democracy. The artificial noble shrinks into
a dwarf before the noble of Nature; and in the few
instances of those (for there are some in all countries) in
whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy,
THOSE MEN | DESPISE IT. But it is time to proceed to
a new subject.
The French constitution has reformed the condition
of the clergy. It has raised the income of the lower and
middle classes, and taken from the higher. None are
now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds
sterling) nor any higher than about two or three thousand
pounds. What will Mr. Burke place against this?
Hear what he says.^
He says : “ That the people of England can see without
pain or grudging, an archbishop precede a duke; they
can see a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Winchester in
possession of ;£io,ooo a-year ; and cannot see why it is in
worse hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands
of this earl or that 'squire.” And Mr. Burke offers this
as an example to France.
As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes
This paragraph is omitted in some modern editions. — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
51
the duke, or the duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the
people in general, somewhat like Stemhold and Hopkins,
or Hopkins and Stemhold ; you may put which you
please first ; and as I confess that I do not understand
the merits of this case, I will not contend it with Mr,
Burke.
But with respect to the latter, I have something to
say. Mr. Burke has not put the case right. The com-
parison is out of order, by being put between the bishop
and the earl or the 'squire. It ought to be put between
the bishop and the curate and then it will stand thus : —
“ The people of England can see without pain or grudg-
ing, a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Winchester, in
possession of ten thousand pounds a-year, and a curate
on thirty or forty pounds a-year, or less." No, sir,
they certainly do not see those things without great pain
or grudging. It is a case that applies itself to every
man's sense of justice, and is one among many that calls
aloud for a constitution.
In France the cry of " the church J the church I ” was
repeated as often as in Mr. Burke’s book, and as loudly
as when the Dissenters’ Bill was before the English
Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy
were not to be deceived by this cry any longer. They
knew that whatever the pretence might be, it was them-
selves who were one of the principal objects of it. It was
the cry of the high beneficed clergy, to prevent any
regulation of income taking place between those of ten
thousand pounds a-year and the parish priest. They
therefore joined their case to those of every other
oppressed class of men, and by this union obtained
redress.
The French constitution has abolished tythes, that
source of perpetual discontent between the tythe-holder
and the parishioner. When land is held on tythe, it is
in the condition of an estate held between two parties ;
the one receiving one-tenth, and the other nine-tenths
of the produce : and consequently, on principles of
equity, if the estate can be improved, and made to
produce by that improvement double or treble what it
RIGHTS OF MAN
52
did before, or in any other ratio, the expense of such
improvement ought to be borne in like proportion be-
tween the parties who are to share the produce. But this
is not the case in tythes : the farmer bears the whole
expence, and the tythe-holder takes a tenth of the im-
provement, in addition to the original tenth, and by
this means gets the value of two-tenths instead of one.
This is another case that calls for a constitution.
The French constitution hath abolished or renounced
Toleration and Intolerance also, and hath established
Universal Right of Conscience.
Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the
counterfeit oi it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes
to itself the right of withholding Liberty of Conscience,
and the other of granting it. The one is the Pope armed
with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope selling
or granting indulgences. The former is church and
state, and the latter is church and traffic.
But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger
light. Man worships not himself, but his Maker; and
the hberty of conscience which he claims is not for the
service of himself, but of his God. In this case, there-
fore, we must necessarily have the associated idea of two
things; the mortal who renders the worship, and the
Immortal Being who is worshipped. Toleration, there-
fore, places itself, not between man and man, nor
between church and church, nor between one denomina-
tion of religion and another, but between God and man ;
between the being who worships, and the Being who is
worshipped ; and by the same act of assumed authority
by which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it pre-
sumptuously and blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate
the Almighty to receive it.
Were a bill brought into any parliament, entitled.
An Act to tolerate or grant liberty to the Almighty to
receive the worship of a Jew or a Turk,” or ” to prohibit
the Almighty from receiving it,” all men would startle
and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar.
The presumption of toleration in religious matters
would then present itself unmasked; but the pre-
RIGHTS OF MAN
53
sumption is not the less because the name of " Man "
only appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the
worshipper and the worshipped cannot be separated.
Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes ! by whatever
name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest
thine insignificance between the soul of man and its
Maker? Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not
as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as
he believes, and there is no earthly power can determine
between you.
With respect to w^hat are called denominations of
religion, if every one is left to judge of his own religion,
there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong ; but if
they are to judge of each other’s religion, there is no
such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all
the world is right, or all the world is wrong. But with
respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as
directing itself from the universal family of mankind
to the Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing
to his Maker the fruits of his heart and though those
fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the
earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted.
A bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Winchester, or
the archbishop who heads the dukes, will not refuse a
tythe-sheaf of wheat because it is not a cock of haj:", nor
a cock of hay because it is not a sheaf of wheat ; nor a
pig, because it is neither one nor the other ; but these
same persons, under the figure of an established church,
will not permit their Maker to receive the varied t5dhes
of man’s devotion.
One of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke’s book is
“ Church and State.” He does not mean some one
particular church, or some one particular state, but any
church and state; and he uses the term as a generM
figure to hold forth the political doctrine of always
uniting the church with the state in every country, and
he censures the National Assembly for not having done
this in France. Let us bestow a few thoughts on this
subject.
54
RIGHTS OF MAN
All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and
united with principles of morality. They could not have
made proselytes at first by professing anything that was
vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like every-
thing else, they had their beginning ; and they proceeded
by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then
is it that they lose their native mildness, and become
morose and intolerant ?
It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke
recommends. By engendering the church with the state,
a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and
not of breeding up, is produced, called the Church
established by Law. It is a stranger, even from its birth,
to any parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom
in time it kicks out and destroys.
The inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the
religion originally professed but from this mule-animal
engendered between the church and the state. The
burnings in Smithfield proceeded from the same hetero-
geneous production ; and it was the regeneration of this
strange animal in England afterwards that renewed
rancour and irreligion among the inhabitants, and that
drove the people called Quakers and Dissenters to
America. Persecution is not an original feature in any
religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature
of all law-religions, or religions established by law.
Take away the law-establishment and every religion
reassumes its original benignity. In America a Catholic
priest is a good citizen, a good character, and a good
neighbour; an Episcopalian minister is of the same
description; and this proceeds, independently of the
men, from there being no law establishment in America.
If also we view this matter in a temporal sense we shall
see the ill effects it has had on the prosperity of nations.
The union ofxhumh and state has impoverished Spain .
The: revoking the^dicHot JNl antes drove the silE^rnami-
facture from France into England; and church and
state are driving the cotton manufacture from England
to America and France. Let then Mr. Burke continue
to preach his antipolitical doctrine of Church and State.
RIGHTS OF MAN
55
It will do some good. The National Assembly will not
follow his advice but will benefit by his folly. It was by
observing the iU effects of it in England, that America
has been warned against it ; and it is by experiencing iJ
them in France, that the National Assembly have
abolished it, and, like America, have established Uni-
VERSAL Right of Conscience and Universal Right I>
OF Citizenship.^ i
1 When in any country we see extraordinary circumstances |
taking place, they naturally lead any man who has a talent for |,
observation and investigation, to enquire into the causes. The *
manufactures of Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield, are I
the principal manufactures in England. From whence did this j,
arise ? A little observation will explain the case. The principal,
and the generality of the inhabitants of those places, are not of rf
what is called in England, ihe church established by law ; and they, *'
or their fathers (for it is within but a few years) , withdrew from F
the persecution of the chartered towns, where test laws more ;
particularly operate, and established a sort of asylum for them- |
selves in those places. It was the only asylum that then ofiered, |
for the rest of Europe was worse. — ^But the case is now changing. i
France and America bid all comers welcome, and initiate them I
into all the rights of citizenship. Policy and interest, therefore,
will, but perhaps too late, dictate in England, what reason and
justice could not. Those manufactures are withdrawing, and are
arising in other places. There is now erecting at Passy, three P
miles from Paris, a large cotton-mill, and several are already
erected in America . Soon after the rej ecting the Bill for repealing ^
the test-law, one of the richest manufacturers in England said in ;
my hearing, " England, Sir, is not a country for a dissenter to live
in — ^we must go to France.” These are truths, and it is doing ‘
justice to both parties to tell them. It is chiefly the dissenters
who have carried English manufactures to the height they are f
now at, and the same men have it in their power to carry them I
away: and though those manufactures will afterwards continue i
to be made in those places, the foreign market will be lost . There
are frequently appearing in the London Gazette, extracts from i
certain acts to prevent machines and persons, as far as they can ;
extend to persons, from going out of the country. It appears |
from these, that the HI effects of the test-laws and church- |
establishment begin to be much suspected; but the remedy of *
force can never supply the remedy of reason. In the progress of i,
less than a century, all the unrepresented part of England, of all j
denominations, which is at least a hundred times the most ■
numerous, may begin to feel the necessity of a constitution, and
then all those matters will come regularly before them. — Author.
[This note and the whole of the paragraph to which it belongs ;
are omitted in some of the later editions. — H. B. B.]
56
RIGHTS OF MAN
I will here cease the comparison with respect to the
principles of the French Constitution, and conclude
this part of the subject with a few observations on the
organization of the formal parts of the French and
English governments.
The executive power in each country is in the hands of
a person stiled the King ; but the French Constitution
distinguishes between the King and the Sovereign. It
considers the station of King as official, and places
Sovereignty in the nation.
The representatives of the nation who compose the
National Assembly, and who are the legislative power,
originate in and from the people by election, as an
inherent right in the people. In England it is otherwise ;
and this arises from the original establishment of what is
called its monarchy ; for as by the conquest all the rights
of the people or the nation were absorbed into the hands
of the Conqueror, and who added the title of King to
that of Conqueror, those same rnatters which in France
are now held as rights in the people, or in the nation,
are held in England as grants from what is called the
Crown . The Parliament in England, in both its branches,
was erected by patents from the descendants of the
Conqueror. The House of Commons did not originate
as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect,
but as a grant or boon.
By the French Constitution the nation is alw'ays
named before the King. The third article of the declara-
tion of rights says : “ The nation is essentially the source
(or fountain) of all sovereignty.” Mr. Burke argues that
in England a King is the fountain — that he is the fountain
of all honour. But as this idea is evidently descended
from the conquest I shall make no other remark upon it,
than that it is the nature of conquest to turn everything
upside down ; and as Mr. Burke will not be refused the
privilege of speaking twice, and as there are but two
parts in the figure, the fountain and the spout, he will be
right the second time.
The French Constitution puts the legislative before
the executive, the Law before the King ; La hi, Ic Roi.
RIGHTS OF MAN
57
This also is in the natural order of things, because laws
must have existence before they can have execution.
A King in France does not, in addressing himself to
the National Assembly, say “ My assembly,” similar
to the phrase used in England of ” my parliament ” ;
neither can he use it consistently with the constitution,
nor could it be admitted. There may be propriety in
the use of it in England, because as is before mentioned,
both Houses of Parliament originated from what is
called the Crown by patent or boon — and not from the
inherent rights of the people, as the National Assembly
does in France, and whose name designates its origin.
The President of the National Assembly does not
ask the King to grant to the Assembly liberty of speech, as
is the case with the English House of Commons. The
constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot
debase itself. Speech is, in the first place, one of the
natural rights of man always retained ; and with respect
to the National Assembly the use of it is their d^iiy, and
the nation is their authority. They were elected by the
greatest body of men exercising the right of election the
European world ever saw. They sprung not from the
filth of rotten boroughs, nor are they the vassal representa-
tives of aristocratical ones. Feeling the proper dignity
of their character, they support it. Their parliamentary
language, whether for or against the question, is free,
bold, and manly, and extends to all the parts and circum-
stances of the case. If any matter or subject respecting
the executive department or the person who presides
in it (the King) comes before them it is debated on with
the spirit of men, and the language of gentlemen ; and
their answer or their address is returned in the same stile.
They stand not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar
ignorance, nor bend with the cringe of sycophantic
insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows no
extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-
angled character of man.
Let us now look to the other side of the question.
In the addresses of the English parliaments to their
Kings we see neither the intrepid spirit of the old parlia-
RIGHTS OF MAN
58
ments of France, nor the serene dignity of the present
National Assembly ; neither do we see in them anything
of the stile of English manners, which borders somewhat
on bluntness. Since then they are neither of foreign
extraction, nor naturally of English production, their
origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin is
the Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the
vassalage class of manners, and emphatically mark the
prostrate distance that exists in no other condition of
men than between the conqueror and the conquered.
That this vassalage idea and stile of speaking was not
got rid of even at the revolution of 1688, is evident from
the declaration of parliament to William and Mary in
these words : " We do most humbly and faithfully
submit ourselves, our heirs and posterities, for ever.”
Submission is wholly a vassalage term, repugnant to
the dignity of freedom, and an echo of the language
used at the Conquest.
As the estimation of all things is by comparison, the
revolution of 1688, however from circumstances it may
have been exalted beyond its value, will find its level.
It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the enlarging orb
of reason, and the luminous revolutions of America and
France. In less than another century it will go, as well
as Mr. Burke’s labours, " to the family vault of all the
Capulets.” Mankind will then scarcely believe that a
country calling itself free would send to Holland for a
man, and cloath him with power on purpose to put them-
selves in fear of him, and give him almost a million
sterling a year for leave to submit themselves and their
posterity, like bondmen and bondwomen, for ever.
But there is a truth that ought to be made known :
I have had the opportunity of seeing it ; which is, that
notwithstanding appearances, there is not any description
of men that despise monarchy so much as courtiers. But
they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is seen
by them, the juggle could not be kept up. They are in
the condition of men who get their living by a show, and
to whom the folly of that show is so familiar that they
ridicule it; but were the audience to be made as wise
RIGHTS OF MAN
59
in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to
the show and the profits with it. The difference between
a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy,
is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be
something ; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be
nothing.
As I used sometimes to correspond with Mr. Burke,
believing him then to be a man of sounder principles than
his book shews him to be, I wrote to him last winter
from Paris, and gave him an account how prosperously
matters were going on. Among other subjects in that
letter, I referred to the happy situation the National
Assembly were placed in ; that they had taken ground
on which their moral duty and their political interest
were united. They have not to hold out a language
which they do not themselves believe, for the fraudulent
purpose of making others believe it. Their station
requires no artifice to support it, and can only be main-
tained by enlightening mankind. It is not their interest
to cherish ignorance, but to dispel it. They are not in
the case of a ministerial or an opposition party in England,
who, though they are opposed, are still united to keep
up the common mystery. The National Assembly must
throw open a magazine of light. It must shew man the
proper character of man; and the nearer it can bring
him to that standard, the stronger the National Assembly
becomes.
In contemplating the French constitution, we see in it
a rational order of things. The principles harmonize
with the forms, and both with their origin. It may
perhaps be said as an excuse for bad forms, that they are
nothing more than forms ; but this is a mistake. Forms
grow out of principles, and operate to continue the
principles they grow from. It is impossible to practise
a bad form on anything but a bad principle. It cannot
be ingrafted on a good one ; and wherever the forms in
any government are bad, it is a certain indication that
the principles are bad also.
I will here finally close this subject. I began it by
remarking that Mr. Burke had voluntarily declined going
6o
RIGHTS OF MAN
into a comparison of the English and French constitu-
tions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it, by
sa5dng that he had not time, Mr. Burke’s book was
upwards of eight months in hand, and is extended to a
volume of three hundred and sixty-six pages. As his
omission does injury to his cause, his apology makes it
worse; and men on the EngUsh side of the water will
begin to consider, whether there is not some radical
defect in what is called the English constitution, that
made it necessary for Mr. Burke to suppress the com-
parison, to avoid bringing it into view.
As Mr. Burke has not written on constitutions so
neither has he written on the French revolution. He
f ives no account of its commencement or its progress.
le only expresses his wonder. “ It looks,’ ' says he, " to
me, as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of
France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than
Europe. All circumstances t^en together, the French
revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto
happened in the world.”
As wise men are astonished at foolish things, and
other people at wise ones, I know not on which ground
to account for Mr. Burke’s astonishment; but certain
it is, that he does not understand the French revolution.
It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a
chaos, but it is no more than the consequence of a mental
revolution priorly existing in France. The mind of the
nation had changed beforehand, and the new order of
things has naturally followed the new order of thoughts.
I will here, as concisely as I can, trace out the growth of
the French revolution, and mark the circumstances that
have contributed to produce it.
The despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety
of his Court, and the gaudy ostentation of his character
had so humbled, and at the same time so fascinated the
mind of France, that the people appear to have lost all
sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their
grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV.,
remarkable only for weakness and effeminacy, made
no other alteration than that of spreading a sort of
RIGHTS OF MAK
6l
lethargy over the nation, from which it shewed no p
disposition to rise. |i
The only signs which appeared of ^ the spirit of Liberty [
during those periods, are to be found in the writings of ^
the French plnlosophers. Moatesquieu , president of the
Parliament of Bordeaux, wem as laras a writer under r
a despotic government could well proceed; and being r
obliged to divide himself between principle and prudence,
his mind often appears under a veil, and we ought to I
give him credit for more than he has expressed.
Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist I;
of depotism, took another line. His forte lay in exposing
and ridiculing the suj)erstitions which priestcraft, united
with statecraft, had interwoven with governments. It |
was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of .
mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally I
concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly I
in its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to |
expose it, that he made these attacks. They were, how- |
ever, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous ; I
and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of
mankind. |
On the contrary, we find in the writings of Pousseau |
and th e_Abbe Ravnal, a loveliness of sentiment in favour |
of liberty, that excites respect, and elevates the human ^
faculties; but having raised this animation, they do i
not direct its operation, and leave the mind in love with :
an object, without describing the means of possessing it. f
The writings of Ouesnav. Turgot, and the friends of i
those authors, are of the serious kinds ; but th ey laboured ■
under the same disadvantage with Montesquieu ; their •'
writings abound with moral maxims of government, but ;
are rather directed to ceconomise and reform the
administration of the government, than the government \
itself. I
But all those writings and many others had their f
weight; and by the different manner in which they )
treated the subject of government, Montesquieu by his i
1 “ To " takes the place of “ of ” in the later editions, but this ^
is clearly an absurd error. — B. B.
62
RIGHTS OF MAN
judgment and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his wit,
Rousseau and Raynal by their animation, and Quesnay
and Turgot by their moral maxims and systems of
cBconomy, readers of every class met with something to
their taste, and a spirit of political inquiry began to
diffuse itself through the nation at the time the dispute
between England and the then colonies of America
broke out.
As it was impossible to separate the military events
which took place in America from the principles of the
American revolution, the publication of those events in
France necessarily connected themselves with the princi-
ples which produced them. Many of the facts were in
themselves principles ; such as the declaration of
American independence, and the treaty of alliance
between France and America, which recognised the
natural rights of man, and justified resistance to
oppression.
The then Minister of France, Count Vergennes, was
not the friend of America; and it is both justice and
gratitude to say, that it was the Queen of France who
gave the cause of America a fashion at the French Court.
Count Vergennes was the personal and social friend of
Dr. Franklin; and the Doctor had obtained, by his
sensible gracefulness, a sort of influence over him ; but
with respect to principles Count Vergennes was a despot.
'The situation of Dr. Franklin, as Minister from
America to France, should be taken into the chain of
circumstance. The diplomatic character is of itself the
narrowest sphere of society that man can act in. It
forbids intercourse by the reciprocity of suspicion ; and
a diplomatic is a sort of unconnected atom, continually
repelling and repelled. But this was not the case with
Dr. Franklin. He was not the diplomatic of a Court,
but of MAN. His character as a philosopher had been
long established, and his circle of society in France was
universal.
Count Vergennes resisted for a considerable time the
publication in France of the American constitutions,
translated into the French language : but even in this
RIGHTS OF MAN
63
he was obliged to give way to public opinion, and a sort
of propriety in admitting to appear what he had under-
taken to defend. The American constitutions were to
Liberty what a grammar is to language : they define
its parts of speech, and practically construct them into
syntax.
The peculiar situation of the then Marquis de la
Fayette is another link in the great chain. He served in
America as an American officer under a commission of
Congress, and by the universality of his acquaintance
was in close friendship with the civil government of
America, as well as with the military line. He spoke the
language of the country, entered into the discussions
on the principles of government, and was always a
welcome friend at any election.
When the war closed, a vast reinforcement to the
cause of Liberty spread itself over France, by the return
of the French officers and soldiers. A knowledge of the
practice was then joined to the theory ; and all that was
wanting to give it real existence was opportunity. Man
cannot, properly speaking, make circumstances for his
purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve
them when they occur, and this was the case in France.
M. Neckar was displaced in May, 1781 ; and by the
ill-management of the finances afterwards, and particu-
larly during the extravagant administration of M.
Calonne, the revenue of France, which was nearly
twenty-four millions sterling per year, was become
unequal to the expenditure, not because the revenue had
decreased, but because the expences had increased;
and this was a circumstance which the nation laid hold
of to bring forward a revolution. The English Minister,
Mr. Pitt, has frequently alluded to the state of the
French finances in his budgets, without understanding
the subject. Had the French Parliaments been as ready
to register edicts for new taxes as an English Parliament
is to grant them, there had been no derangement in the
finances, nor yet any revolution; but this will better
explain itself as I proceed.
It will be necessary here to show how taxes were
RIGHTS OF MAN
64
formerly raised in France. The King, or rather the
court or ministry acting under the use of that name,
framed the edicts for taxes at their own discretion, and
' sent them to the parliaments to be registered ; for until
they were registered by the parliaments they were not
operative. Disputes had long existed between the court
and the parliaments with respect to the extent of the
parliaments’ authority on this head. The court insisted
that the authority of parliaments went no farther than
to remonstrate or shew reasons against the tax, reserving
to itself the right of determining whether the reasons
were well or ill-founded; and in consequence thereof,
either to withdraw the edict as a matter of choice, or to
oyAer it to be enregistered as a matter of authority. The
parliaments on their part insisted that they had not
only a right to remonstrate, but to reject ; and on this
ground they were always supported by the nation.
But to return to the order of my narrative. M.
Calonne wanted money : and as he knew the sturdy
disposition of the parliaments with respect to new taxes,
he ingeniously sought either to approach them by a
more gentle means than that of direct authority, or to
get over their heads by a manoeuvre ; and for this pur-
pose he revived the project of assembling a body of men
from the several provinces, under the style of an
" Assembly of the Notables,” or men of note, who met
in 1787, and who were either to recommend taxes to
the parliaments, or to act as a parliament themselves.
An assembly under this name had been called in 1617.
As we are to view this as the first practical step
towards the revolution, it will be proper to enter into
some particulars respecting it. The Assembly of the
Notables has in some places been mistaken for the
States-General, but was wholly a different body, the
States-General being always by election. The persons
who composed the Assembly of the Notables were all
nominated by the King, and consisted of one hundred
and forty members. But as M. Calonne could not
depend upon a majority of this Assembly m his favour,
he very ingeniously arranged .them in such a manner as
RIGHTS OF MAN
65
to make forty-four a majority of one hundred and
forty; to effect this he disposed of them into seven
separate committees, of h^venty members each. Every
general question was to be decided, not by a majority
of persons, but by a majority of committees; and as
eleven votes would make a majority in a committee,
and four committees a majority of seven, M. Calonne
had good reason to conclude that as forty-four would
determine any general question he could not be out-
voted. But all his plans deceived him, and in the event
became his overthrow.
The then Marquis de la Fayette was placed in the
second committee, of which the Count D’Artois was
president, and as money matters were the object, it
naturally brought into view every circumstance con-
nected with it. M. de la Fayette made a \^erbal charge
against Calonne for selling crown lands to the amount
of two millions of livres, in a manner that appeared to
be unknown to the King. The Count D’Artois (as if to
intimidate, for the BastiUe was then in being) asked
the Marquis if he would render the charge in writing?
He replied that he would. The Count D’Artois did not
demand it, but brought a message from the King to
that purport. M. de la Fayette then delivered in his
charge in writing, to be given to the King, undertaking
to support it. No farther proceedings were had upon
this affair, but M. Calonne was soon after dismissed by
the King and sent off to England.
As M. de la Fayette, from the experience of what he
had seen in America, was better acquainted with the
science of civil government than the generality of the
members who composed the Assembly of the Notables
could then be, the brunt of the business fell considerably
to his share. The plan of those who had a constitution
in view was to contend with the court on the ground of
taxes, and some of them openly professed their object.
Disputes frequently arose between Count D’Artois and
M. de la Fayette upon various subjects. With respect
to the arrears aheady incurred the latter proposed to
remedy them by accommodating the expences to the
66
RIGHTS OF MAN
revenue instead of the revenue to the expences ; and as
objects of reform he proposed to abolish the Bastille and
all the State prisons throughout the nation (the keeping
of which was attended with great expence), and to sup-
press Lettres de Cachet ; but those matters were not then
much, attended to, and with respect to Lettres de Cachet, a
majority of the Nobles appeared to he in favour of them.
On the subject of supplying the Treasury by new
taxes the Assembly declined taking the matter on them-
selves, concurring in the opinion that they had not
authority. In a debate on this subject M. de la Fayette
said that raising money by taxes could only be done by a
National Assembly, freely elected by the people, and
acting as their representatives. Do you mean, said the
Count D 'Artois, the States-Generall M. de la Fayette
replied that he did. Will you, said the Count D 'Artois,
sign what you say to be given to the King ? The other
replied that he would not only do this but that he would
go farther, and say that the effectual mode would be for
the King to agree to the establishment of a constitution.
As one of the plans had thus failed, that of getting the
Assembly to act as a parliament, the other came into
view, that of recommending. On this subject the
Assembly agreed to recommend two new taxes to be
enregistered by the parliament : the one a stamp-tax
and the other territorial tax, or sort of land-tax. The
two have been estimated at about five millions sterling
per annum. We have now to turn our attention to the
parliaments, on whom the business was again devolving.
The Archbishop of Thoulouse (since Archbishop of
Sens, and now a Cardinal) was appointed to the adminis-
tration of the finances soon after the dismission of
Calonne. He was also made Prime Minister, an office
that did not always exist in France. When this office
did not exist, the chief of each of the principal depart-
ments transacted business immediately with the King,
but_ when a Prime Minister was appointed they did
business only with him. The Archbishop arrived to
more state-authority than any minister since the Duke
de Choiseul, and the nation was strongly disposed in his
RIGHTS OF MAN
67
favour ; but by a line of conduct scarcely to be accounted
for he perverted every opportunity, turned out a despot, f
and sunk into disgrace, and a Cardinal.
Tlie Ass^bly of the Notables having broken up, the
minister sent the edicts for the two new taxes recom-
mended by the Assembly to the parliaments to be
enregistered. They of course came first before the
Parliament of Paris, who returned for answer. That with
such a revenue as the nation then supported the name of
taxes ought not to he mentioned but for the purpose of
reducing them, and threw both the edicts out.^
On this refusal the parliament was ordered to Versailles,
where, in the usual form, the King held what under the
old government was called a Bed of Justice ; and the two
edicts were enregistered in presence of the parliament by
an order of State in the manner mentioned in p. 64.
On this the parliament immediately returned to Paris,
renewed their session in form, and ordered the enregister-
ing to be struck out, declaring that everything done at
Versailles was illegal. All the members of the parliament
were then served with Lettres de Cachet, and exiled to
Trois; but as they continued as inflexible in exile as
before, and as vengeance did not supply the place of
taxes, they were after a short time recalled to Paris.
The edicts were again tendered to them, and the
Count D’Artois undertook to act as representative of the
King. For this purpose he came from Versailles to
Paris, in a train of procession ; and the parliament were
assembled to receive him. But show and parade had
lost their influence in France; and whatever ideas of
importance he might set off with, he had to return with
those of mortification and disappointment. On alight-
ing from his carriage to ascend the steps of the Parlia-
ment House, the crowd (which was numerously collected)
threw out trite expressions, saying ; “ This is Monsieur
D 'Artois, who wants more of our money to spend."
The marked disapprobation which he saw impressed
^ When the English Minister, Mr. Pitt, mentions the French
finances again in the English Parliament it -would be well that he
noticed this as an example. — Author.
68
RIGHTS OF MAN
him with apprehensions, and the word A^!,x armes /
{To arms /) was given out by the officer of the guard who
attended him. It was so loudly vociferated, that it
echoed through the avenues of the House, and produced
a temporary confusion. I was then standing in one of
the apartments through which he had to pass, and could
not avoid reflecting how wretched was the condition of a
disrespected man.
He endeavoured to impress the parliament by great
words, and opened his authority by saying, “ The King,
our Lord and Master.” The parliament received this
very coolly and with their usual determination not to
register the taxes; and in this manner the interview
ended.’-
After this a new subject took place : In the various
debates and contests which arose between the Court
and the parliaments on the subject of taxes, the Parlia-
ment of Paris at last declared that although it had been
customary for parliaments to enregister edicts for taxes
as a matter of convenience, the right belonged only to
the States-General ; and that, therefore, the parliament
could no longer with propriety continue to debate on
what it had not authority to act. The King after this
came to Paris and held a meeting with the Parliament,
in which he continued from ten in the morning till about
six in the evening, and, in a manner that appeared to
proceed from him as if unconsulted upon with the
cabinet or ministry, gave his word to the Parliament
that the States-General should be convened.
But after this another scene arose, on a ground different
from all the former. The minister and the cabinet
were averse to calling the States-General. They well
knew that if the States-General were assembled, them-
selves must fall; and as the King had not mentioned
awy time, they hit on a project calculated to elude,
without appearing to oppose.
For this purpose, the Court set about making a sort
of constitution itself. It was principally the work of
M. Lamoignon, Keeper of the Seals, who afterwards
1 See note on p. 50.
RIGHTS OF MAN
69
shot himself. This new arrangement consisted in
establishing a body under the name of a Cour 'pUnilre, or
full Court, in which were invested all the powers that the
government might have occasion to make use of. The
persons composing this Court were to be nominated by
the King. The contended right of taxation was given
up on the part of the King, and a new criminal code of
laws and law proceedings was substituted in the room
of the former. The thing, in many points, contained
better principles than those upon which the government
had hitherto been administered; but with respect to
the Cour pleniere, it was no other than a medium
through which despotism was to pass, without appearing
to act directly from itself.
The cabinet had high expectations from their new
contrivance. The persons who were to compose the
Cour fUniere were already nominated; and as it was
necessary to carry a fair appearance, many of the best
characters in the nation were appointed among the
number. It was to commence on the 8th of May, 1788 ;
but an opposition arose to it on two grounds — the one
as to Principle, the other as to Form.
On the ground of Principle it was contended that
government had not a right to alter itself, and that if
the practice was once admitted it would grow into a
principle and be made a precedent for any future altera-
tions the government might wish to establish; that the
right of altering the government was a national right,
and not a right of government. And on the ground of
Form it was contended that the Cour fUniero was
nothing more than a larger cabinet.
The then Duke de la Rochefoucault, Luxembourg,
De NoaiUes, and many others, refused to accept the
nomination, and strenuously opposed the whole plan.
When the edict for establishing this new court was sent
to the parliaments to be enregistered and put into execu-
tion, they resisted also. The Parliament of Paris not
only refused, but denied the authority ; and the contest
renewed itself between the parliament and the cabinet
more strongly than ever. While the parliament were
RIGHTS OF MAN
70
sitting in debate on this subject, the ministry ordered a
regiment of soldiers to surround the House and form a
blockade. The members sent out for beds and provi-
sions, and lived as in a besieged citadel ; and as this had
no ehect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter
the Parliament House and seize them, which he did,
and some of the principal members were shut up in
different prisons. About the same time a deputation
of persons arrived from the province of Brittany to
remonstrate against the establishment of the Cour
piiniere, and those the archbishop sent to the BastHle.
But the spirit of the nation was not to be overcome, and
it was so fully sensible of the strong ground it had taken,
that of withholding taxes, that it contented itself with
keeping up a sort of quiet resistance, which effectually
overthrew all the plans at that time formed against it.
The project of the Cour j}Uniere was at last obliged to
be given up, and the Prime Minister not long afterwards
followed its fate, and M. Neckar was recalled into office.
The attempt to establish the Cour flenUre had an
effect upon the nation which itself did not perceive. It
was a sort of new form of government that insensibly
served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it
from the superstitious authority of antiquity. It was
government dethroning government; and the old one,
% attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.
The failure of this scheme renewed the subject of
convening the States-General ; and this gave rise to a
new series of politics. There was no settled form for
convening the States-General; all that it positively
meant was a deputation from what was then called the
Clergy, the Noblesse, and the Commons; but their
numbers or their proportions had not been always the
same. They had been convened only on extraordinary
occasions, the last of which was in 1614 ; their numbers
were then in equal proportions, and they voted by
orders.
It could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar,
that the mode of 1614 would answer neither the purpose
of the then government nor of the nation. As matters
RIGHTS OF MAN
71
were at that time circumstanced it would have been
too contentious to agree upon an5rthing. The debates
would have been endless upon privileges and exemptions,
in which neither the wants of the government nor the
wishes of the nation for a constitution would have been
attended to. But as he did not choose to tstke the
decision upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly
of the Notables and referred it to them. This body was
in general interested in the decision, being chiefly of the
aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they decided in
favour of the mode of 1614. This decision was against
the sense of the nation, and also against the wishes of
the Court; for the aristocracy opposed itself to both
and contended for privileges independent of either. The
subject was then taken up by the Parliament, who
recommended that the number of the Commons should
be equal to the other two : and they should all sit in
one house and vote in one body. The number finally
determined on was 1,200; 600 to be chosen by the
Commons (and this was less than their proportion ought
to have been when their worth axid consequence is con-
sidered on a national scale), 300 by the Clergy, and 300
by the Aristocracy; but with respect to the mode of
assembling themselves, whether together or apart, or
the manner in which they should vote, those matters
were referred.^
1 Mr. Burke (and I must take the liberty of telling him he is
very unacquainted with French affairs), speaking upon this
subject, says, '' The first thing that struck me in the calling the
States-General, was a great departure from the ancient course ; "
— and he soon after says, " From the moment I read the list, I
saw distinctly, and very nearly as it happened, all that was to
follow.” — ^Mr. Burke certainly did not see all that was to follow.
I endeavoured to impress him, as well before as after the States-
General met, that there would be a revolution ; but was not able
to make him see it, neither would he believe it. How then he
could distinctly see all the parts, when the whole was out of sight,
is beyond my comprehension. And with respect to the ” depar-
ture from the ancient course," besides the natural weakness of the
remark, is shews that he is unacquainted with circumstances.
The departure was necessary, from the experience had upon it,
that the ancient course was a bad one. The States-General of
1614 were called at the commencement of the civil war in the
72
RIGHTS OF MAN
The election that followed was not a contested elec-
tion, but an animated one. The candidates were not
men, but principles. Societies were formed in Paris, and
committees of correspondence and communication estab-
lished throughout the nation, for the purpose of en-
lightening the people, and explaining to them the
principles of civil government ; and so orderly was the
election conducted, that it did not give rise even to
the rumour of tumult.
The States-General were to meet at Versailles in April,
1789, but did not assemble till May. They situated
themselves in three separate chambers, or rather the
clergy and aristocracy withdrew each into a separate
chamber. The majority of the aristocracy claimed what
they called the privilege of voting as a separate body,
and of giving their consent or their negative in that
manner ; and many of the bishops and the high-beneficed
clergy claimed the same privilege on the part of their
Order,
The Tiers Etat (as they were then called) disowned
any knowledge of artificial Orders and artificial privi-
leges; and they were not only resolute on this point,
but somewhat disdainful. They began to consider the
aristocracy as a kind of fungus growing out of the cor-
ruption of society, that could not be admitted even as
a branch of it ; and from the disposition the aristocracy
had shown by upholding Lettres de Cachet, and in sundry
other instances, it was manifest that no constitution
minority of Louis XIII. ; but by the clash of arranging them by
orders, they increased the confusion they were called to compose.
The author of L’ Intrigue du Cabinet (Intrigue of the Cabinet),
who wrote before any revolution was thought of in France,
speaking of the States-General of 1614, says. " They held the
public in suspense five months; and by the questions agitated
therein, and the heat with which they were put, it appears that
the Great {les grands) thought more to satisfy their particular
passions, than to procure the good of the nation ; and the whole
time passed away in altercations, ceremonies, and parade.”
LTntrigue du Cabinet, vol i, p. 329. — Author.
[This note has been omitted in many of the modem editions.-—
H. B. B.]
RIGHTS OF MAN
73
could be formed by admitting men in any other character
than as National Men,
After various altercations on this head, the Tiers
Etat or Commons (as they were then called) declared
themselves (on a motion made for that purpose by the
Abbe Sieyes) “ The Representatives of the Nation ;
and that the two Orders could he considered hut as deputies
of corporations, and could only have a deliberate voice
when they assembled in a national character with the
national representatives.” This proceeding extinguished
the stile of Etats Generaux, or States-General, and erected
it into the stile it now bears, that of L’Assemblee
Nationale, or National Assembly.
This motion was not made in a precipitate manner.
It was the result of cool deliberation, and concerted
between the national representatives and the patriotic
members of the two chambers, who saw into the foUy,
mischief, and injustice of artificial privileged distinctions.
It was become evident, that no constitution, worthy of
being called by that name, could be established on any-
thing less than a national ground. The aristocracy had
hitherto opposed the des|5otism of the Court, and affected
the language of i)atriotism; but it opposed it as its
rival (as the English Barons opposed King John), and
it now opposed the nation from the same motives.
On carrying this motion, the national representatives,
as had been concerted, sent an invitation to the two
chambers, to unite with them in a national character,
and proceed to business. A majority of the clergy,
chiefly of the parish priests, withdrew from the clerical
chamber, and joined the nation; and forty-five from
the other chamber joined in like manner. There is a
sort of secret history belonging to this last circumstance,
which is necessary to its explanation ; it was not judged
prudent that all the patriotic members of the chamber
stiling itself the Nobles, should quit it at once; and in
consequence of this arrangement, they drew off by
degrees, always leaving some, as well to reason the
case, as to watch the suspected. In a little time the
numbers increased from forty-five to eighty, and soon
RIGHTS OF MAN
74
after to a greater nuinber; which, with the majority of
the clergy, and the whole of the national representatives,
put the malcontents in a very diminutive condition.
The King, who, very different from the general class
called by that name, is a man of a good heart, showed
himself disposed to recommend a union of the three
chambers, on the ground the National Assembly had
taken ; but the malcontents exerted themselves to pre-
vent it, and began now to have another project in view.
Their numbers consisted of a majority of the aristo-
cratical chamber and a minority of the clerical chamber,
chiefly of bishops and high-beneficed clergy ; and these
men were determined to put everything to issue, as
well by strength as by stratagem. They had no objec-
tion to a constitution; but it must be such a one as
themselves should dictate, and suited to their own views
and particular situations. On the other hand, the
Nation disowned knowing anything of them but as
citizens, and was determined to shut out all such up-
start pretensions. The more aristocracy appeared, the
more it was despised; there was a visible imbecility
and want of intellects in the majority, a sort of je ne
sais quoi, that while it affected to be more than citizen,
was less than man. It lost ground from contempt more
than from hatred ; and was rather jeered at as an ass,
than dreaded as a lion. This is the general character of
aristocracy, or what are called Nobles or Nobility, or
rather No-ability, in all countries.
The plan of the malcontents consisted now of two
'i things; either to deliberate and vote by chambers (or
4 orders), more especially on all questions respecting a
I' constitution (by which the aristocratical chamber would
i have had a negative on any article of the constitution) ;
‘ or, in case they could not accomplish this object, to
overthrow the National Assembly entirely.
To effect one or other of these objects they began to
cultivate a friendship with the despotism they had
hitherto attempted to rival, and the Count D ’Artois
became their chief. The King (who has since declared
himself deceived into their measures) held, according to
RIGHTS OF MAN
75
the old fonn, a Bed of Justice, in which he accorded to
the deliberation and vote par tete (by head) upon several
subjects; but reserved the deliberations and vote upon
all questions respecting a constitution to the three
chambers separately. This declaration of the King was
made against the advice of M, Neckar, who now began
to perceive that he was growing out of fashion at court,
and that another minister was in contemplation.
As the form of sitting in separate chambers was yet
apparently kept up, though essentially destroyed, the
national representatives immediately after this declara-
tion of the king resorted to their own chambers to con-
sult on a protest against it; and the minority of the
chamber (calling itself the Nobles), who had joined the
national cause, retired to a private house to consult in
like manner. The malcontents had by this time con-
certed their measures with the court, which the Count
D’Artois undertook to conduct; and as they saw from
the discontent which the declaration excited, and the
opposition making against it, that they could not obtain
a control over the intended constitution by a separate
vote, they prepared themselves for their final object —
that of conspiring against the National Assembly, and
overthrowing it.
The next morning the door of the chamber of the
National Assembly was shut against them, and guarded
by troops ; and the members were refused admittance.
On this they withdrew to a tennis-ground in the neigh-
bourhood of Versailles, as the most convenient place
they could find, and, after renewing their session, took
an oath never to separate from each other, under any
circumstance whatever, death excepted, until they had
established a constitution. As the experiment of shut-
ting up the house had no other effect than that of pro-
ducing a closer connection in the members, it was
opened again the next day, and the public business
recommenced in the usual place.
We are now to have in view the forming of the new
ministry, which was to accomplish the overthrow of
the National Assembly. But as force would be neces-
RIGHTS OF MAN
76
sary, orders were issued to assemble thirty thousand
troops, the command of which was given to Broglio,
one of the new-intended ministry, who was recced
from the country for this purpose. But as some
management was necessary to keep this plan concealed
till the moment it should be ready for execution, it is to
this policy that a declaration made by Count D ’Artois must
be attributed, and which is here proper to be introduced.
It could not but occur, while the malcontents con-
tinued to resort to their chambers separate from the
National Assembly, that more jealousy would be excited
than if they mixed with it, and that the plot might be
suspected. But as they had taken their ground, and
now wanted a pretence for quitting it, it was necessary
that one should be devised. This was effectually
accomplished by a declaration made by the Count
D ’Artois : “ That if they took not a part in the National
Assembly, the life of the King would be endangered
on which they quitted their chambers, and mixed with
the Assembly, in one body.
At the time this declaration was made, it was gener-
ally treated as a piece of absurdity in the Count D’Artois,
and calculated merely to relieve the outstanding mem-
bers of the two chambers from the diminutive situation
they were put in; and if nothing more had followed,
this conclusion would have been good. But as things
best explain themselves by then: events, this apparent
union was only a cover to the machmations which were
secretly going on; and the declaration accommodated
itself to answer that purpose. In a little time the
National Assembly found itself surrounded by troops,
and thousands more were daily arriving. On this a
very strong declaration was made by the National
Assembly to the King, remonstrating on the impro-
priety of the measure, and demanding the reason. The
King, who was not in the secret of this business, as
himself afterwards declared, gave substantially for
answer, that he had no other object in view than to
preserve the public tranquillity, which appeared to be
much disturbed.
RIGHTS OP MAN
77
But in a few days from this time the plot unravelled
itself. M. Neckar and the ministry were displaced, and
a new one formed of the enemies of the revolution ; and
Broglio, with between twenty-five and thirty thousand
foreign troops, was arrived to support them. The mask
was now thrown off, and matters were come to a crisis.
The event was that in a space of three days the new
ministry and their abettors found it prudent to fly the
nation; the Bastille was taken, and Broglio and his
foreign troops dispersed, as is already related in the
former part of this work.
There are some curious circumstances in the history
of this short-lived ministry, and tliis short-lived attempt
at a counter-revolution. The Palace of Versailles, where
the Court was sittmg, was not more than four hundred
yards distant from the hall where the National Assembly
was sitting. The two places were at this moment like
the separate headquarters of two combatant armies;
yet the Court was as perfectly ignorant of the informa-
tion which had arrived from Paris to the National
Assembly, as if it had resided at a hundred miles dis-
tance. The then Marquis de la Fayette, who (as has
been already mentioned) was chosen to preside in the
National Assembly on this particular occasion, named
by order of the Assembly three successive deputations
to the King, on the day and up to the evening on which
the Bastille was taken, to inform and confer with him
on the state of affairs ; but the ministry, who knew not
so much as that it was attacked, precluded all com-
munication, and were solacing themselves how dex-
terously they had succeeded; but in a few hours the
accounts arrived so thick and fast that they had to
start from their desks and run. Some set off in one
disguise, and some in another, and none in their own
character. Their anxiety now was to outride the news,
lest they should be stopped, which, though it flew fast,
flew not so fast as themselves.
It is worth relating that the National Assembly
neither pursued those fugitive conspirators, nor took any
notice of them, nor sought to retaliate in any shape
RIGHTS OF MAN
78
whatever. Occupied with establishing a constitution
founded on the Rights of Man and the Authority of the
People, the only authority on which government has a
right to exist in any country, the National Assembly
felt none of those mean passions which mark the char-
acter of impertinent governments, founding themselves
on their own authority, or on the absurdity of hereditary
succession. It is the faculty of the human mind to
become what it contemplates, and to act in unison
with its object.
The conspiracy being thus dispersed, one of the first
works of the National Assembly, instead of vindictive
proclamations, as has been the case with other govern-
ments, was to publish a declaration of the Rights of
Man, as the basis on which the new constitution was to
be built, and which is here subjoined :
DECLARATION
OF THE
RIGHTS OF MAN AND OF CITIZENS,
BY THE
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF FRANCE.
“ The representatives of the people of France, formed
into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance,
neglect, or contempt of human rights, are the sole causes
of public misfortunes and corruptions of Government,
have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, these
natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable rights; that
this declaration being constantly present to the minds
of the members of the body social, they may be forever
kept attentive to their rights and their duties ; that the
acts of the legislative and executive pow^ers of govern-
ment, being capable of being every moment compared
with the end of political institutions, may be more
respected; and also, that the future claims of the citi-
zens, being directed by simple and incontestable prin-
ciples, may always tend to the maintenance of the
constitution, and the general happiness.
RIGHTS OF MAN
79
" For these reasons the National Assembly doth
recognise and declare, in the presence of the Supreme
Being, and with the hope of his blessing and favour, the
following sacred rights of men and of citizens :
" ‘ L Men are horn, and always continue, free and
equal hi respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, there-
fore, can he founded only on public utility.
“ ‘ 11. The end of all political associations is the pre-
servation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man ;
and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance
of oppression.
‘ III. The nation is essentially the source of all
sovereignty ; nor can any individual, or any body of
MEN, he entitled to any authority which is not expressly
derived from it.
“ ‘ IV. Political Liberty consists in the power of
doing whatever does not injure another. The exercise
of the natural rights of every man, has no other limits
than those which are necessary to secure to every other
man the free exercise of the same rights; and these
limits are determinable only by the law.
“ ' V. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful
to society. What is not prohibited by the law should
not be hindered; nor should anyone be compelled to
that which the law does not require.
“ ' VI. The law is an expression of the will of the
community. All citizens have a right to concur, either
personally or by their representatives, in its foimation.
It should be the same to all, whether it protects or
punishes ; and all being equal in its sight, are equally
eligible to all honours, places, and employments, accord-
ing to their different abilities, without any other
distinction than that created by their virtues and
talents.
“ ' VII. No man should be accused, arrested, or held
in confinement, except in cases determined by the law,
and according to the forms which it has prescribed.
All who promote, solicit, execute, or cause to be exe-
cuted, arbitrary orders, ought to be punished, and every
citizen called upon, or apprehended by virtue of the
8o
RIGHTS OF MAN
law, ought immediately to obey, and renders himself
culpable by resistance.
“ ‘ VIII. The law ought to impose no other penalties
but such as are absolutely and evident^ necessary ; and
no one ought to be punished, but in virtue of a law
promulgated before the offence, and legally applied.
“ ' IX. Every man being presumed innocent till he
has been convicted, whenever his detention becomes in-
dispensable, all rigour to him, more than is necessary to
secure his person, ought to be provided against by the
law.
“ ‘ X. No man ought to be molested on account of
his opinions, not even on account of his religious opinions,
provided his avowal of them does not disturb the public
order established by the law.
“ ‘ XI. The unrestrained communication of thoughts
and opinions being one of the most precious rights of
man, every citizen may speak, write, and publish freely,
provided he is responsible for the abuse of this liberty,
in cases determined by the law.
“ ‘ XII. A public force being necessaiy to give
security to the rights of men and of citizens, that force
is instituted for the benefit of the community and not
for the particular benefit of the persons to whom it is
intrusted.
“ ' XIII. A common contribution being necessary for
the support of the public force, and for defraying the
other expenses of government, it ought to be divided
equally among the members of the community, accord-
ing to their abihties.
“ ‘ XIV. Every citizen has a right, either by himself
or his representative, to a free voice in determining the
necessity of public contributions, the appropriation of
them, and their amount, mode of assessment, and
duration.
“ ‘ XV. Every community has a right to demand of
aU its agents an account of their conduct.
“ ‘ XVI. Every community in which a separation of .
powers and a security of rights is not provided for,
wants a constitution. "
RIGHTS OF MAN
Sr
“ ' XVII. The right to property being inviolable and
sacred, no one ought to be deprived of it, except in
cases of evident public necessity, legally ascertained,
and on condition of a previous just indemnity/ ”
OBSERVATIONS |
ON THE ;
DECLARATION OF RIGHTS. :
The first three articles comprehend in general terms the
whole of a Declaration of Rights; all the succeeding "
articles either originate from them or follow as elucida-
tions. The 4th, 5th, and 6th define more particularly »
what is only generally expressed in the ist, 2nd, and 3rd.
The 7th, 8th, 9th, loth, and iith articles are declar-
atory of 'principles upon which laws shall be constructed, r
conformable to rights already declared. But it is ques- j.
tioned by some very good people in France, as well as
in other countries, whether the loth article sufficiently T
guarantees the right it is intended to accord with;
besides which it takes off from the divine dignity of
religion, and weakens its operative force upon the mind, !
to make it a subject of human laws. It then presents
itself to man like light intercepted by a cloudy medium,
in which the source of it is obscured from his sight,
and he sees nothing to reverence in the dusky ray.^
1 There is a single idea, which, if it strikes rightly upon the ;
mind, either in a legal or a religious sense, will prevent any man,
or any body of men, or any government, from going wrong on the ‘
subject of Religion; which is, that before any human institution
of government was known in the world, there existed, if I may so
express it, a compact between God and Man, from the beginning ‘
of time; and that as the relation and condition which man in i
his individual person stands in towards his Maker, cannot be
changed, or any-ways altered by any human laws or hunian
authority, that religious devotion, -which is a part of this compact,
cannot so much as be made a subject of human laws; and that
all laws must conform themselves to this prior existing compact,
and not assume to make the compact conform to the laws, w'hich,
besides being human, are subsequent thereto. The first act of
man, when he looked around and saw himself a creature which he
82
RIGHTS OF MAN
The remaining articles, beginning with the twelfth,
are substantially contained in the principles of the pre-
ceding articles ; but in the particular situation in which
France then was, having to undo what was wrong, as
well as to set up what was right, it was proper to be
more particular than what in another condition of things
would be necessary.
While the Declaration of Rights was before the
National Assembly some of its members remarked that
if a declaration of rights were published it should be
accompanied by a declaration of duties. The observa-
tion discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred
by not reflecting far enough. A declaration of rights is,
by reciprocity, a declaration of duties also. Whatever
is my right as a man is also the right of another; and
it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
The first three articles are the basis of Liberty, as
well individual as national; nor cem any country be
called free whose government does not take its begin-
ning from the principles they contain, and continue to
preserve them pure; and the whole of the Declaration
of Rights is of more value to the world, and will do
more good, than all the laws and statutes that have
yet been promulgated.
In the declaratory exordium which prefaces the
Declaration of Rights we see the solemn and majestic
spectacle of a nation opening its commission, under the
auspices of its Creator, to establish a government, a
scene so new, and so transcendently unequalled by any-
thing in the European world, that the name of a revolu-
tion is diminutive of its character, and it rises into a
regeneration of man. What are the present govern-
ments of Europe but a scene of iniquity and oppression ?
What is that of England ? Do not its own inhabitants
say it is a market where every man has his price, and
did not make, and a world furnished for his reception, must have
been devotion, and devotion must ever continue sacred to every ,
individual man, as it appears right to him ; and governments do
mischief by interfering. — Author. [This note is omitted in many
modern editions. — H. B. B.]
RIGHTS OF MAN
83
where corruption is common traffic at the expence of a
deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French
revolution is traduced. Had it confined itself merely
to the destruction of flagrant despotism perhaps Mr.
Burke and some others had been silent. Their cry now
is, " It has gone too far ” — ^that is, it has gone too far
for them. It stares corruption in the face, and the
venal tribe are all alarmed. Their fear discovers itself
in their outrage, and they are but publishing the groans
of a wounded vice. But from such opposition the
French revolution, instead of suffering, receives an
homage. The more it is struck the more sparks it will
emit; and the fear is it will not be struck enough. It
has nothing to dread from attacks : Truth has given it
an establishment, and Time wifi, record it with a name
as lasting as his own.
Having now traced the progress of the French revolu-
tion through most of its principal stages, from its com-
mencement to the taking of the Bastille, and its estab-
lishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will close the
subject with the energetic apostrophe of M. de la
Fayette — May this great monument, raised to Liberty,
serve as a lesson to ike oppressor, and an example to ike
oppressed ! ^
^ See page 9 of this work.
N.B. — Since the taking of the Bastille, the occurrences have
been published ; but the matters recorded in this narrative are
prior to that period ; and some of them, as may be easily seen, can
be but very httle known. — Author. [This is another omitted
note, — H. B. B.]
MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER
To prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding
part of this work, or the narrative that follows it, I
reserved some observations to be thrown together in a
-miscellaneous chapter; by which variety might not be
censured for confusion. Mr. Burke’s book is all mis-
cellany. His intention was to make an attack on the
French revolution; but instead of proceeding with an
orderly arrangement, he has stormed it with a mob of
ideas tumbling over and destroying one another.
But this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke’s
book is easily accounted for. When a man in a wrong
cause attempts to steer his course by anything else than
some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. It
is beyond the compass of his capacity to keep all the
parts of an argument together, and make them unite in
one issue, by any other means than having this guide
always in view. Neither memory nor invention will
supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the
latter betrays him.
Notwithstanding the nonsense, for it deserves no
better name, that Mr. Burke has asserted about heredi-
tary rights and hereditary succession, and that a nation
has not a right to form a government of itself; it hap-
pened to fall in his w^ay to give some account of what
government is. " Government” says he, “is a con-
trivance of human wisdom”
Admitting that government is a contrivance of human
wisdom, it must necessarily follow, that hereditary suc-
cession, and hereditary rights (as they are called), can
make no part of it, because it is impossible to raalce
wisdom hereditary ; and on the other hand, that cannot
be a wise contrivance, which in its operation may com-
mit the government of a nation to the wisdom of an
idiot. The ground w^’hich Mr. Burke now takes is fatal
RIGHTS OF LiAN
85
to every part of his cause. The argument changes from
hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom ; and the ques-
tion is, Who is the wisest man? He must now show
that every one in the line of hereditary succession was
a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king. What
a stroke has Mr. Burke now made ! To use a sailor's
phrase, he has swabbed, the deck, and scarcely left a name
legible in the list of kings ; and he has mowed down and
thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as formidable
as Death and Time,
But Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this
retort; and he has taken care to guard against it, by
making government to be not only a contrivance of
human wisdom, but a mono'poly of wisdom. He puts
the nation as fools on one side, and places his govern-
ment of wisdom, all wise men of Gotham, on the other
side; and he then proclaims and says that “Men have
a RIGHT that their wants should he provided for hy this
wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next
proceeds to explain to them what their wants are, and
also what their rights are. In this he has succeeded
dexterously, for he makes their wants to be a want of
wisdom; but as this is cold comfort, he then informs
them, that they have a right — ^not to any of the wisdom,
but to be governed by it ; and in order to impress them
with a solemn reverence for this monopoly-government
of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all purposes,
possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds with
astrological mysterious importance, to teU to them its
powers in these words ; “ The rights of men in govern-
ment are their advantages; and these are often in
balance between differences of good; and in com-
promises sometimes between good and evil, and some-
times between evil and evil. Political reason is a com-
futing^ -principle ; adding — substracting — multiplying —
and (hviding, morally and not metaphysically or mathe-
matically, true moral denominations." ^
1 This word is usually written " demonstrations,” and I am
indebted to Moncure D. Conway for pointing out this error to me.
Burke wrote ” denominations.”- — ^H. B. B.
86
RIGHTS OF MAN
As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes
himself talking to, may not understand all this learned
jargon, I will undertake to be its interpreter. The
meaning, then, good people, of all this, is, That govern-
ment is governed hy no 'principle whatever ; that it can
make evU good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short,
that government is arbitrary power.
But there are some things which Mr. Burke has for-
gotten. First, he has not shown where the wisdom
originally came from; and secondly, he has not shown
by what authority it first began to act. In the manner
he introduces the matter, it is either government stealing
wisdom, or wisdom stealing government. It is without
an origin, and its powers without authority. In short,
it is usurpation.
Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a con-
sciousness of some radical defect in a government neces-
sary to be kept out of sight, or from both, or from any
other cause, I undertake not to determine, but so it is,
that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to
its source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleth
by which he may be known. A thousand years hence,
those who shall live in America or France, will look
back with contemplative pride on the origin of their
government, and say. This was the work of our glorious
ancestors ! But what can a monarchical talker say.?
What has he to exult in ? Alas ! he has nothing. A
certain something forbids him to look back to a begin-
ning, lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise
from the long obscurity of time and say, I am the origin.
Hard as Mr. Burke laboured at the Regency bill and
hereditary succession two years ago, and much as he
dived for precedents, he still had not iDoldness enough to
bring up William of Normandy, and say. There is the
head of the list, there is the fountain of honour ; the son
of a prostitute and the plundeiur of the English nation.
The opinions of men with respect to government are
changing fast in all countries. The revolutions of
America and France have thrown a beam of light over
the world, which reaches into man. The enormous
RIGHTS OF MAN
87
expence of governments has provoked people to think,
by making them feel; and when once the veil begins
to rend, it admits not of repair. Iterance is of a
peculiar nature : once dispelled, it is impossible to re-
establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is
only the absence of knowledge; and though man may
be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The
mind, in mscovering truth, acts in the same manner as
it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when
once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put
the mind back to the same condition it was in before
it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in
France, show how little they understand of man. There
does not exist in the compass of language an arrange-
ment of words to express so much as the means of
effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an
obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been
discovered how to make man unknow his knowledge, or
unthink his thoughts.
Mr. Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of
knowledge; and it comes with the worse grace from
him, as there is a certain transaction known in the city
which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in a
fictitious name. This may account for some strange
doctrine he has advanced in his book, which though he
points it at the Revolution Society, is effectually directed
against the whole nation.
“ The King of England,” says he, “ holds Ms crown ”
(for it does not belong to the nation, according to Mr.
Burke) “ in contempt of the choice of the Revolution
Society, who have not a single vote for a King among
them either individually or collectively ; and his Majesty’s
heirs each in their time and order, will come to the
Crown with the same contempt of their choice with which
his Majesty has succeeded to that which he now wears.”
As to who is King in England or elsewhere, or whether
there is any King at all, or whether the people choose a
Cherokee chief, or a Hessian hussar for a King, it is not
a matter that I trouble myself about, be that to them-
selves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it
RIGHTS OF MAN
relates to the rights of men and nations, it is as abomiii<
able as anything ever uttered in the most enslaved
country under heaven. Whether it sounds worse to my
ear, by not being accustomed to hear such despotism,
than what it does to the ear of another person, I am not
so well a judge of; but of its abominable principle I
am at no loss to judge.
It is not the Revolution Society that Mr. Burke
means ; it is the nation, as well in its original as in its
representative character ; and he has taken care to make
himself understood, by saying that they have not a
vote either collectively or individually. The Revolution
Society is composed of citizens of all denominations,
and of members of both the Houses of Parliament ; and
consequently, if there is not a right to a vote in any of
the characters, there can be no right to any either in
the nation or in its parliament. This ought to be a
caution to every country how it imports ^ foreign
families to be Kings. It is somewhat curious to observe,
that although the people of England have been in the
habit of tallying about Kings, it is always a foreign
house of Kings, hating foreigners yet governed by them.
It is now the House of Brunswick, one of the petty
tribes of Germany.
It has hitherto been the practice of the English
Parliaments to regulate what was called the succession
(taking it for granted that the nation then continued
to accord to the form of annexing a monarchical branch
to its government ; for without this the parliament could
not have had authority to have sent either to Holland
or to Hanover, or to impose a King upon the nation
against its wiU). And this must be the utmost limit
to which parliament can go upon the case; but the
right of the nation goes to the whole case, because it
has the right of changing its whole fonn of government.
The right of a parliament is only a right in trust, a right
by delegation, and that but from a very small part of
^ In some of the modern editions " how to import ’’ is the
somewhat amusing reading for the original " how it imports.”
RIGHTS OF MAN
89
the nation; and one of its Houses has not even this.
But the right of the nation is an original right, as
universal as taxation. The nation is the paymaster of
everything, and everything must conform to its general
will.
I remember taking notice of a speech in what is
called the English House of Peers, by the then Earl of
Shelburne, and I think it was at the time he was Minister,
which is applicable to this case. I do not directly
charge my memory with every particular; but the
words and the purport, as nearly as I remember, were
these. That the form of a government was a matter wholly
at the will of the nation at all times, that if it chose a
monarchical form, it had a right to have it so ; and if it
afterwards chose to he a republic, it had a right to he a
republic, and to say to a King, We have no longer any
occasion for you.”
When Mr. Burke says that “ his Majesty's heirs and
successors, each in their time and order, will come to
the crown with the same contempt of their choice with
which his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears,” it
is saying too much even to the humblest individual in
the country, part of whose daily labour goes towards
making up the million sterling a-year, which the country
gives the person it stiles a King. Government with
insolence is despotism ; but when contempt is added it
becomes worse ; and to pay for contempt is the excess
of slavery. This species of government comes from
Germany ; and reminds me of what one of the Bruns-
wick soldiers told me, who was taken prisoner by the
Americans in the late war : “ Ah ! ” said he, “ America
is a fine free country, it is worth the people's fighting .
for ; I know the difference by knowing my own : in
my country, if the prince says, eat straw, we eat straw.”
God help that country, thought I, be it England or else-
where, whose liberties are to be protected by German
principles of government, and Princes of Brunswick !
As Mr. Burke sometimes speaks of England, some-
times of France, and sometimes of the v/orld, and of
gfovernment in general, it is difficult to answer his book
go
RIGHTS OF MAN
without apparently meeting him on the same ground.
Although principles of government are general subjects,
it is next to impossible, in many cases, to separate
them from the idea of place and circumstance, and the
more so when circumstances are put for arguments,
which is frequently the case with Mr. Burke.
In the former part of his book, addressing himself to
the people of France, he says : “No experience has
taught us [meaning the English], that in any other
course or method than that of a hereditary crown, can
our liberties be regularly perpetuated and preserved
sacred as our hereditary right” I asked Mr. Burke,
Who is to take them away ? M. de la Fayette, in speak-
ing to France, says : “ For a nation to be free, it is
sufficient that she wills it.” But Mr. Burke represents
England as wanting capacity to take care of itself, and
that its liberties must be taken care of by a King hold-
ing it in “ contempt.” If England is sunk to this, it is
preparing itself to eat straw, as in Hanover, or in
Brunswick. But besides the folly of the declaration, it
happens that the facts are all against Mr. Burke. It
was by the government being hereditary, that the liber-
ties of the people were endangered. Charles I. and
James II. are instances of this truth; yet neither of
them went so far as to hold the nation in contempt.
As it is sometimes of advantage to the people of one
country to hear what those of other countries have to
say respecting it, it is possible that the people of France
may learn something from Mr. Burke's book, and that
the people of England may also learn something from
the answers it will occasion. When nations fall out
about freedom, a wide field of debate is opened. The
argument commences with the rights of war, without
its evils; and as knowledge is the object contended for,
the party that sustains the defeat obtains the prize.
Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary
crown, as if it were some production of Nature; or as
if, like time, it had a power to operate, not only inde-
pendently, but in spite of man ; or as if it were a thing
or a subject universally consented to. Alas ! it has
RIGHTS OF MAN
91
none of those properties, but is the reverse of them all.
It is a thing in imagination, the propriety of which is
more than doubted, and the legality of which in a few
years will be denied.
But, to arrange this matter in a clearer view than
what general expression can convey, it will be necessary
to state the distinct heads under which (what is called)
an hereditary crov/n, or more properly speaking, an
hereditary succession to the government of a nation,
can be considered ; which are.
First, the right of a particular Family to establish
itself.
Secondly, the right of a Nation to establish a particular
Family.
With respect to the^rs^ of these heads, that of a Family
establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own
authority, and independent of the consent of a nation,
all men will concur in calling it despotism, and it would
be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to
prove it.
But the second head, that of a Nation establishing a
particular Family with hereditary powers, does not pre-
sent itself as despotism on the first reflection; but if
men will permit a second reflection to take place, and
carty that reflection forward but one remove out of
their own persons to that of their offspring, they will
then see that hereditary succession becomes in its con-
sequences the same despotism to others, which they
reprobated for themselves. It operates to preclude the
consent of the succeeding generations; and the pre-
clusion of consent is despotism. Wlien the person who
at any time shall be in possession of a government, or
those who stand in succession to him, shall say to a
nation, I hold this power in “ contempt " of you, it
signifies not on what authority he pretends to say it.
It is no relief, but an aggravation to a person in slavery,
to reflect that he was sold by his parent ; and as that
which heightens the criminality of an act cannot be
produced to prove the legality of it, hereditary succession
cannot be established as a legal thing.
92
RIGHTS OF MAN
In order to arrive at a more perfect decision on this
head, it will be proper to consider the generation which
undertakes to establish a family with hereditary powers,
apart and separate from the generations which are to
follow; and also to consider the character in which |
the first generation acts with respect to succeeding ;
generations.
The generation which first selects a person, and puts
him at the head of its government, either with the title
of King, or any other chstinction, acts on its own choice,
be it wise or foolish, as a free agent for itself. The
person so set up is not hereditary, but selected and
appointed; and the generation who sets him up, does
not live under an hereditary government, but under I'
a government of its own choice and establishment. ■
Were the generation who sets him up, and the person i
so set up, to live for ever, it never could become heredi- /■
tary succession ; and of consequence hereditary succes- '
sion can only follow on the death of the first parties.
As, therefore, hereditary succession is out of the
question with respect to the first generation, we have
now to consider the character in which that generation
acts with respect to the commencing generation, and ^
to all succeeding ones.
It assumes a character, to which it has neither right
nor title. It changes a Legislator to a T estator, and afiects p
to make its Will, which is to have operation after the i
demise of the makers, to bequeath the government :
and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to establish
on the succeeding generation, a new and different form
of government under which itself lived. Itself, as
already observed, lived not under a hereditary govern-
ment, but under a government of its own choice and
establisliment ; and it now attempts, by virtue of a
will and testament (and which it has not authority to
make), to take from the commencing generation, and all ^
future ones, the rights and free agency by which itself i.
acted. i;
But, exclusive of the right which any generation has
to act collectively as a testator, the objects to which it |,
RIGHTS OF MAN
93
applies itself in this case, are not within the compass
of any law, or of any will or testament.
The rights of men in society, are neither devisable or
transferable, nor annihilable, but are descendable only,
and it is not in the power of any generation to intercept
finally, and cut off the descent. If the present genera-
tion, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not
lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free.
Wrongs cannot have a legal descent. Wlien Mr. Burke
attempts to maintain that the English nation did at the
revolution of 1688, most solemnly renounce and abdicate
their rights for themselves, and for all their posterity for
ever, he speaks a language that merits not reply, and
which can only excite contempt for his prostitute
principles, or pity for his ignorance.
In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing
out of the will and testament of some former generation,
presents itself, it is an absurdity. A cannot make a
will to take from B the property of B, and give it to
C; yet this is the manner in which (what is called)
hereditary succession by law operates. A certain former
generation made a will to take away the rights of the
commencing generation, and all future ones, and con-
vey those rights to a third person, who afterwards comes
forward, and tells them, in Mr. Burke’s language, that
they have no rights, that their rights are already be-
queathed to him and that he will govern in contempt of
them. From such principles, and such ignorance, Good
Lord deliver the world !
But, after all, what is the metaphor called a crown,
or rather what is monarchy? Is it a thing, or is it a
name, or is it a fraud ? Is it a " contrivance of human
wisdom,” or of human craft to obtain money from a
nation under specious pretences ? Is it a thing neces-
sary to a nation ? If it is, in what does that necessity
consist, what services does it perform, what is its busi-
ness, and what are its pierits ? Does the virtue consist
in the metaphor, or in the man ? Doth the goldsmith
that makes the crown, make the virtue also ? Doth it
operate like Fortunatus’s wishing-cap, or Harlequin’s
94 RIGHTS OF MAN
wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer? In
fine, what is it? It appears to be a something going
much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in
some countries both as unnecessary and expensive. In
America it is considered as an absurdity ; and in France
it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man,
and the respect for his personal character, are the only
things that preserve the appearance of its existence.
If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, " a
contrivance of human wisdom,” I might ask him, if
wisdom was at such a low ebb in England, that it was
become necessary to import it from Holland and from
Hanover ? But I will do the country the justice to say,
that was not the case; and even if it was, it mistook
the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when properly
exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there
could exist no moi'e real occasion in England to have
sent for a Dutch stadtholder, or a German elector, than
there was in America to have done a similar thing. If
a country does not understand its own affairs, how is a
foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its
laws, its manners, nor its language ? If there existed a
man so transcendently wise above all others, that his
wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation, some reason
might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our
eyes about a country, and observe how every part
understands its own affairs; and when we look around
the world, and see that of all men in it, the race of
I kings are the most insignificant in capacity, our reason
I cannot fail to ask us — What are those men kept for ?
If there is anything in monarchy which we people of
America do not understand, I wish Mr, Burke would
be so kind as to inform us. I see in America, a govern-
ment extending over a country ten times as large as
England, and conducted with regularity, for a fortieth
part of the expence which government costs in England.
If I ask a man in America if he wants a King, he retorts,
and asks me if I take him for an idiot ? How is it that
this difference happens? are we more or less wise than
others? I see in America the generality of people
RIGHTS OF MAN
95
living in a stile of plenty unknown in monarchical
countries ; and I see that the principle of its govern-
ment, which is that of the equal Rights of Man, is making
a rapid progress in the world.
If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept up
anywhere ? and if a necessary thing, how can it he dis-
pensed with? That civil government is necessary, all
civilized nations will agree : but civil government is
republican government. All that part of the govern-
ment of England which begins with the office of con-
stable, and proceeds through the department of magis-
trate, quarter-sessions, and general assize, including
trial by jury, is republican government. Nothing of
monarchy appears in any part of it, except in the name
which William the Conqueror imposed upon the English,
that of obliging them to call him " Their Sovereign
Lord the King.”
It is very easy to conceive that a band of interested
men, such as placemen, pensioners, lords of the bed-
chamber, lords of the kitchen, lords of the necessary-
house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as
many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at
the expence of the country, amount to; but if I ask
the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the trades-
man, and down through all the occupations of life to
the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him ?
he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy
is, he believes it is something like a sinecure.
Notwithstanding the taxes of England amount to
almost seventeen millions a-year, said to be for the
expences of Government, it is still evident that the
sense of the nation is left to govern itself, and does
govern itself, by magistrates and juries, almost at its
own charge, on republican principles, exclusive of the
expence of taxes. The salaries of the judges are almost
the only charge that is paid out of the revenue. Con-
sidering that all the internal government is executed
by the people, the taxes of England ought to be the
lightest of any nation in Europe; instead of which,
they are the contrary. As this cannot be accounted
96 RIGHTS OF MAN
on the score of civil government, the subject necessarily
extends itself to the monarchical part.
, When the people of England sent for George the First,
(and it would puzzle a wiser man than Mr. Burke to
discover for what he could be wanted, or what service
he could render,) they ought at least to have conditioned
for the abandonment of Hanover. Besides the endless
German intrigues that must follow from a Gerrnan
Elector being King of England, there is a natural^ im-
possibility of uniting in the same person the principles
of freedom and the principles of despotism, or as it is
usually called in England arbitrary power. A German
Elector is in his electorate a despot ; how then could it
be expected that he should be attached to principles of
liberty in one country .while his interest in another was
to be supported by despotism.? The union cannot
exist; and it might easily have been foreseen that
German electors would make German kings, or in Mr.
Burke's words, would assume government with “ con-
tempt" The English have been in the habit of con-
sidering a King of England only in the character in
which he appears to them ; whereas the same person,
while the connection lasts, has a home-seat in another
country, the interest of which is different to their own,
and the principles of the governments in opposition to
each other. To such a person England will appear as a
town-residence, and the electorate as the estate. The
English may wish, as I believe they do, success to the
principles of liberty in France, or in Germany; but a
German Elector trembles for the fate of despotism in
his electorate; and the Duchy of Mecklenburg, where
the present Queen’s family governs, is under the same
wretched state of arbitrary power, and the people in
slavish vassalage.
There never was a time when it became the English
to watch continental intrigues more circumspectly than
at the present moment, and to distinguish the politics
of the electorate from the politics of the nation. The
revolution of France has entirely changed the ground
with respect to England and France, as nations; but
RIGHTS OF MAN
the German despots, with Prussia at their head, are *
combining against Liberty; and the fondness of Mr.
Pitt for office, and the interest which all his family
connections have obtained, do not give sufficient security
against this intrigue. ^
As everything which passes in the world becomes
matter for history, I will now quit this subject, and «
take a concise review of the state of parties and politics
in England, as Mr, Burke has done in France. ^
Whether the present reign commenced with contempt, *.
I leave to Mr. Burke : certain, however, it is that it
had strongly that appearance. The animosity of the
English nation, it is very well remembered, ran high; i
and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well
understood then as they now promise to be, it is prob-
able the nation would not have patiently submitted to
so much. George the First and Second were sensible :
of a rival in the remains of the Stuarts; and as they :
could not but consider themselves as standing on their
good behaviour, they had prudence to keep their Ger-
man principles of government to themselves ; but as
the Stuart family wore away, the prudence became less i.
necessary. i
The contest between rights, and what were called pre-
rogatives, continued to heat the nation till some time
after the conclusion of the American War — when all at :
once it fell a calm— execration exchanged itself for
applause, and Court popularity sprang up like a mush- ;
room in a night. -
To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to
observe that there are two distinct species of popularity ;
the one excited by merit, and the other by resentment. »
As the nation had fonned itself into two parties, and ;
each was extoUing the merits of its parliamentary
champions for and against prerogative, nothing could
operate to give a more general shock than an immediate
coalition of the champions themselves. The partizans
of each being thus suddenly left in the lurch, and
mutually heated with disgust at the measure, felt no
other relief than uniting in a common execration against
RIGHTS OF MAN
98
both. A higher stimulus of resentment being thus
excited than what the contest on prerogatives occasioned,
the nation quitted all former objects of rights and
wrongs, and sought only that of gratification. The
indignation at the Coalition so effectuaKy superseded
the indignation against the Court as to extinguish it;
and without any change of principles on the part of the
Court, the same people who had reprobated its despotism
united with it to revenge themselves on the Coalition
Parliament. The case was not, which they liked best,
but which they hated most ; and the least hated passed
for love. The dissolution of the Coalition Parliament,
as it afforded the means of gratifying the resentment of
the nation, could not fail to be popular : and from
hence arose the popularity of the Court.
Transitions of this kind exhibit a nation under the
government of temper, instead of a fixed and steady
principle; and having once committed itself, however
rashly, it feels itself urged along to justify, by continu-
ance, its first procee(fing. Measures which at other
times it would censure, it now apjproves, and acts per-
suasion upon itself to suffocate its judgment.
On the return of a new parliament, the new minister,
Mr. Pitt, found himself in a secure majority; and the
nation gave him credit, not out of regard to himself,
but because it had resolved to do it out of resentment to
another. He introduced himself to public notice by a
^ proposed reform of parliament, which in its operation
I would have amounted to a public justification of cor-
I ruption. The nation was to be at the expence of buy-
• ing up the rotten boroughs, whereas it ought to punish
r the persons who deal in the traffic.
; Passing over the two bubbles of the Dutch business
and the million a-year to sink the national debt, the
i matter which most presents itself, is the affair of the
;; Regency. Never, in the course of my observation, was
; delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more
■: completely deceived. But, to make this appear, it will
‘ be necessary to go over the circumstances.
Mr. Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that
RIGHTS OF MAN
99
the Prince of Wales, as heir in succession, had a right in
himself to assume the government. This was opposed
by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was con-
fined to the doctrine, it was just. But the principles
which Mr. Pitt maintained on the contrary side were as
bad, or worse in their extent, than those of Mr. Fox;
because they went to establish an aristocracy over the
nation, and over the small representation it has in the
House of Commons.
Whether the English form of government be good or
bad, is not in this case the question; but, taking it as
it stands, without regard to its merits or demerits, Mr.
Pitt was farther from the point than Mr. Fox.
It is supposed to consist of three parts ; while there-
fore the nation is disposed to continue this foim, the
parts have a national standing, independent of each other,
and are not the creatures of each other. Had Mr. Fox
passed through parliament, and said that the person
alluded to claimed on the ground of the nation, Mr.
Pitt must then have contended (what he called) the
right of the parliament against the right of the nation.
By the appearance which the contest made, Mr. Fox
took the hereditary ground, and Mr. Pitt the parlia-
mentary ground; but the fact is, they both took
hereditary ground, and Mr. Pitt took the worse of the
two.
What is called the parliament is made up of two
Houses, one of which is more hereditary, and more
beyond the controul of a nation than what the Crown
(as it is called) is supposed to be. It is an hereditary
aristocracy, assuming and asserting indefeasible, irre-
vocable rights and authority, wholly independent of the
nation. Where, then, was the merited popularity of
exalting this hereditary power over another hereditary
power less independent of the nation than what itself
assumed to be, and of absorbing the rights of the nation
into a House over which it has neither election nor
controul ?
The general impulse of the nation was right ; but it
acted without reflection. It approved the opposition
lOO
RIGHTS OF MAN
made to the right set up by Mr. Fox, without perceiving
that Mr. Pitt was supporting another indefeasible right
more remote from the nation in opposition to it.
With respect to the House of Commons, it is elected
but by a small part of the nation; but were the elec-
tion as universal as taxation, which it ought to be, it
would still be only the organ of the nation, and cannot
possess inherent rights. When the National Assembly
of France resolves a matter, the resolve is made in right
of the nation ; but Mr. Pitt, on all national questions,
so far as they refer to the Plouse of Commons, absorbs
the rights of the nation into the organ, and makes the
organ into a nation, and the nation itself into a cypher.
In a few words, the question on the Regency was a
question of a million a-year, w'hich is appropriated to
the excutive department ; and Mr. Pitt could not possess
himself of any management of this sum, without setting
up the supremacy of parliament; and when this was
accomplished, it w^as indifferent who should be Regent,
as he must be Regent at his own cost. Among the
curiosities which this contentious debate afforded, was
that of making the Great Seal into a King, the affixing
of which to an act was to be royal authority. If,
therefore. Royal Authority is a Great Seal, it conse-
quently is in itself nothing; and a good constitution
would be of infinitely more value to the nation than
what the three nominal powers, as they now stand, are
worth.
The continual use of the word Constitution in the
English Parliament shews there is none; and that the
Vvhole is merely a form of government without a con-
stitution, and constituting itself with w^hat powers it
pleases. If there were a constitution it certainly could
be refen-ed to; and the debate on any constitutional
point would terminate by producing the constitution.
One member says tliis is constitution, and. another says
that is constitution— to-day it is one thing, and to-
morrow something else — ^while the maintaining of the
debate proves there is none. Constitution is now the
cant word of parliament, tuning itself to the ear of the
RIGHTS OF MAN
lOI
nation. Formerly it was the universal supremacy of
parliament — the omnipotence of parliament : but since
the progress of Liberty in France, those phrases have a
despotic harshness in their note ; and the English Parlia-
ment have catched the fashion from the National
Assembly, but v/ithout the substance, of speaking of
Constitution.
As the present generation of people in England did
not make the government, they are not accountable for
any of its defects; but, that sooner or later, it must
come into their hands to undergo a constitutional
reformation, is as certain as that the same thing has
happened in France. If France, with a revenue of
nearly twenty-four millions sterling, with an extent of
rich and fertile country above four times larger than
England, with a population of twenty-four millions of
inhabitants to support taxation, with upwards of ninety
millions sterling of gold and silver circulating in the
nation, and with a debt less than the present debt of
England — still found it necessary, from whatever cause,
to come to a settlement of its affairs, it solves the
problem of funding for both countries.
It is out of the question to say how long what is
called the English constitution has lasted, and to argue
from thence how long it is to last; the question is,
how long can the funding system last ? It is a thing
but of modern invention, and has not yet continued
beyond the life of a man ; yet in that short space it has
so far accumulated, that, together with the current
expences, it requires an amount of taxes at least equal
to the whole landed rental of the nation in acres to
defray the annual expenditure. That a government
could not have always gone on by the same system
which has been followed for the last seventy years, must
be evident to every man; and for the same reason it
cannot always go on.
The funding system is not money; neither is it,
properly speaking, credit. It, in effect, creates upon
paper the sum which it appears to borrow, and lays on
a tax to keep the imaginary capital alive by the pay-
102
RIGHTS OF MAN
ment of interest and sends the annuity to market, to
be sold for paper already in circulation. If any credit
is given, it is to the disposition of the people to pay the
tax, and not to the government, which lays it on.
When this disposition expires, what is supposed to be
the credit of government expires with it. The instance
of France under the former government, shews that it is
impossible to compel the payment of taxes by force,
when a whole nation is determined to take its stand
upon that ground.
Mr. Burke, in his review of the finances of France,
states the quantity of gold and silver in France, at about
eighty-eight millions sterling. In doing this, he has, I
presume, divided by the difference of exchange, instead
of the standard of twenty-four livres to a pound sterling ;
for M. Neckar’s statement, from which Mr. Burke’s is
taken, is two thousand two hundred millions of livres,
which is upwards of ninety-one millions and a half
sterling.
M. Neckar in France, and Mr. George Chalmers of the
Office of Trade and Plantation in England, of which
Lord Hawkesbury is president, published nearly about
-the same time (1786) an account of the quantity of money
in each nation, from the returns of the Mint of each
nation, Mr. Chalmers, from the returns of the English
Mint at the Tower of London, states the quantity of
money in England, including Scotland and Ireland, to
be twenty millions sterling. ^
M. Neckar ^ says that the amount of money in France,
re-coined from the old coin which was called in, was
two thousand five hundred millions of livres (upwards of
one hundred and four millions sterling); and, after
deducting for waste, and what may be in the West
Indies and other possible circumstances, states the
circulation quantity at home to be ninety-one millions
and a half sterling ; but taking it as Mr. Burke has put it,
^ See Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain,
by G. Chalmers. — Author.*
® See Administration of the Finances of France, vol. iii.. bv
M. Neckar.—
RIGHTS OF MAN
103
it is sixty-eight millions more than the national quantity
in England.
That the quantity of money in France cannot be under
this sum, may at once be seen from the state of the French
Revenue, without referring to the records of the French
Mint for proofs. The revenue of France, prior to the
revolution, was nearly twenty-four millions sterling;
and as paper had then no existence in France the whole
revenue was collected in gold and silver ; and it would
have been impossible to have collected such a quantity
of revenue upon a less national quantity than M. Neckar
has stated. Before the establishment of paper in
England, the revenue was about a fourth part of the
national amount of gold and silver, as may be known by-
referring to the revenue prior to King William and the
quantity of money stated to be in the nation at that
time, which was nearly as much as it is now.
It can be of no real service to a nation, to impose upon
itself, or to permit itself to be imposed upon; but the
prejudices of some, and the imposition of others, have
always represented France as a nation possessing but
little money — ^whereas the quantity is not only more than
four times what the quantity is in England, but is
considerably greater on a proportion of numbers. To
account for this deficiency on the part of England, some
reference should be had to the English system of funding.
It operates to multiply paper, and to substitute it in the
room of money, in various shapes ; and the more paper is
multiplied, the more opportunities are offered to export
the specie ; and it admits of a possibility (by extending it
to small notes) of increasing paper till there is no money
left.
I know this is not a pleasant subject to English
readers ; but the matters I am going to mention, are so
important in themselves, as to require the attention of
men interested in money transactions of a public nature.
There is a circumstance stated by M. Neckar, in his
treatise on the administration of the finances, which
has never been attended to in England, but which forms
the only basis whereon to estimate the quantity of money
104 RIGHTS OF MAN
(gold and silver) which ought to be in every nation in
Europe, to preserv^^e a relative proportion with other
nations.
Lisbon and Cadiz are the two ports into which gold
and silver (money) from South America are imported,
and which afterwards divide and spread themselves over
Europe by means of conunerce, and increase the quantity
of money in all parts of Europe. If, therefore, the
amount of the annual importation into Europe can be
known, and the relative proportion of the foreign com-
merce of the several nations by which it can be distributed
can be ascertained, they give a.Tule sufficiently true, to
ascertain the quantity of money which ought to be found
in any nation, at any given time.
M. Neckar shows from the registers of Lisbon and
Cadiz, that the importation of gold and silver into
Europe, is five miliions sterling annually. He has not
taken it on a single year, but on an average of fifteen
succeeding years, from 1763 to 1777, both inclusive;
in which time the amount was one thousand eight
hundred million livres, which is seventy-five millions
sterling.^
From the commencement of the Hanover succession
in 1714 to the time Mr. Chahners published is seventy-
two years; and the quantity imported into Europe, in
that time, would be three hundred and sixty millions
sterling.
If the foreign commerce of Great Britain be stated at
a sixth part of what the whole foreign commerce of
Europe amounts to (which is probably an inferior estima-
tion to what the gentlemen at the Exchange would
allow) the proportion which Britain should draw by
commerce of this sum, to keep herself on a proportion
with the rest of Europe, would be also a sixth part,
which is sixty millions sterling ; and if the same allowance
for waste and accident be made for England which M.
Neckar makes for France, the quantity remaining after
these deductions would be fifty-two millions; and this
^Administration of the Finances of France, vol. iii —
Author.*
RIGHTS OF MAN
105
sum ought to have been in the nation (at the time Mr.
Chalmers published), in addition to the sum which was
in the nation at the commencement of the Hanover
succession, and to have made in the whole at least sixty-
six millions sterling; instead of which there were but
twenty millions, which is forty-six millions below its
proportionate quantity.
As the quantity of gold and silver imported into Lisbon
and Cadiz is more exactly ascertained than that of any
commodity imported into England, and as the quantity
of money coined at the Tower of London is still more
positively known, the leading facts do not admit of
controversy. Either, therefore, the commerce of
England is unproductive of profit, or the gold and silver
which it brings in leak continually away by unseen means
at the average rate of about three-quarters of a million
a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years,
accounts for the deficiency ; and its absence is supplied
by paper. 1
^ Whether the English commerce does not bring in money, or
whether the government sends it out after it is brought in, is a
matter which the parties concerned can best explain; but that
the deficiency exists, is not in the power of either to disprove.
While Dr. Price, Mr. Eden (now Auckland), Mr. Chalmers, and
others, were debating whether the quantity of money in England
was greater or less than at the revolution, the circumstance was
not adverted to, that since the revolution, there cannot have been
less than four hundred millions sterling imported into Europe;
and therefore, the quantity in England ought at least to be four
times greater than it was at the revolution, to be on a proportion
with Europe. What England is now doing by paper, is what she
would have been able to have done by solid money, if gold and
silver had come into the nation in the proportion it ought, or had
not been sent out ; and she is endeavouring to restore by pa.per,
the balance she has lost by money. It is certain, that the gold
and silver which arrive annually in the register-ships to Spain
and Portugal, do not remain in those countries. Taking the
value half in gold and half in silver, it is about four hundred tons
annually; and from the number of ships and galloons employed
in the trade of bringing those metals from South America to
Portugal and Spain, the quantity sufficiently proves itself, without
referring to the registers.
In the situation England now is, it is impossible she can increase
in money. High taxes not only lessen the property of the
io6 RIGHTS OF MAN
The revolution of France is attended with many novel
circumstances, not only in the political sphere, but in the
circle of money transactions. Among others, it shews
that a government may be in a state of insolvency and a
nation rich. So far as the fact is confined to the late
government of France, it was insolvent; because the
nation would no longer support its extravagance, and
therefore it could no longer support itself — but with
respect to the nation all the means existed. A govern-
ment may be said to be insolvent every time it applies
to the nation to discharge its arrears. The insolvency of
the late government of France and the present govern-
ment of England differed in no other respect than as the
disposition of the people differ. The people of France
refused their aid to the old government ; and the people
of England submit to taxation without enquiry. What
individuals, but they lessen also the money-capital of a nation, by
inducing smuggling, which can only be carried on by gold and
silver. By the politics which the British Government have
carried on with the Inland Powers of Germany and the Continent,
it has made an enemy of all the Maritime powers, and is therefore
obliged to keep up a large navy ; but though the navy is built in
England, the naval stores must be purchased from abroad, and
that from countries where the greatest part must be paid for in
gold and silver. Some fallacious rumours have been set afloat in
England to induce a belief of money, and, among others, that of
the French refugees bringing great quantities. The idea is
ridiculous. The general part of the money in France is silver;
and it would take upwards of twenty of the largest broad wheel
waggons, with ten horses each, to remove one million sterling of
silver. Is it then to be supposed, that a few people fleeing on
horse-back, or in post-chaises, in a secret manner, and having
the French Custom House to pass, and the sea to cross, could
bring even a sufficiency for their own expences ?
When millions of money are spoken of, it should be recollected,
that such sums can only accumulate in a country by slow
degrees, and a long procession of time. The most frugal system
that England could now adopt, would not recover, in a century,
the balance she has lost in money since the commencement of
the Hanover succession. She is seventy millions behind France,
and she must be in some considerable proportion behind every
country in Europe, because the returns of the English Mint do not
shc\y an increase of money, while the registers of Lisbon and
Cadiz shew an European increase of between three and four
hundred millions sterling. — Author.*
RIGHTS OF MAN
107
is called the Crown in England has been insolvent several
times j the last of which, publicly known, was in May,
1777, when it applied to the nation to discharge upwards
of ;^6oo,ooo private debts, which otherwise it could not
pay.
It was the error of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and all those
who were unacquainted with the affairs of France, to
confound the French nation with the French govern-
ment. The French nation, in effect, endeavoured to
render the late government insolvent for the purpose of
taking government into its own hands : and it reserved
its means for the support of the new government. In a
country of such vast extent and population as France
the natural means cannot be wanting ; and the political
means appear the instant the nation is disposed to permit
them. When Mr. Burke, in a speech last winter in the
British parliament, cast his eyes over the map of Europe,
and saw a chasm that once was France, he talked like a
dreamer of dreams. The same natural France existed
as before, and all the natural means existed with it.
The only chasm was that which the extinction of des-
potism had left, and which was to be filled up with a
constitution more formidable in resources than the power
which had expired.
Although the French nation rendered the late govern-
ment insolvent, it did not permit the insolvency to act
towards the creditors ; and the creditors, considering the
nation as the real pay-master, and the government only
as the agent, rested themselves on the nation, in
preference to the government. This appears greatly
to disturb Mr. Burke, as the precedent is fatal to the
policy by which governments have supposed themselves
secure. They have contracted debts, with a view of
attaching what is called the monied interest of a nation
to their support ; but the example in France shews that
jhe permanent security of the creditor is in the nation , |
*and not in t he gbvernmeht : ana that m ail possiBTe {
revolullbns t'Kax may happen in governments, the
means are always with the nation, and the nation always
in existence. Mr. Burke argues that the creditors ought
io8 RIGHTS OF MAN
to have abided the fate of the government which they
trusted ; but the National Assembly considered them as
the creditors of the nation, and not of the government—
of the master, and not of the steward.
Notwithstanding the late government could not
discharge the current expences, the preserd go'v^rnment
paid off a great part of the capital. This has been
accomplished by two means; the one by lessenmg the
expences of government, and the other by the sale of the
monastic and ecclesiastical landed estates. The devotees
and penitent debauchees, extortioners and misers of
former days, to ensure themselves a better w’orld than
that which they were about to leave, had bequeathed
immense property in trust to the priesthood, for fious
uses ; and the priesthood kept it for themselves. The
National Assembly has ordered it to be sold for the good
of the whole nation, and the priesthood to be decently
provided for.* .
In consequence of the revolution, the annual interest
of the debt of France will be reduced at least six millions
sterling, by paying off upwards of one hundred millions
of the capital ; which, with lessening the former expences
of government at least three millions, will place France
in a situation worthy the imitation of Europe.*
Upon a whole review of the subject, how vast is the
contrast ! TOile Mr. Burke has been talking of a
general bankruptcy in France, the National Assembly
has been paying off the capital of its debt ; and while
taxes have increased near a million a year iri England,
they have lowered several millions a year in France.
Not a word has either Mr. Burke or Mr. Pitt said about
the French affairs, or the state of the French finances, in
the present session of parliament. The subject begins
to be too well understood, and imposition serves no
longer.
There is a general enigma running through the whole
of Mr. Burke's book. He writes in a rage against
the National Assembly ; but what is he enraged about ?
If his assertions were as true as they are groundless,
and that France, by her revolution, had annihilated her
RIGHTS OF MAN
log
power, and become what he calls a chasm, it might excite
the grief of a Frenchman (considering himself as a
national man), and provoke his rage against the National
Assembly; but why should it excite the rage of Mr.
Burke ? Alas ! it is not the nation of France that Mr.
Burke means, but the Court ; and every Court in Europe,
dreading the same fate, is in mourning. He writes
neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an English-
man, but in the fawning character of that creature known
in all countries, and a friend to none, a Courtier.
Whether it be the Court of Versailles, or the Court of St.
James, or of Carlton House, or the Court in expectation,
signifies not ; for the caterpillar principle of all courts and
courtiers are alike . They form a common policy through-
out Europe, detached and separate from the interest of
nations ; and while they appear to quarrel, they agree to
plunder. Nothing can be more terrible to a court or
courtier than the revolution of France. That which is a
blessing to nations is bitterness to them : and as their
existence depends on the duplicity of a country, they
tremble at the approach of 'principles, and dread the
precedent that threatens their overthrow.
E
CONCLUSION
Reason and Ignorance, the opposite to each other,
influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these
can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the
machinery of government goes easily on. Reason
obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is
dictated to it.
The two modes of government which prevail in the
world, are, first, government by election and representa-
tion; secondly, government % hereditary succession.
The former is generally knovim by the name of republic;
the latter by that of rnonarchy and aristocracy.
Those two distmct and opposite fonns erect themselves
on the two distinct and opposite bases of Reason and
Ignorance. As the exercise of government requires
talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities cannot
have hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary
succession requires a belief from man to which his reason
cannot subscribe, and which can only be established upon
his ignorance; and the more ignorant any country is,
the better it is fitted for this species of government.
On the contrar37, government, in a well-constituted
republic, requires no belief from man bej^’ond what his
reason can give. He sees the rationale of the whole
system,, its origin and its operation; and as it is best
supported when best understood, the human faculties
act with boldness, and acquire under this form of
government a gigantic manliness.
As, therefore, each of those forms acts on a different
base, the one moving freely by the aid of reason, the
other by ignorance, we have next to consider, what it is
that gives motion to that species of government which is
called mixed government, or, as it is sometimes
ludicrously stiled, a government of this, that and t’other.
no
RIGHTS OF MAN
rii
The moving power in this species of government is of
necessity corruption. However imperfect election and
representation may be in mixed governments, they still
give exercise to a greater portion of reason than is
convenient to the hereditary part; and therefore it
becomes necessary to buy the reason up. A mixed
government is an imperfect everything, cementing and
soldering the discordant parts together by corruption, to
act as a whole. Mr. Burke appears highly disgusted that
France, since she had resolved on a revolution, did not
adopt what he calls “ A British Constitution " ; and the
regretful manner in which he expresses himself on this
occasion, implies a suspicion that the British Constitution
needed something to keep its defects in countenance.
In mixed governments there is no responsibility : the
parts cover each other till responsibility is lost ; and the
corruption which moves the machine, contrives at the
same time its own escape. When it is laid down as a
maxim, that a King can do no wrong, it places Imn in a
state of similar security with that of idiots and persons
insane, and responsibility is out of the question with
respect to himself. It then descends upon the minister,
who shelters himself under a majority in parliament,
which by places, pensions, and corruption, he can always
command ; and that majority justifies itself by the same
authority with which it protects the minister. In this
rotatory motion, responsibility is thrown off from the
parts, and from the whole.
When there is part in a government which can do no
wrong, it implies that it does nothing ; and is only the
machine of another power, by whose advice and direction
it acts. What is supposed to be the King in the mixed
governments, is the cabinet ; and as the cabinet is always
a part of the parliament, and the members justifying
in one character what they advise and act in another,
a mixed government becomes a continual enigma;
entailmg upon a country, by the quantity of corruption
necessary to solder the parts, the expence of supporting
all the foims of government at once, and finally resolving
into a government by committee ; in which the advisers.
II2
RIGHTS OF MAN
the actors, the approvers, the justifiers, the persons
responsible, and the persons not responsible, are the
same persons.
By this pantomimical contrivance, and change of
scene and character, the parts help each other ont in
matters which neither of them singly would assume to act.
V^en money is to be obtained, the mass of variety
apparently dissolves, and a profusion of parliament^
praises passes between the parts. Each admires with
astonishment, the wisdom, the liberality, and dis-
interestedness of the other; and all of them breathe a
pitying sigh at the burdens of the nation.
But in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this
soldering, praising, and pitying, can take place; the
representation being equal t^oughout the country, and
compleat in itself, however it may be arranged into
legislative and executive, they have all one and the same
natural source. The parts are not foreigners to each
other, lilce democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy.
As there are no discordant distinctions, there is nothing
to corrupt by compromise, nor confound by contrivance.
Public measures appeal of themselves to the under-
standing of the nation, and resting on their own merits,
disown any flattering applications to vanity. The
continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes,
however successfully it may be practised in mixed govern-
ments, is inconsistent with the sense and sphit of a
republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course
advantageous, but if they require an apology, the
I apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is
man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself ?
;■ When men are spoken of as Kings and subjects, or
when government is mentioned under the distinct or
combined heads of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, what is it that reasoning man is to under-
stand by the terms ? If there really existed in the world
two or more distinct and separate elements of human
power, we should then see the several origins to which
those terms would descriptively apply ; but as there is
. but one species of man, there can be but one element of
RIGHTS OF MAN
113
hxixnan. power, and that element is man himself.
Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, are but creatures
of imagination ; and a thousand such may be contrived
as well as three.
From the revolutions of America and France, and the
symptoms that have appeared in other countries, it
is evident that the opinion of the world is changed with
respect to systems of government, and that revolutions
are not within the compass of political calculations. The
progress of time and circumstances, which men assign
to the accomplisliment of great changes, is too mechanical
to measure the force of the mind, and the rapidity of
reflection, by which revolutions are generated : All the
old governments have received a shock from those that
already appear, and which were once more improbable,
and are a greater subject of wonder, than a general
revolution in Europe would be now.*
When we survey the wretched condition of man, under
the monarchical and hereditary systems of government,
dragged from his home by one power, or driven by
another, and impoverished by taxes more than by
enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad,
and that a general revolution in the principle and
construction of governments is necessary.
What is government more than the management of
the affairs of a nation? It is not, and from its nature
cannot be, the property of any particular man or family,
but of the whole community, at whose expence it is
supported ; and though by force and contrivance it has
been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot
alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of
right, appertains to the nation only, and not to any
individual; and a nation has at all times an inherent,
indefeasible right to abolish any form of government it
finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with
its interest, disposition, and happiness. The romantic
and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects.
RIGHTS OF MAN
1 14
thougb it may suit the conditions of courtiers^ cannot
that of citizens ; and is exploded by the principle upon
which governments are now founded. Every citizen is
a member of the sovereignty, and, as such, can acknow-
ledge no personal subjection ; and his obedience can be
only to the laws.
When men think of what government is, they must
necessarily suppose it to possess a knowledge of all the
objects and matters upon which its authority is to be
exercised. In this view of government, the republican
system, as established by America and France, operates
to embrace the whole of a nation; and the knowledge
necessary to the interest of all the parts, is to be found in
the centre, which the parts by representation form ; but
the old governments are on a construction that excludes
knowledge as well as happiness ; government by monks,
who knew nothing of the world beyond the walls of a
convent, is as consistent as government by kings.
What were foimerty called revolutions, were little
more than a change of persons, or an alteration of local
circumstances. They rose and feU lilce things of course,
and had nothing in their existence or their fate that could
influence beyond the spot that produced them. But
what we now see in the world, from the revolutions of
America and France, are a renovation of the natural
orders of things, a system of principles as universal as
truth and the existence of man, and combining moral
with political happiness and national prosperity.
‘"I. Men are horn, and always continue, free and equal
in res-peci of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can
he founded only on public utility.
“ II. The end of all political associations is the preserva-
tion of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man ; and
these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of
oppression.
"III. The nation is essentially the source of all
sovereignty; ^ nor can any individual, or any body of
MEN, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly
derived from it.”
In these principles there is nothing to throw a nation
RIGHTS OF MAN
into confusion by inflaming ambition. They are calcu-
lated to call forth wisdom and abilities, and to exercise
them for the public good, and not for the emolument or
aggrandisement of particular descriptions of men or
families. Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of man-
I kind, and the source of misery, is abolished; and the
sovereignty itself is restored to its natural and original
place, the nation. Were this the case throughout
Europe, the cause of wars would be taken away.
It is attributed to Henry the Fourth of France, a man
of enlarged and benevolent heart, that he proposed,
about the year i6io, a plan for abolishing war in Europe ;
the plan consisted in constituting an European Congress,
or as the French authors stile it, a Pacific Republic, by
appointing delegates from the several nations who were
to act as a court of arbitration in any disputes that might
arise between nation and nation.
Had such a plan been adopted at the time it was pro-
posed, the taxes of England and France, as two. of the
parties, would have been at least ten millions sterling
annually to each nation less than they were at the
commencement of the French revolution.
To conceive a cause why such a plan has not been
adopted (and that instead of a congress for the purpose
of preventing war, it has been called only to terminate a
war, after a fruitless expence of several years), it will be
necessary to consider the interest of governments as a
distinct interest to that of nations.
Whatever is the cause of taxes to a nation, becomes
also the means of revenue to government. Eveiy wax
terminates with an addition of taxes, and consequently
with an addition of revenue ; and in any event of wars,
in the manner they are now coromenced and concluded,
the power and interest of governments are increased.
War, therefore, from its productiveness, as it easily
furnishes the pretence of necessity for taxes and appoint-
ments to places and offices, becomes a principal part of
the system of old governments; and to establish any
mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be
to nations, would be to take from such government the
RIGHTS OF MAN
Ii6
most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous matters
upon which war is made shew the disposition and avidity
of governments to uphold the system of war, and betray
the motives upon which they act.
Why are not repubhcs plunged into war, but because
the nature of their government does not admit of an
interest distinct from that of the nation ? Even Holland,
though an ill-constructed republic, and with a commerce
extending over the world, existed nearly a century with-
out war; and the instant the form of government was
changed in France the republican principles of peace and
domestic prosperity and oeconomy arose with the new
government; and the same consequences would follow
the cause in other nations.
As war is the system of government on the old con-
struction, the animosity which nations reciprocally
entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their
governments excite to keep up the spirit of the system.
Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue,
and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of
their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities.
Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium
of a false system of government. Instead, therefore, of
exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclama-
tion should be directed against the principle of such
governments; and instead of seeking to reform the
individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to
reform the system.
Whether the forms and maxims of governments which
are stiU in practice were adapted to the condition of
the world at the period they were established is not in
this case the question. The older they are the less
correspondence can they have with the present state of
things. Time, and change of circumstances and opinions,
have the same progressive effect in rendering modes of
government obsolete as they have upon customs and
manners. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and
the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of nations is
best promoted, require a different system of government,
and a different species of knowledge to direct its opera-
RIGHTS OF MAN
117
tions, to what might have been required in the former
condition of the world.
And it is not (hfficult to perceive, from the enlightened
state of mankind, that hereditar57 governments are
verging to their decline, and that revolutions on the broad
basis of national sovereignty and government b}^
representation, are making their way in Europe, it
would be an act of wisdom to anticipate their approach,
and produce revolutions by reason and accommodation,
rather than commit them to the issue of convulsions.
From what we now see, nothing of reform in the
political world ought to be held improbable. It is an
age of revolutions, in which everything may be looked for.
The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war is
kept up, may provoke a confederation of nations to
abolish it ; and an European Congress to patronize the
progress of free government, and promote the civilization
of nations with each other, is an event nearer in prob-
ability than once were the revolutions and alliance of
France and America.
■RIGHTS OF MAN
PART
THE SECOND
COMBINING
PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE
BY
THOMAS PAINE
SJiCRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO CONGRESS IN THE AMERICAN WAR,
AND AUTHOR OF THE WORK ENTITLED “COMMON SENSE,** AND THE
TO M. DE LA FAYETTE
After an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years in difficult
situations in America, and various consultations in
Europe, I feel a pleasure in presenting to you this small
treatise in gratitude for your services to my beloved
America, and as a testimony of my esteem for the
virtues, public and private, which I know you to possess.
The only point upon which I could ever discover that
we differed was not as to principles of government, but
as to time. For my own part I think it equally as
injurious to good principles to permit them to linger, as
to push them on too fast. That which you suppose
accomplishable in fourteen or fifteen years I may
believe practicable in a much shorter period. Man-
kind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to
understand their true interest, provided it be presented
clearly to their understanding, and that in a manner not
to create suspicion by anything like self-design, nor
offend by assuming too much. Wlrere we would wish
to reform we must not reproach.
"When the American revolution was established I felt
a disposition to sit serenely down and enjoy the calm.
It did not appear to me that any object could afterwards
arise great enough to make me quit tranquillity and
feel as I had felt above. But when principle, and not
place, is the energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is
everywhere the same.
I am now once more in the public world; and as I
have not a right to contemplate on so many years of
remaining life as you have, I have resolved to labour as
fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid and
your company, I wish you to hasten your prmciples and
oyertake m’e.
If you make a campaign the ensuing spring, which it
I2I
132
RIGHTS OF MAN
is most probable there will be no occasion for, I will
come and join you. Should the campaign commence,
I hope it wiU terminate in the extinction of German
despotism, and in establishing the freedom of ail Ger-
many. \^en France shaU be surrounded with revolu-
tions she will be in peace and safety, and her taxes, as
well as those of Germany, wiU consequently become less.
Your sincere,
Affectionate Friend,
THOMAS PAINE.
London, Fel. 9, 1792.
PREFACE
When I began the chapter entitled the Condudan in the
former part of the Rights of Man, published last 3^ear,
it was my intention to have extended it to a greater
length; but in casting the whole matter in my mind
which I wish to add, I found that it must either make
the work too bulky, or contract my plan too much. I
therefore brought it to a close as soon as the subject
would admit, and resented what I had further to say to
another opportunity.
Several other reasons contributed to produce this
determination. I wished to know the manner in which
a work, written in a style of thinking and expression
different from what had been customary in England,
would be received before I proceeded farther. A great
field was opening to the view' of mankind by means of
the French Revolution. Mr. Burke's outrageous opposi-
tion thereto brought the controversy into England. He
attacked principles which he knew (from information) I
would contest with him, because they are principles I
believe to be good, and which I have contributed to
establish, and conceive myself bound to defend. Had
he not urged the controversy, I had most probably been
a silent man.
Another reason for deferring the remainder of the
work was, that kir. Burke promised in his first publication
to renew the subject at anotlier opportunity, and to
make a comparison of what he called the English and
French constitutions. I therefore held m^'self in reserve
for him. He has published two works since, without
doing this : which he certainly would not have omitted,
had the comparison been in his favour.
In his last work, his Appeal from the new to the old
Whigs, he has quoted about ten pages from the Rights
1^3
RIGHTS OF MAN
124
of Man, and having given himself the trouble of doing
this, says he shall " not attempt in the smallest degree
to refute them,"' meaning the principles therein con-
tained. I am enough acquainted with Mr. Burke to
know that he would if he could. But instead of con-
testing them, he immediately after consoles himself with
saying that “ he has done his part." Pie has not done
his part. He has not performed his promise of a com-
parison of constitutions. He started the controversy,
he gave the challenge, and has fled from it ; and he is
now a case in ‘point with his own opinion that " the age
of chivalry is gone ! "
The title as well as the substance of his last work, his
Appeal, is his condemnation. Principles must stand
on their own merits, and if they are good they certainly
win. To put them under the shelter of other men’s
authority, as Mr. Burke has done, serves to bring them
into suspicion. Mr. Burke is not very fond of dividing
his honours, but in this case he is artfully dividing the
disgrace.
But who are those to whom Mr. Burke has made his
appeal ? A set of childish thinkers, and half-way
politicians born in the last century, men who went no
farther with any principle than as it suited their purpose
as a party ; the nation was always left out of the question ;
and this has been the character of every party from that
day to this. The nation sees nothing in ^ such works,
or such politics, worthy its attention. A little matter
will move a party, but it must be something great that
moves a nation.
Though I see nothing in Mr. Burke’s Appeal worth
taking much notice of, there is, however, one expression
upon which I shall offer a few remarks. After quoting
largely from the Rights of Man, and declining to contest
the principles contained in that work, he says : " This
will most probably be done {if such writings shall he
thought to deserve any other refutation than that of criminal
justice) by others, who may think with Mr. Burke and
with the same zeal.”
^ “ Oi ” iu all the current editions. — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
125
In the first place, it has not yet been done by anybody.
Not less, I believe, than eight or ten pamphlets intended
as answers to the former part of the Rights of Man have
been published by different persons, and not one of them
to my knowledge has extended to a second edition, nor
are even the titles of them so much as generally remem-
bered. As I am averse to unnecessarily multiplying
publications, I have answered none of them. And as I
believe that a man may write himself out of reputation
when nobody else can do it, I am careful to avoid that
rock.
But as I would decline unnecessary publications on
the one hand, so would I avoid everything that might
appear like sullen pride on the other. If Mr. Burke, or
any person on his side the question, will produce an
answer to the Rights of Man that shall extend to a half,
or even to a fourth part of the number of copies to which
the Rights of Man extended, I will reply to his work.
But until this be done, I shall so far take the sense of
the public for my guide (and the world knows I am not a
flatterer) that what they do not think worth while to
read, is not worth mine to answer. I suppose the
number of copies to which the first part of the Rights of
Man extended, taking England, Scotland, and Ireland,
is not less than between forty and fifty thousand.
I now come to remark on the remaining part of the
quotation I have made from Mr. Burke.
"If,” says he, " such writing shall be thought to
deserve any other refutation than that of criminal
justice.”
Pardoning the pun, it must be criminal justice indeed f
that should condemn a work as a substitute for not
being able to refute it. The greatest condemnation that I
could be passed upon it would be a refutation. But in
proceeding by the method Mr. Burke alludes to, the
condemnation would, in the final event, pass upon the
criminality of the process and not upon the work, and
in this case, I had rather be the author, than be either
the judge or the jury that should condemn it.
But to come at once to the point. I have differed
126
RIGHTS OF MAN
from some professional gentlemen on the subject of
prosecutions, and I since find they are falling into my
opinion, which I will here state as fully, but as concisely
as I can.
I will first put a case with respect to any law, and
then compare it with a government, or with what in
England is, or has been, called a constitution.
It would be an act of despotism, or what in England
is called arbitrary power, to make a law to prohibit
investigating the principles, good or bad, on which such
a law, or any other, is founded.
If a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice
of it, but it is quite a different thing to expose its errors,
to reason on its defects, and to shew cause why it should
be repealed, or why another ought to be substituted in
its place. I have always held it an opinion (making it
also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law,
making use at the same time of every argument to sliow
its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate
it ; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might
weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation
of those which are good.
The case is the same with respect to principles and
forms of government, or to what are called constitutions
and the parts of which they are composed.
It is for the good of nations and not for the emolu-
ment or aggrandisement of particular individuals, that
government ought to be established, and that mankind
are at the expence of supporting it. The defects of
every government and constitution, both as to principle
and form, must on a parity of reasoning, be as open to
discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which
every man owes to society to point them out. When
those defects, and the means of remedying them, are
generally seen by a nation, Jihat nation will reform its
government or its constitution in the one case, as the
government repealed or reformed the law in the other.
The operation of government is restricted to the making
and the administering of laws; but it is to a nation that
the right of forming or reforming, generating or regenerat-
RIGHTS OF MAJN
ing, constitutions and governments belongs; and
consequently those subjects^ as subjects of investigation,
are always before a country as a matter of right, and
cannot, without invading the general rights of that
country, be made subjects for prosecution. On this
ground I will meet Mr. Burke whenever he please. It
is better that the whole argument should come out than
to seek to stiSe it. It was himself that opened the
controversy, and he ought not to desert it.
I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will
continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened
countries in Europe. If better reasons can be shewn
for them than against them, they will stand; if the
contrary, they will not. Mankind are not now to be
told they shall not think or they shall not read; and
publications that go no further than to investigate prin-
ciples of government, to invite men to reason and to
reflect and to shew the errors and excellencies of different
systems, have a right to appear. If they do not excite
attention, they are not worth the trouble of a prosecu-
tion, and if they do the prosecution will amount to
nothing, since it cannot amount to a prohibition of
reading. Tins would be a sentence on the public
instead of on the author, and would also be the most
effectual mode of making or hastening revolutions.*
On aU cases that apply universally to a nation with
respect to systems of government, a jury of twelve men
is not competent to decide. Wliere there are no wit-
nesses to be examined, no facts to be proved, and where
the whole matter is before the vt''ho]e public, and the
merits or demerits of it resting on their opinion; and
where tliere is nothing to be known in a court, but what
everybody knows out of it, any twelve men are equally
as good a jury as another, and would most probably
reverse another’s verdict; or, from the variety of their
opinions, not be able to form one. It is one case whether
a nation approve a work or a plan: but it is quite
another case whether it will commit to any such jury
the power of determining whether that nation have a
right to or shall reform its government or not. I
2
i‘
I
I
f.
128 RIGHTS OF MAN
mention those cases that Mr. Burke may see I have not
written on government without reflecting on what is
Law, as well as on what are Rights. The only effectual
jury in such cases would be a convention of the whole
nation fairly elected; for in all such cases the whole
nation is the vicinage. If Mr. Burke will propose such
a jury I will waive all privileges of being the citizen of
another country, and, defending its principles, abide the
issue, provided he will do the same; for my opinion is
that his work and his principles would be condemned
instead of mine.
As to the prejudices which men have from education
and habit, in favour of any particular form or system
of government, those prejudices have yet to stand the
test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices
are nothing. No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing
knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the
belief of its being right, and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone. We have but a defective
idea of what prejudice is. It might be said that until
men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and
not opinion : for that only is opinion which is the result
of reason and reflection. I offer this remark that Mr.
Burke may not confide too much in what have been the
customary prejudices of the country.*
I I do not believe that the people of England have ever
been fairly and candidly dealt by. They have been
imposed upon by parties and by men assuming the
character of leaders. It is time that the nation should
rise above those trifles. It is time to dismiss that
inattention which has so long been the encouraging
cause of stretching taxation to excess. It is time to
dismiss all those songs and toasts which are calculated
to enslave, and operate to suffocate reflection. On all
such subjects men have but to think and they will
neither act wrong nor be misled. To say that any
people are not fit for freedom is to make poverty their
choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes
than not. If such a case could be proved it would
equally prove that those who govern are not fit to
RIGHTS OF MAN
129
govern them, for they are a part of the same national
mass.
But admitting governments to be changed all over
Europe; it certainly may be done without convulsion
or revenge. It is not worth maldng changes or revolu-
tions, unless it be for some great national benefit : and
when this shall appear to a nation the danger wiU be as
in America and France, to those who oppose ; and with
this reflection I close my preface.
THOMAS PAINE.
London, Feb. 9, 1792.
INTRODUCTION
What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers may
be applied to reason and liberty. “ Had we,” says he,
“ a place to stand upon, we might raise the world.”
The revolution of America presented in politics what
was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were
ah the governments of the old world, and so effectually
had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established
itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made
in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition
of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe;
reason was considered as rebellion ; and the slavery of
fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it
asks, and aU it wants, is the liberty of appearing. The
sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from dark-
ness; and no sooner did the American governments
display themselves to the world than despotism felt a
shock and man began to contemplate redress.
The independence of America, considered merely as a
separation from England, would have been a matter of
but little importance, had it not been accompanied by a
revolution in the principles and practice of governments.
She made a stand, not for herself only, but for the world,
and looked beyond the advantages herself could receive.
Even the Hessian, though hired to fight against her, may
live to bless his defeat; and England, condemning the
viciousness of its government, rejoice in its miscarriage.
As America was the only spot in the political world
where the principle of universal reformation could begin,
so also was it the best in the natural world. An assem-
blage of circumstances conspired not only to give birth,
but to add gigantic maturity to its principles. The
,^-scene which that country presents to the eye of a spec-
RIGHTS OF aUN
m i
tator has something in it which generates and encourages |
great ideas. Nature appears to him in magnitude.
The mighty objects he beholds act upon his mind I^y !
enlarging it, and he partakes of tlie greatness he con-
templates. Its first settlers were emigrants from
different European nations, and of diversified profes- '
sions of religion, retiring from the governmental perse- j
ciitions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as {
enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily (
accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced [
among them a state of society which countries long j
harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments !
had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man j ,
becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with ; j
the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred ; j I
and the example shows to the artificial world that man j;*
must go back to nature for information. H
From the rapid progress which America makes in j ;
every species of improvement, it is rational to conclude
that, if the governments of Asia, Africa, and Europe had !.
begun on a principle similar to that of America, or had j
not been very early corrupted therefrom, those countries !
must by this time have been in a far superior condition ; ' .
to what they are. Age after age has passed away, for i’-
no other purpose than to behold their wretchedness.
Could we suppose a spectator who knew nothing, of the
world, and who was put into it merely to make his i|;
observations, he would take a great part of the old-
world to be new, just struggling udth the difficulties and
hardships of an infant settlement. He could not ij'
suppose that the hordes of miserable poor with which. I i
old countries abound could be any otlier than those who ; ^
had not yet had time to pro\dde for themselves. Little ; |
would he think they were the consequence of what ijii : |.
such countries is called government. i J.
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we i j
look at those which are in an advanced stage of improve- j f
ment, we still find the greedy hand of government i:
thrusting itself into every comer and crevice of industry, j ;
and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is |i
RIGHTS OF MAN
132
continually exercised to furnish new pretences for |
revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey, f
and permits none to escape without a tribute.
As revolutions have begun (and as the probability is
always greater against a thing beginning than of pro-
ceeding after it has begun), it is natural to expect that
other revolutions will follow. The amazing and still i
increasing expences with which old governments are
conducted, the numerous wars they engage in or pro-
voke, the embarrassments they throw’- in the way of ^
miiversal civilization and commerce, and the oppression ,
and usurpation they practise at home, have w’earied out 1
the patience and exhausted the property of the world. i
In such a situation and with the examples already
existing, revolutions are to be looked for. They are
become subjects of universal conversation, and may be
considered as the Order of the day.’^
If systems of government can be introduced less j
expencive and more productive of general happiness
than those which have existed, all attempts to oppose
their progress will in the end be fruitless. Reason, like :
time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a '
combat with interest. If universal peace, civilization, 1
and commerce are ever to be the happy lot of man, it |
cannot be accomplished but by a revolution in the '
system of governments. AU the monarchical govern-
ments are milital3^ War is their trade, plunder and
revenue their objects. While such governments con-
tinue, peace has not the absolute security of a day.
What is the history of all monarchical governments but
a disgustful picture of human wretchedness, and the
accidental respite of a few years’ repose? Wearied 1
with war, and tired with human butchery, they sat f
down to rest, and called it peace. This certainly is not ;
the condition that heaven intended for man ; and if this j
be monarchy, well might monarch3^ t)e reckoned among '
the sins of the Jews.
The revolutions which formerly took place in the
world had nothing in them that interested the bulk of
mankind. They extended only to a change of persons
RIGHTS OF MAN
133
and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell
among the common transactions of the moment. What
we now behold may not improperly be called a “ counter
revolution." Conquest and twanny, at some earlier
period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now
recovering them. And as the tide of all human affairs
has its ebb and flow in directions contrary to each other,
so also is it in this. Government founded on a moral
theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible
hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west to
east by a stronger impulse than the government of the
sword revolved from east to west. It interests not
particular individuals, but nations in its progress, and
promises a new era to the human race.
The danger to which the success of revolutions is
most exposed is in attempting them before the principles
on which they proceed, and the advantages to result
from them, are sufficiently seen and understood. Almost
everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation,
has been absorbed and confounded under the general
and mysterious word government. Though it avoids '
taking to its account the errors it commits, and the
mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself
whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs
industry of its honours, by pedanticly making itself the
cause of its effects ; and purloins from the general char-
acter of man, the merits that appertain to him as a
social being.
It may therefore be of use in this day of revolutions
to discriminate between those things which are the effect
of government, and those which are not. This mil be
best done by taking a review of society and civilization,
and the consequences resulting therefrom, as things
distinct from what are called governments. By begin-
ning with this investigation, we shall be able to assign
effects to their proper causes and analyze the mass of
common errors.
CHAPTER I
OF SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION
Great part of that order which reigns among mankind
is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the
principles of society and the natural constitution of
man. It existed prior to government, and would exist
if the formality of government was abolished. The
mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man
has upon man, and aU the parts of civilized comniunity
upon each other, create that great chain of connection
wliich holds it together. The landholder, the farmer,
the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and
every occupation, prospers by the aid which each
receives from the other, and from the whole. Common
interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law;
and the laws which common usage ordains, have a
greater influence than the laws of government. In fine,
society performs for itself almost everything which is
ascribed to government.
To understand the nature and quantity of government
proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character.
As nature created him for social life, she fitted him for
the station she intended. In all cases she made his
natural wants greater than his individual powers. No
one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supply-
ing his own wants ; and those wants, acting upon every
individual, impel the -whole of them into society, as
naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.
But she has gone further. She has not only forced
man into society by a diversity of wants which the
reciprocal aid of each other can supply, but she has
implanted in him a system of social affections, which,
though not necessary to his existence, are essential to
134
RIGHTS OF MAN
135
his happiness. There is no period in life when this love
for society ceases to act. It begins and ends with our
being.
If we examine with attention into the composition
and constitution of man, the diversity of talents in
different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants
of each other, his propensity to society, and consequently
to preserve the advantages resulting from it, we shall
easily discover that a great part of what is called govern-
ment is mere imposition.
Government is no farther necessary than to supply
the few cases to which society and civilization are not
conveniently competent ; and instances are not wanting
to show, that everything which government can usefully
add thereto, has been performed by the common consent
of society, without government.
For upwards of two years from tlie commencement of
the American War, and to a longer period in several of
the American States, there were no established forms of
government. The old governments had been abolished,
and the country was too much occupied in defence to
employ its attention in establishing new governments;
yet during this interval order and harmony were pre-
served as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There
is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society,
because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and
resources, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it
is in. The instant formal government is abolished,
society begins to act : a general association takes place,
and common interest produces common security.
So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that
the abolition of any formal government is the dissolution
of society, that it acts by a contrary impulse, and brings
the latter the closer together. All that part of its
organization which it had committed to its governments,
devolves again upon itself, and acts through its medium.
When men, as well from natural instinct as from recipro-
cal benefits, have habituated themselves to social and
civilized life, there is always enough of its principles in
practice to carry 'them through any changes they may
RIGHTS OF MAN
136
find necessary or convenient to make in their govern-
ment. In short, man is so naturally a creature of society
that it is almost impossible to put him out of it.
Formal government makes but a small part of civilized
life ; and when even the best that human wisdom can
devise is established, it is a thing more in name and idea
than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental
principles of society and civilization — to the common
usage universally consented to, and mutually and recipro-
cally maintained — to the unceasing circulation of
interest, which, passing through its million channels,
invigorates the whole mass of civilized man — it is to
these things, infinitely more than to anything which even
the best instituted government can perform, that the
safety and prosperity of the individual and of the whole
depends.
The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has
it for government, because the more does it regulate its
own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary is the
practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that
the expences of them increase in the proportion they
ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that
civiHzed life requires, and those of such common useful-
ness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of
governments or not, the effect will be nearly the same.
If we consider what the principles are that first condense
men into society, and what are the motives that regulate
their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by
the time we arrive at what is called government, that
nearly the whole of the business is performed by the
natural operation of the parts upon each other.
Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a
creature of consistency than he is aware, or than govern-
ments would wish him to believe. All the great laws of
society are laws of nature. Those of trade and commerce,
whether with respect to the intercourse of individuals or
of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interests.
They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest
of the parties so to do, and not on account of any formal
laws their governments may impose or interpose.
RIGHTS OF MAN
137
j But hov/- often is the natural propensity to society
j disturbed or destroyed by the operations of govern-
ment ! When the latter, instead of being ingrafted on
the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppres-
sion it becomes the cause of the mischiefs it ought to
prevent.
If we look back to the riots and tumults which at
1 various times have happened in England, we shall find
i that they did not proceed from the want of a government,
J but that government was itself the generating cause ;
I instead of consolidating society it divided it ; it deprived
it of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents
and disorders which otherwise would not have existed.
In those associations which men promiscuously form for
the purpose of trade, or of any concern in which govern-
ment is totally out of the question, and in which they act
I merely on the principles of society, we see how naturally
the various parties unite ; andthis'shows, by comparison,
that governments, so far from being always the cause or
means of order, are often the destruction of it. The riots
of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those
i prejudices which the government itself had encouraged.
But with respect to England there are also other
causes.
Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised
in the means, never fail to appear in their effects. As a
great mass of the community are throv/n thereby into
poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink
t of commotion ; and deprived, as they unfortunately are,
I of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage,
I Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the
i real one is always want of happiness. It shows that
I something is wrong in the sjrstem of government that
; injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.
But as fact is superior to reasoning, the instance of
America presents itself to confirm these obseivations. If
there is a country in the world where concord, according
to common calculation, would be least expected, it is
America. Made up as it is of people from different
RIGHTS OF MAN
138
nations/ accustomed to different forms and habits of
government, speaking different languages, and more
different in their modes of worship, it would appear that
the union of such a people was impracticable ; but by the
simple operation of constructing government on the
principles of society and the rights of man, every
difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial
unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are
not privileged. Industiy is not mortified by the splendid
extravagance of a court rioting at its expence. Their
taxes are few, because their government is just : and as
there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing
to engender riots and tumults.
A metaphysical man, like Mr. Burke, would have
tortured his invention to discover how such a people |
could be governed. He would have supposed that some ’
must be managed by fraud, others by force, and all by ,
some contrivance ; that genius must be hired to impose
upon ignorance, and show and parade to fascinate the ■
vulgar. Lost in the abundance of his researches, he
would have resolved and re-resolved, and finally over- j
looked the plain and easy road that lay directly before !
him.
One of the great advantages of the American revolu-
tion has been, that it led to a discovery of the principles,
and laid open the imposition of governments. All the
revolutions till then had been worked within the atmo- •
sphere of a court, and never on the great floor of a nation. ;
^ That part of America which is generally called New-England, 1
including New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island, and
Connecticut, is peopled chiefly by English descendants. In the
state of New York, about half are Dutch, the rest English, Scotch,
and Irish. In New Jersey, a mixture of English and Dutch, with
some Scotch and Irish. In Pennsylvania, about one-third are
English, another Germans, and the remainder Scotch and Irish,
with some Swedes. The States to the southward have a greater !
proportion of English than the middle States, but in all of them
there is a mixture; and besides those enumerated, there are a .
considerable number of French, and some few of all the European ■
nations lying on the coast. The most numerous religious denom- <*
ination are the Presbyterians ; but no one sect is established above :
another, and all men are equally citizens.* — Author. ^
RIGHTS OF MAN
139
The parties were alwa5’'s of the class of courtiers ; and
whatever was their rage for reformation, they carefully
preserved the fraud of the profession.
In all cases they took care to represent government as a
thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves under-
stood; and they hid from the understanding of the
nation the only thing that was beneficial to know,
namely, that government is nothing more than a national
association acting on the principles of society.
Having thus endeavoured to show that the social and
civilized state of man is capable of performing within
itself almost ever3rthing necessary to its protection and
government, it will he proper, on the other hand, to take
a review of the present old governments, and examine
whether their principles and practice are coirespondent
thereto.
CHAPTER II
OF THE ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT OLD GOVERNMENTS
It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto
existed in the world, would have commenced by any
other means than a total violation of every principle,
sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin of
all the present old governments is buried, implies the
iniquity and disgrace with which they began. The
origin of the present government of America and France
will ever be remembered, because it is honourable to
record it ; but with respect to the rest, even flattery has
consigned them to the tomb of time, without an
inscription.
It could have been no difficult thing in the early and
solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of
men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti
of ruffians to overrun a country and lay it under con-
tributions, Their power being thus established the chief
of the band contrived to lose the name of Robber in
that of Monarch ; and hence the origin of Monarchy and
Kings.
The origin of the government of England, so far as
relates to what is called its line of monarchy, being one
of the latest, is perhaps the best recorded. The hatred
which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat, must
have been deeply rooted in the nation, to have outlived
the contrivance to obliterate it. Though not a courtier
will talk of the curfeu-bell, not a village in England has
forgotten it.
These bands of robbers having parcelled out the
world, and divided it into dominions, began, as is
naturally the case, to quarrel with each other. What
at first was obtained by violence was considered by others
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RIGHTS OF MAN
141
as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded
the first. They alternately invaded the dominions which
each had assigned to himself, and the brutality with
which they treated each other explains the original
character of monarchy. It was ruffian torturing, ruffian.
The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his
prisoner, but his property. He led him in triumph
rattling in chains, and doomed him, at pleasure, to
slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of
their beginning, their successors assumed new appear-
ances, to cut off the entail of their disgrace, but their
principles and objects remained the same. What at first
was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue ; and
the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.
From such beginning of governments, what could be
expected but a continued system of war and extortion ?
It has established itself into a trade. The vice is not
peculiar to one more than to another, but is the common
principles of all. There does not exist within such
governments sufficient ^ stamina whereon to engraft
refoimation ; and the shortest and most effectual remedy
is to begin anew.
What scenes of horror, what perfection of iniquity,
present themselves in contemplating the character and
reviewing the history of such governments ! If we would
delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and
hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder
at and humanity disown, they are kings, courts, and
cabinets that must sit for the portrait. Man, naturallj?-
as he is, with all his faults about him, is not up to the
character.
Can we possibly suppose that if governments had
originated in a right principle, and had not an interest
in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in
the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen
it? What inducement has the farmer, while following
the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuits, and go
to war with the farmer of another country? or what
^ “ A stamina "intheearliesteditions, but altered to" sufficient
stamina ” in the seventh. — ^H. B. B.
F
RIGHTS OF MAN
142
inducement has the manufacturer ? What is dominion
to them, or to any class of men in a nation ? Does it
add an acre to any man's estate, or raise its value?
Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and
taxes the never-fading consequence ? Though this
reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a
government. War is the Pharo table of governments,
and nations the dupes of the game.
If there is anything to wonder at in this miserable
scene of governments more than might be expected,
it is the progress which the peaceful arts of agriculture,
manufacture and commerce have made beneath such
a long accumulating load of discouragement and
oppression. It serves to show that instinct in animals
does not act with stronger impulse than the principles of
society and civilization operate in man. Under all dis-
couragements he pursues his object, and yields to nothing
but impossibilities.
CHAPTER III
OF THE OLD AND NEW SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT
Nothing can appear more contradictory than the
principles on which the old governments began, and the
condition to which societ5^, civilization, and commerce are
capable of carrying mankind. Government, on the old
system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandizement
of itself; on the new a delegation of power for the
common benefit of society. The former supports itself
by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes a
system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation.
The one encourages national prejudices; the other
promotes universal society, as the means of universal
commerce. The one measures its prosperity by the
quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its
excellence by the small quantity of taxes it requires.
Mr. Burke has tallced of old and new whigs. If he can
amuse himself with childish names and (Estinctions, I
shall not interrupt his pleasure. It is not to him, but to
the Abbd Sieyes, that I address this chapter. I am
already engaged to the latter gentleman to discuss the
subject of monarchical government; and as it naturally
occurs in comparing the old and new systems, I make this
the opportunity of presenting to him my obseiwations.
I shaU occasionally take Mr. Burke in my way.
Though it might be proved that the system of govern-
ment now called the new is the most ancient in principle
of all that have existed, being founded on the original
inherent Rights of Man ; yet, as tyranny and the sword
have suspended the exercise of those rights for many
centuries past, it serves better the purpose of distinction
to call it the new than to claim the right of calling it the
old.
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RIGHTS OF MAN
144
The first general distinction between those two systems
is that the one now called the old is hereditary, either in
whole or in part ; and the new is entirely representative.
It rejects all hereditaty government :
First, As being an imposition on mankind.
Secondly, As inadequate to the purposes for which
government is necessary.
With respect to the first of these heads — It cannot be
proved by what right hereditary government could
begin; neither does there exist within the compass of
mortal power a right to establish it. Man has no
authority over posterity in matters of personal right;
and, therefore, no man or body of men had, or can have, a
right to set up hereditary government. Were even our-
selves to come again into existence, instead of being
succeeded by posterity, we have not now the right of
taking from ourselves the rights which would then be
ours. On what ground, then, do we pretend to take
them from others ?
j All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.
An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what
other fanciful name such things may be called, have no
other significant explanation than that mankind are
heritable property. To inherit a government, is to
inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds. ^
With respect to the second head, that of being inade-
quate to the purposes for which government is necessary,
we have only to consider what government essentially is,
and compare it with the circumstances to which hereditary
succession is subject.
Government ought to be a thing always in full maturity.
It ought to be so constructed as to be superior to all the
accidents to which individual man ia subject; and,
therefore, hereditary succession, by being siibject to
them all, is the most irregular and imperfect of all the
systems of government.
^ This was the first of the eight paragraphs upon which the
Attorney-General relied in the proceedings against Thomas
Paine ; and it was, therefore, omitted from the cheap Symonds’g
edition published in the same year. — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
145
We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling
system ; but the only system to which the word levelling
is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical system.
It is a system of mental levelling. It indiscriminately
admits every species of character to the same authority.
Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every
I quality, good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings
j succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals.
1 It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are.
’ Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the
human mind in monarchical countries, when the govern-
ment itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?
It has no fixed character. To-day it is one thing;
to-morrow it is something else. It changes with the
temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to
; ail the varieties of each. It is government through the
I medium of passions and accidents. It appears under
all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude,
dotage; a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in
I crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature,
i It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits
! of nonage over wisdom and experience. In short,
we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of govern-
ment, than hereditary succession, in all its cases,
presents.
Could it be made a decree in nature, or an edict
registered in heaven and man could know it, that
virtue and wisdom should invariably appertain to
hereditary succession, the objections to it would be
removed; but when we see that nature acts as if she
disowned and sported with the hereditary system ; that
the mental characters of successors, in all countries, are
below the average of human understanding; that one
is a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all
■ three together, it is impossible to attach confidence to it,
when reason in man has po'wer to act.
I It is not to the Abbe Sieyes that I need apply this reason-
( ing ; he has already saved me that trouble by giving his
i own opinion upon the case. “ If it be asked,” says he,
" what is my opinion mth respect to hereditary right, I
RIGHTS OF MAN
146
answer, without hesitation, that, in good theory, an
hereditary transmission of any power or oiEhce, can never j
accord with the laws of a true representation. Heredi-- [
taryship is, in this sense, as much an attaint upon
principle, as an outrage upon society. But let us," I
continues he, “ refer to the history of all_ elective ^
monarchies and principalities : is there one in which ,
the elective mode is not worse than the hereditary , ■
succession?"
As to debating on which is the worse of the two, it is i
admitting both to be bad : and herein we are agreed. '
The preference w'hich the Abb6 has given is a condemna-
tion of the thmg that he prefers. Such a mode of
reasoning on such a subject is inadmissible, because it
finally amounts to an accusation upon Providence, as
if she had left to man no other choice with respect to j
government than between two evils, the best of which he [
admits to be " an attaint upon principle, and an outrage '
upon society." '
Passing over for the present all the evils and mischiefs ;
which monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing .
can more effectually prove its uselessness in a state of ,
civil government, than making it hereditar}/. Would ,
we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and
abilities to fdl it ? and where wisdom and abilities are not
necessary, such an office, wdiatever it may be, is super-
fluous or insignificant.*
Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy.
It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it
I as an office which any cliM or idiot may fill. It requires
some talents to be a common mechanic ; but to be a king
requires only the animal figure of man — a sort of
breathing automaton. This superstition may last a
few years more, but it cannot long resist the aw’-akened
reason and interest of men.
As to Mr. Burke, he is a sticlder for monarchy, , not f
altogether as a pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, i
but as a political man. He has taken up a contemptible I
opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the !
same of him. He considers them as a herd of beings
RIGHTS OF MAN
147
that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show ; and
an idol would be as good a figure of monarchy with him
as a man. I will, however, do him the justice to say
that, with respect to America, he has been very com-
plimentary. He always contended, at least in my
hearing, that the people of America were more en-
lightened than those of England, or of any country in
Europe ; and that therefore the imposition of shew was
not necessary in their governments.
Though the comparison between hereditary!- and
elective monarchy, vffiich the Abbe has made, is un-
necessary to the case, because the representative system
rejects both; yet, were I to make the comparison, I
should decide contrary to what he has done.
The civil v/ars which have originated from contested
hereditary claims are more numerous, and have been
more dreadful, and of longer continuance, than those
which have been occasioned by election. All the civil
wars in France arose from the hereditary system ; they
were either produced by hereditary claims, or by the
imperfection of the hereditary form, which admits of
regencies, ormonarchy atnurse. With respect to England,
its history is full of the same misfortunes. The contests
for succession between the houses of York and Lancaster,
lasted a whole century; and others of a similar nature
have renewed themselves since that period. Those_ of
1715 and 1745 were of the same kind. The .succession
war for the crowm of Spain embroiled ahnost half Europe.
The disturbances in Holland are generated from the
hereditaryship of the Stadtholder. A government
calling itself free, -with aji hereditary office, is like a thorn
in the flesh, that produces a fermentation which
endeavours- to discharge it.
But I might go further, and place also foreign wars, of
whatever kind, to the same cause. It is by adding the
evil of hereditaiy succession to that of monarchy, that a
permanent family interest is created, v/hose constant
objects are dominion and revenue. Poland, though an
elective monarchy, has had fewer wars than those which
are hereditary ; and it is the only government that has
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148
made a voluntary essay, though but a small one, to
reform the condition of the country. I
Having thus glanced at a few of the defects of the old, |
or hereditary systems of government, let us compare it f
with the new, or representative system. ^ 1
The representative system takes society and civiliza- ^
tion for its basis ; nature, reason, and experience for its i
guide. _ I
Experience, in all ages and in all countries, has ;
demonstrated that it is impossible to controul nature in '
her distribution of mental powers. She gives them as [
she pleases. Whatever is the rule by which she,
apparently to us, scatters them among mankind, that
rule remains a secret to man. It would be as ridiculous
to attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty
as of wisdom. Whatever wisdom constituently is, it !
is like a seedless plant ; it may be reared when it appears,
but it cannot be voluntarily produced. There is always '
a sufficiency somewhere in the general mass of society '
for all purposes ; but with respect to the parts of society, '
it is continually changing its place. It rises in one
to-day, in another to-morrow, and has most probably
visited in rotation every family of the earth, and again
withdrawn. |
As this is in the order of nature, the order of govern- 1
ment must necessarily follow it, or government will, as
we see it does, degenerate into ignorance. The heredi- }
tary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human |
wisdom as to human rights ; and is as absurd as it is
unjust.
As the republic of letters brings forward the best
literary productions, bj^ giving to genius a fair and
I universal chance; so the representative system of
I government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by
' collecting wisdom from where it can be found. I smile ;
to myself when I contemplate the ridiculous insignificance I
into which literature and all the sciences W’-ould sink,
were they made hereditary ; and I carry the same idea
into governments. An hereditary governor is as incon- ,
sistent as an hereditary author. I knov/ not whether
RIGHTS OF MAN 149
Homer or Euclid had sons ; but I will venture an opinion
that if they had, and had left their works unfinished,
those sons could not have completed them.
Do we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of
hereditary government than is seen in the descendants
of those men, in any line of life, who once were famous ?
Is there scarcely an instance in which there is not a
total reverse of the character ? It appears as if the tide
of mental faculties flowed as far as it could in certain
channels, and then forsook its course and arose in others.
How irrational then is the hereditary system, which
establishes channels of power, in company with which
wisdom refuses to flow 1 By continuing this absurdity,
man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he
accepts, for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator,
a person whom he would not elect for a constable.
It appears to general observation that revolutions
create genius and talents ; but those events do no more
than bring them forward. There is existing in man a
mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless
something excites to action, will descend to him, in that
condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of
society that the whole of its faculties should be employed,
the construction of government ought to be such as to
bring forward by a quiet and regular operation, all that
extent of capacity which never fails to appear in
revolutions.
This cannot take place in the insipid state of hereditary
government, not only because it prevents, but because
it operates to benumb. When the mind of a nation is
bowed dovm by any political superstition in its govern-
ment, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a consider-
able portion of its powers on all other subjects and
objects. Hereditary succession requires the same
obedience to ignorance as to 'wisdom; and when once
the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate
reverence, it descends below the stature of mental man-
hood. It is fit to be great only in little things. It acts
a treachery upon itself, and suffocates the sensations that
urge to detection.
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150
Though the ancient governments present to us a
miserable picture of the condition of man, there is one
which above all others exempts itself from the general
description. I mean the democracy of Athenians. We I
see more to admire, and less to condemn, in that great, I
extraordinary people than in anything which history '
affords.*
Mr. Burke is so little acquainted with constituent |
principles of government, that he confounds democracy 1
and representation together. Representation was a f
thing unknown in the ancient democracies. In those i
the mass of the people met and enacted laws (grammatic-
ally speaking) in the first person. Simple democracy
was no other than the common haU of the ancients. It
signifies the form as well as the public principle of the
government. As those democracies increased in popula- I
tion, and the territory extended, the simple democratical |
form became unwieldy and impracticable; and as the I
system of representation was not known, the con- !
sequence was, they either degenerated convulsively into
monarchies or became absorbed into such as then
existed. Had the system of representation been then
understood, as it now is, there is no reason to believe *
that those forms of government now called monarchical
or aristocratical would ever have taken place. It was
the want of some method to consolidate the parts of I
society after it became too populous and too extensive
for the simple democratical form, and also the lax and
solitary condition of shepherds and herdsmen in other
parts of the world, that afforded opportunities to those
unnatural modes of government to begin. \
As it is necessary to clear away the rubbish of errors
into which the subject of government has been thrown,
I shall proceed to remark on some others.* ;
It has always been the political craft of courtiers and I
couit-goveraments to abuse something which they called f
republicanism; but what republicanism was or is they
never attempt to explain. Let us examine a little into
this case.
The only forms of government are the democratical, I
RIGHTS OF MAN
151
the aristocratical, the monarchical, and what is now
called the representative.
"VVhat is called a yepublic is not any particular form of
government. It is wholly characteristical of the purport,
matter, or object for wliich government ought to be
instituted, and on which it is to be employed ; res-
PUBLiCA, the public affairs, or the pubUc good; or,
literally translated, the public thing. It is a word of a
good original, referring to what ought to be the character
and business of government; and in this sense it is
naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which has a
base original signiiication. It means arbitrary power in
an individual person ; in the exercise of which, himself,
and not the res-puhlica, is the object.
Every government that does not act on the principle
of a republic, or, in other words, that does not make
the res-puhlica its whole and sole object, is not a
good government. Republican government is no other
than government established and conducted for the
interest of the public, as well individually as collectively.
It is not necessai'ily connected with any particular
form, but it most naturally associates with the
representative form, as being best calculated to secure the
end for which a nation is at the expence of supporting
it.
Various forms of government have affected to stile
themselves a republic. Poland calls itself a republic
which is an hereditary aristocracy, with what is called
an elective monarchy. Holland calls itself a republic
which is chiefly aristocratical, with an hereditmy
stadtholdership.* But the government of America,
which is wholly on the system of representation, is the
only real republic, in character and in practice, that now
exists. Its government has no other object than the
public business of the nation, and therefore it is properly
a republic; and the Americans have taken care that
THIS, and no other, shall always be the object of their
government, by their rejecting everything hereditary,
and establishing government on the system of repre-
sentation only.
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152
Those who have said that a republic is not a form of
government calculated for countries of great extent,
mistook, in the first place, the business of a government
for a form of government; for the res-j)uhlica equally
appertains to every extent of territory and population.
And, in the second place, if they meant anything with
respect to form, it was the simple democratical form,
such as was the mode of government in the ancient
democracies, in which there was no representation.
The case, therefore, is not that a republic cannot be
extensive, but that it cannot be extensive on the simple
democratical form ; and the question naturally presents
itself, JV/iai is the best form of government for conducting
the RES-PUBLICA, or the public business of a nation,
after it becomes too extensive and populous for the simple
democratical form ?
It cannot be monarchy, because monarchy is subject
to an objection of the same amount to which the simple
democratical form was subject.
It is possible that an individual may lay down a system
of principles, on which government shall be constitu-
tionally established to any extent of territory. This is
no more than an operation of the mind, acting by its own
powers. But the practice upon those principles, as
applying to the various and numerous circumstances of a
nation, its agriculture, manufacture, trade, commerce,
etc., etc., requires a knowledge of a different kind, and
which can be had only from the various parts of society.
It is an assemblage of practical knowledge, which no
individual can possess; and therefore the monarchical
form is as much limited, in useful practice, from the
incompetency of knowledge, as was the democratical
form from the multiplicity of population. The one
degenerates, by extension, into confusion; the other
into ignorance and incapacity, of which all the great
monarchies are an evidence. The monarchical form,
therefore, could not be a substitute for the democratical,
because it has equal inconveniences.
Much less could it when made hereditary. This is
the most effectual of all forms to preclude knowledge.
RIGHTS OF MAN
153
Neither could the high democratical mind have volun-
tarily yielded itself to be governed by children and idiots,
and all the motley insignificance of character which
attends such a mere animal system, the disgrace and tie
reproach of reason and of man.
As to the aristocratical form, it has the same vices
and defects with the monarchical, except that the chance
of abilities is better from the proportion of numbers,
but there is still no security for the right use and
application of them.i*
Referring them to the original simple democracy, it
affords the true data from which government on a large
scale can begin. It is incapable of extension, not from
its principle, but from the inconvenience of its form;
and monarchy and aristocracy, from their incapacity.
Retaining, then, democracy as the ground, and rejecting
the corrupt systems of monarchy and aristocracy, the
representative system naturally presents itself ; remedy-
ing at once the defects of the simple democracy as to
form, and the incapacity of the other two with respect
to knowledge.
Simple democracy was society governing itself with-
out the aid of secondary means. By ingrafting repre-
sentation upon democracy, we arrive at a system of
government capable of embracing and confederating all
the various interests and every extent of territory and
population; and that also with advantages as much
superior to hereditary government, as the republic of
letters is to hereditary literature.
It is on this system that the American government is
founded. It is representation ingrafted upon democracy.
It has fixed the form by a scale parallel in all cases to
the extent of the principle. What Athens was in minia-
ture, America will be in magnitude. The one was the
wonder of the ancient world ; the other is becoming the
admiration and model ^ of the present. It is the easiest
1 For a character of aristocracy the reader is referred to the
Rights of Man. Part I, p. 62. — Author.*
* The words " and model " are absent from the modern
editions.— -H. B. B.
EIGHTS OF MAN
154
of all the forms of government to be understood and the
most eligible in practice, and excludes at once the
ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode, and
the inconvenience of the simple democracy.
It is impossible to conceive a system of government
capable- of acting over such an extent of territory, and
such a circle of interests, as is immediately produced by
the operation of representation. France, great and
populous as it is, is but a spot in the capaciousness of
the system. It is preferable to simple democracy even
in small territories. Athens, by representation, -would
have outrivalled her own democracy.
That which is called government, or rather that which
we ought to conceive government to be, is no more than
some common centre, in which all the parts of society
unite. This cannot be accomplished by any method
so conducive to the various interests of the community
as by the representative system. It concentrates the
knowledge necessary to the interest of the parts, and of
the whole. It places government in a state of constant
maturity. It is, as has already been observed, never
young, never old. It is subject neither to nonage nor
dotage. It is never in the cradle nor on crutches. It
admits not of a separation between knowledge and
power, and is superior, as government always ought to
be, to all the accidents of individual man, and is there-
fore superior to what is called monarchy.
A nation is not a body, the figure of which is to be
represented by the human body, but is hke a body con-
tained within a circle, ha\dng a common centre in which
every radius meets ; and that centre is formed by repre-
sentation. To connect representation with what is
called monarchy is eccentric government. Representa-
tion is of itself the delegated monarchy of a nation, and
cannot debase itself by di-viding it with another.*
Mr. Burke has two or three times, in his parliamentary
speeches, and in his publication, made use of a jingle
of words that convey no ideas. Speaking of govern-
ment, he says : “ It is better to have monarchy for its
basis, and republicanism for its corrective, than re-
RIGHTS OF MAN
155
publicanism for its basis, and monarchy for its correc-
tive.” If he means that it is better to coirect foUy
with wisdom than wisdom with folly, I will no otherwise
contend with him, than that it would be much better to
reject the folly entirely.
But what is this thing which Mr. Burke calls monarchy ?
Will he explain it ? All men can understand what repre-
sentation is; and that it must necessarily include a
variety of knowledge and talents. But what security
is there for the same qualities on the part of monarchy ?
or, when this monarchy is a child, where then is the
wisdom ? What does it know about government ?
Who then is the monarch, or where is the monarchy?
If it is to be performed by regency, it proves to be a
farce. A regency is a mock species of republic, and the
whole of monarchy deserves no better description. It
is a thing as various as imagination can paint. It has
none of the stable character that government ought to
possess. Every succession is a revolution, and every
regency a counter-revolution. The whole of it is a scene
of perpetual court cabal and intrigue, of which Mr.
Burke is himself an instance. To render monarchy
consistent with government, the next in succession
should not be bom a child, but a man at once, and that
man a Solomon. It is ridiculous that nations are to
wait and government be interrupted till boys grow to
be men.
Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to
be imposed upon ; whether I have too much or too little
pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the question;
but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always
appears to me a silly contemptible thing. I compare
it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there
is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air
of seeming solemnity; but when, by an accident, the
curtain happens to be opened, and the company see what
it is, they burst into laughter.
In the representative system of government, nothing
of this can happen. Like the nation itself, it possesses
a perpetual stamina, as weU of body as of mind, and
RIGHTS OF MAN
156
presents itself on the open theatre of the world in a fair
and manly manner. Whatever are its excellencies or
defects, they are visible to all. It exists not by fraud
and mystery ; it deals not in cant and sophistiy ; but
inspires a language that, passing from heart to heart, is
felt and understood.
We must shut our eyes against reason, we must basely
degrade our understanding, not to see the folly of what
is called monarchy. Nature is orderly in all her works ;
but this is a mode of government that counteracts nature.
It turns the progress of the human faculties upside down.
It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom
by folly.
On the contrary, the representative system is always
parallel with the order and immutable laws of nature,
and meets the reason of man in every part. For
example : —
In the American federal government, more power is
delegated to the President of the United States than
to any other individual member of congress. He
cannot, therefore, be elected to this office under the age
of thirty-five years. By this time the judgment of man
becomes matured, and he has lived long enough to be
acquainted with men and things, and the country with
him. But on the monarchical plan (exclusive of the
numerous chances there are against evei'y man born into
the world, of drawing a prize in the lottery of human
faculties), the next in succession, whatever he may be,
is put at the head of a nation, and of a government, at
the age of eighteen years. Does this appear like an act
of wisdom? Is it consistent with the proper dignity
and the manly character of a nation? Where is the
propriety of calling such a lad the father of the people ?
In all other cases, a person is a minor until the age of
twenty-one years. Before this period, he is not entrusted
with the management of an acre of land, or with the
heritable property of a flock of sheep or an herd of
swine ; but wonderful to teU ! he may at the age of
eighteen years be trusted with a nation.
That monarchy is all a bubble, a mere court artifice
mGHTS OF MAN
157
to procure money, is evident (at least to me) in every
character in which it can be viewed. It would be
impossible, on the rational system of representative
government, to make out a bill of expences to such an
enormous amount as this deception admits. Govern-
ment is not of itself a very chargeable institution.
The whole expence of the federal government of America,
founded, as I have already said, on the system of repre-
sentation, and extending over a country nearly ten times
as large as England, is but six hundred thousand dollars,
or one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds sterling.
I presume that no man in his sober sense will compare
the character of the kings of Europe with that of General
Washington. Yet in France, and also in England, the
expence of the civil list only, for the support of one man,
is eight times greater than the whole expence of the
federal government in America. To assign a reason for
this appears almost impossible. The generality of the-
people of America, especially the poor, are more able tO'
pay taxes than the generality of people either in France
or England.
But the case is, that the representative system diffuses
such a body of knowledge throughout a nation, on the
subject of government, as to explode ignorance and
preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be
acted on that ground. There is no place for mystery ;
nowhere for it to begin. Those who are not in the repre-
sentation know as much of the nature of business as
those who are. An affectation of mysterious importance
would there be scouted. Nations can have no secrets;
and the secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are
always their defects.
In the representative system, the reason for every-
thing must publicly appear. Every man is a proprietor
in government, and considers it a necessary part of his
business to understand. It concerns his interest, because
it affects his property. He examines the cost, and
compares it with the advantages; and above all, he
does not adopt the slavish custom of following w'hat in
other governments are called leaders.
RIGHTS OF MAN
158
It can only be by blinding the understanding of man,
and making him believe that government is some wonder-
ful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained.
Monarchy is well-calculated to ensure this end. It is
the popery of government, a thing kept up to amuse the
ignorant and quiet them into taxes.
( The government of a free country, properly speaking,
is not in the persons, but in the laws. The enacting
of those requires no great expence ; and w^hen they are
I administered the whole of cridl government is performed
j — ^the rest is all court contrivance.
CHAPTER IV
OF CONSTITUTIONS
That men mean distinct and separate things when they
speak of constitutions and of governments, is evident;
or why are those terms distinctly and separately used?
A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a
people constituting a government; and government
without a constitution is power without a right.
An pov/er exercised over a nation must have some
beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed.
There are no other sources. All delegated power is
tnist, and all assumed power is usuipation. Time does
not alter the nature and quality of either.
In viewing this subject, the case and circumstances
of America present themselves as in the beginning of a
world; and our enquiry into the origin of government
is shortened by referring to the facts that have arisen
in our own day. We have no occasion to roam for
information into the obscure field of antiquity, nor
hazard ourselves upon conjecture. We are brought at
once to the point of seeing government begin, as if we
had lived in the beginning of time. The real volume, not
of history, but of facts, is directly before us, unmutilated
by contrivance or the errors of tradition.
I will here concisely state the commencement of
the American constitutions : by which the difference
between constitutions and governments will sufficiently
appear.
It may not be improper to remind the reader that the
United States of America consist of thirteen separate
states, each of which established a government for itself,
after the declaration of independence, done the 4th of
July, 1776. Each state acted independently of the rest,
159
in forming its government; but the same general
principle pervades the whole. When the sever^ state
governments were formed, they proceeded to form the
federal government that acts over the whole in all
matters which concern the interest of the whole, or
which relate to the intercourse of the several states
with each other, or with foreign nations. I will begin
with giving an instance from one of the state govern-
ments (that of Pennsylvania), and then proceed to the
federal government.*
The state of Pennsylvania, though nearly the same
extent of territory as England, was then divided into
only twelve counties. Each of these counties had elected
a committee at the commencement of the dispute with
the English Government ; and as the city of Philadelphia,
which also had its committee, was the most central
for intelligence, it became the centre of communication
to the several county committees. When it became
necessary to proceed to the formation of a government,
the committee of Philadelphia proposed a conference of
all the committees, to be held in that city, and which
met the latter end of July, 1776.
Though these committees had been elected by the
people, they were not elected expressly for the purpose,
nor invested with the authority, of forming a constitu-
tion; and as they could not, consistently with the
American ideas of right, assume such a power, they
could only confer upon the matter, and put it into "a
train of operation. The conferees, therefore, did no
more than state the case, and recommend to the several
counties to elect six representatives for each county, to
meet in convention at Philadelphia, with powers to form
a constitution, and propose it for public consideration.
This convention, of which Benjamin Franklin was
president, having met and deliberated, and agreed upon
a constitution, they next ordered it to be published,
not as a thing established, but for the consideration
of the whole people, their approbation or rejection,
and then adjourned to a stated time. When the
time of adjournment was expired, the convention
RIGHTS OF MAN
i6i
re-assembled, and as the general opinion of the people
in approbation of it was then known, the constitu-
tion was signed, sealed, and proclaimed, on the authority
of the people, and the original instrument deposited as a
public record. The convention then appointed a day
for the general election of the representatives who were
to compose the government, and the time it should
commence; and having done this they dissolved, and
returned to their severed homes and occupations.
In this constitution were laid down, first, a declaration
of rights; then followed the form which the govern-
ment should have, and the powers which it should pos-
sess — the authority of the courts of judicature and of
juries — the manner in which elections should be con-
ducted, and the proportion of representatives to the
number of electors — ^the time which each succeeding
assembly should continue, which was one year — the
mode of levying, and the accounting for the expenditure,
of public money — of appointing public officers, etc., etc.
No article of this constitution could be altered or
infringed at the discretion of the government that was
to ensue. It was to the government a law. But as it
would have been unwise to preclude the benefit of
experience, and in order also to prevent the accumula-
tion of errors, if any should be found, and to preserve a
unison of government with the circumstances of the
state to all times, the constitution provided that at the
expiration of every seven years, a convention should be
elected for the express purpose of revising the constitu-
tion and making alterations, additions, or abolitions
therein, if any such should be found necessary.
Here we see a regular process — a government issuing
out of a constitution, formed by the people in their
original character; and that constitution serving not
only as an authority, but as a law of controul to the
government. It was the political bible of the state.
Scarcely a family was without it. Every member of the
government had a copy ; and nothing was more common
when any debate arose on the principle of a bill, or on
the extent of any species of authority, than for the
RIGHTS OF MAN
163
members to take the printed constitution out of their
pocket and read the chapter with which such matter in
debate was connected.
Having thus given an instance from one of the states,
I will show the proceedings by which the federal con-
stitution of the United States arose and was formed.
Congress, at its first two meetings, in September, 1774,
and May, 1775, was nothing more than a deputation
from the legislatures of the several provinces, afterwards
states; and had no other authority than what arose
from common consent, and the necessity of its acting as
a public body. In eveiything which related to the
internal affairs of America, congress went no further
than to issue recommendations to the several provincial
assemblies, who at discretion adopted them or not.
Nothing on the part of congress was compulsive; yet
in this situation, it was more faithfully and affectionately
obeyed than was any government in Europe. This
instance, like that of the national assembly of France,
sufficiently shews, that the strength of government
does not consist of anything within itself, but in the
attachment of a nation, and the interest which the
people feel in supporting it. When this is lost govern-
ment is but a child in power, and though like the old
government of France it may harass individuals for a
while, it but facilitates its own fail.*
After the declaration of independence it became con-
sistent with the principle on which representative
government is founded, that the authority of congress
should be defined and established. Wdiether that
authority should be more or less than congress then
discretionarily exercised, was not the question. It was
merely the rectitude of the measure.
^ For this purpose, the act called the act of confedera-
tion (which was a sort of impeifect federal constitution)
was proposed, and after long deliberation was concluded
in the year 1781. It was not the act of congress, because
it is repugnant to the principles of representative
government that a body should give power to itself.
Congress first informed the several states of the powers
RIGHTS OF MAN
163
which it conceived were necessary to be invested in the
union, to enable it to perform the duties and services
required from it; and the states severally agreed with
each other, and concentrated in congress those powers.
It may not be improper to observe that in both those
instances (the one of Pennsylvania, and the other of the
United States) there is no such thing as an idea of a
compact between the people on one side and the govern-
ment on the other. The compact was that of the people
with each other to produce and constitute a government.
To suppose that any government can he a party in a
compact with the whole people is to suppose it to have
existence before it can have a right to exist. The only
instance in which a compact can take place between
the people and those who exercise the government is
that the people shall pay them while they choose to
employ them.
Government is not a trade which any man, or an^
body of men, has a right to set up and exercise for Ms
own emolument, but is altogether a trust in right of
those by whom the trust is delegated, and by whom it is
always resumable. It has of itself no rights ; they are
altogether duties.
Having thus given two instances of the original
formation of a constitution, I will shew the manner
in which both have been changed since their first
establishment.
The powers vested in the governments of the several
states, by the state constitutions, were found upon
experience to be too great, and those vested in the federal
government by the act of confederation, too little. The
defect was not in the principle but in the distribution
of power.
Numerous publications, in pamphlets and in news-
papers, appeared on the propriety and necessity of new
modelling the federal government. After some time
of public discussion, carried on through the channel of
the press, and in conversations, the state of Virginia,
experiencing some inconvenience with respect to coin-
merce, proposed holding a continental conference; in
RIGHTS OF MAN
164
consequence of which, a deputation from five or six of
the state assemblies met at Annapolis, in Maryland,
1786. This meeting, not conceiving itself sufficiently
authorized to go into the business of a reform, did no
more than state their general opinions of the propriety
of the measure, and recommend that a convention of all
the states should be held the year following.
The convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787,
of which General Washington was elected president.
He was not at that time connected with any of the state
governments, or with congress. He delivered up his
commission when the war ended, and since then had
lived a private citizen.
The convention went deeply into all the subjects;
and having, after a variety of debate and investigation,
agreed among themselves upon the several parts of a
federal constitution, the next question was, the manner
of giving it authority and practice.
For this purpose they did not, like a cabal of courtiers,
send for a Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector;
but they referred the whole matter to the sense and
interests of the country.^
They first directed that the proposed constitution
should be published. Secondly, that each state should
elect a convention expressly for the purpose of taking it
into consideration, and of ratifying or rejecting it ; and
that as soon as the approbation and ratification of any
nine states should be given, that those states should
proceed to the election of their proportion of members
to the new federal government ; and that the operation
of it should then begin, and the federal government
cease.
The several states proceeded accordingly to elect their
conventions. Some of those conventions ratified the
constitution by very large majorities, and two or three
unanimously. In others there were much debate and
^ This and the two preceding paragraphs formed the second
part of the information against Paine ; but it was only thought
necessary to omit the final one from the Symonds edition. —
RIGHTS OF MAN
165
division of opinion. In the Massachusetts convention,
which met at Boston, the majority was not above
nineteen or twenty in about three hundred members;
but such is the nature of representative government, that
it quietly decides aU matters by majority. After the de-
bate in the Massachusetts convention was closed, and
the vote taken, the objecting members rose and declared :
“ That though they had argued and voted against it because
certain parts appeared to them in a differe7it light to what
they appeared to other members ; yet, as the vote had decided
in favour of the constitution as proposed, they should give
it the same practical support as if they had voted for it.”
As soon as nine states had concurred (and the rest
followed in the order their conventions were elected),
the old fabric of the federal government was taken down,
and the new erected, of which General Washington is
president. In this place I cannot help remarking that
the character and services of this gentleman are sufficient
to put all those men called kings to shame, Wliile
they are receiving from the sweat and labours of man-
kind a prodigality of pay, to which neither their abilities
nor their services can entitle them, he is rendering every
service in his power, and refusing every pecuniary
reward. He accepted no pay as commander-in-chief;
he accepts none as president of the United States.
After the new federal constitution was established,
the state of Pennsylvania, conceiving that some parts
of its own constitution required to be altered, elected
a convention for that purpose. The proposed altera-
tions were published, and the people concurring therein,
they were established.
In forming those constitutions, or in altering them,
little or no inconvenience took place. The ordinary
course of things was not interrupted, and the advantages
have been much. It is always the interest of a far
greater number of people in a nation to have things right
than to let them remain wrong ; and when public matters
are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will
not decide wrong, unless it decides too hastily.
In the two instances of changing the constitutions, the
RIGHTS OF MAN
1 66
governments then in being were not actors either way.
Government has no right to make itself a party in any
debate respecting the principles or modes of forming,
or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit
of those who exercise the powers of government that
constitutions, and the governments issuing from them,
are established. In aU those matters the right of judging
and acting are in those who pay, and not in those who
receive.
A constitution is the property of a nation, and not of
those who exercise the govermnent. All the constitu-
tions of America are declared to be established on the
authority of the people. In France, the word nation is
used instead of the people ; but in both cases a constitu-
tion is a thing antecedent to the government, and always
distinct therefrom.
In England it is not difficult to perceive that every-
thing has a constitution, except the nation. Every
society and association that is established first agreed
upon a number of original articles, digested into form,
which are its constitution. It then appointed its
officers, whose powers and authorities are described in
that constitution, and the government of that society
then commenced. Those officers, by whatever name
they are called, have no authority to add to, alter, or
abridge the original articles. It is only to the con-
stituting power that this right belongs.
From the want of understanduig the difference
between a constitution and a government, Dr. Johnson
and all writers of his description have always bewildered
themselves. They could not but perceive that there
must necessarily be a controuling power existing some-
where, and they placed tliis in the discretion of the
persons exercising the government, instead of placing
it in a constitution formed by the nation. When it is
in a constitution it has the nation for its support, and
the natural and the political controuling powers are
together. The laws which are enacted by governments
controul men onljT- as individuals, but the nation,
through its constitution, controuls the whole govern-
RIGHTS OF MAN
167
ment, and has a natural ability so to do. The final
controuling power, therefore, and the original con-
stituting power, are one and the same power.
Dr. Johnson could not have advanced such a position
in any country where there was a constitution; and
he is himself an evidence that no such thing as a constitu-
tion exists in England. But it may be put as a question,
not improper to be investigated. That if a constitution
does not exist how came the idea of its existence so
generally established.*
In order to decide this question, it is necessary to
consider a constitution in both its cases : — ^First, as
creating a government and giving it powers. Secondly,
as regulating and restraining the powers so given.
If we begin with William of Normandy, we find that
the government of England was originally a tyranny,
founded on an invasion and conquest of the country.
This being admitted, it will then appear that the exertion
of the nation at different periods to abate that tyranny
and render it less intolerable, has been credited for a
constitution.
Magna Charta, as it was called (it is now like an
almanack of the same date), was no more than com-
pelling the government to renounce a part of its assump-
tions. It did not create and give powers to government
in the manner a constitution does ; but was, as far as it
went, of the nature of a re-conquest, and not a constitu-
tion; for could the nation have totally expelled the
usurpation as France has done its despotism, it would
then have had a constitution to form.
The ^ histor}.’- of the Edwards and the Henries, and up
^ This and the three foUowing paragraphs formed the third
part of the Attorney-General’s information, and are omitted
from the Syinonds edition -with this explanation : " Here follow
on page 52 of the original edition four paragraphs, making about
eighteen lines of the same close printing as in this edition. They
are a continuation of the argument which shews the manner in
which restrictions upon power originally assumed, have been
mistaken for a constitution. But as those paragraphs are put
into the infoimation, and will publicly appear with the pleadings
thereon, when the prosecution shall be brought to an issue,
RIGHTS OF MAN
1 68
to the commencement of the Stuarts, exhibits as many
instances of tyranny as could be acted within the limits
to which the nation had restricted it. The Stuarts
endeavoured to pass those limits, and their fate is well
known. In all those instances we see nothing of a con-
stitution, but only of restrictions on assumed power.
After this, another William, descended from the same
stock, and claiming from the same origin, gained pos-
session; and of the two evUs, James and William, the
nation preferred what it thought the least ; since, from
circumstances, it must take one. The act, called the
Bill of Rights, comes here into view. What is it but a
bargain which the parts of the government made with
each other to divide powers, profits, and privileges?
You shall have so much, and I will have the rest; and
with respect to the nation, it said, for your share you
shall have the right of petitioning. This being the case,
the Bill of Rights is more properly the bill of wrongs and
of insult. As to what is called the convention parlia-
ment, it was a thing that made itself, and then made
the authority by which it acted. A few persons got
together, and called themselves by that name. Several
of them had never been elected, and none of them for
the purpose.
From the time of William a species of government
arose, issuing out of this coalition Bill of Rights; and
more so since the corruption introduced at the Hanover
succession, by the agency of Walpole, that can be
they are not verbally recited here, except the first of them which
is added in the annexed note, for the purpose of shewing the
spirit of the prosecuting party, and the sort of matter which has
been selected from the work for prosecution. N.B. — The whole
of the several paragraphs taken from the woi'k for this purpose
does not amount to two pages of the same printing as in this
edition, and where they occur in the original edition they will
be noticed in this.” After reciting tlie first paragraph in a note,
Paine continues : “ Query : Does the prosecuting party mean
to deny that instances of tyranny were acted by the Edwards
and Henries ? Does he mean to deny that the Stuarts en-
deavoured to pass the liinits which the nation had prescribed ?
Does he mean to prove it libellous in any person to say that
they did ? ”
RIGHTS OF MAN 169
described by no other name than a despotic legislation.
Though the parts may embarrass each other, the whole
has no bounds ; and the only right it acknowledges out
of itself is the right of petitioning. Where then is the
constitution either that gives or restrains power ?
It is not because a part of the government is elective,
that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected
possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers.
Election in this case becomes separated from representa-
tion, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.
I cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own
right, would have thought of calling these things a
constitution, if the cry of constitution had not been set up
by the government. It has got into circulation like
the words lore and quiz, by being chalked up in the
speeches of Parliament, as those words were on window-
shutters and door-posts ; but whatever the constitution
may be in other respects, it has undoubtedly been the
most productive machine of taxation that was ever invented.
The taxes in France, under the new constitution, are not
quite thirteen shillings per head,^ and the taxes in Eng-
land, under what is called its present constitution,
1 are forty-eight shillings and sixpence per head — men,
\ women, and children — amounting to nearly seventeen
; millions sterling, besides the expences of collecting,
i which are upwards of a million more.
1 In a country like England, where the whole of the civil
government is executed by the people of every town
and county by means of parish officers, magistrates,
quarterly sessions, juries, and assize, without any trouble
1 The whole amount of the assessed taxes of France, for the
present year, is three hundred millions of livres, which is twelve
millions and a half sterling ; and the incidental taxes are esti-
mated at three millions, making in the whole fifteen millions
and a half ; which, among twenty-four millions of people, is not
quite thirteen shillings per head. France has lessened her
taxes since the revolution, nearly nine millions sterling annually.
Before the revolution, the city of Paris paid a duty of upwards
of thirty per cent, on all articles brought into the city. This
tax was collected at the city gates. It was taken off on the
first of last May, and the gates taken down, — Author*
EIGHTS OF MAN
170
to what is called the government or any other expence
to the revenue than the salary of the judges, it is astonish-
ing how such a mass of taxes can be employed. Not
even the internal defence of the countiy is paid out of
the revenue. On all occasions, whether real or con-
trived, recourse is continually had to new loans and nev^r
taxes. No wonder, then, that a machine of govern-
ment so advantageous to the advocates of a court
should be so triumphantly extolled. No wonder, that
St. James’ or St. Stephen’s should echo with the con-
tinual cry of constitution 1 No wonder, that the French
revolution should be reprobated, and the res-puhlica
treated with reproach ! The red hook of England, like
the red book of France, will explain the reason.^
I will now, by way of relaxation, turn a thought or
two to Mr. Burke. I ask his pardon for neglecting him
so long.
“America,” says he (in his speech on the Canada
constitution Bill), “ never dreamed of such absurd
doctrine as the Rights of Man”
Mr. Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his
assertions and his premises with such a deficiency of
judgment, that without troubling ourselves about the
principles of philosophy or politics, the mere logical
conclusions they produce are ridiculous. For instance :
If governments, as Mr. Burke asserts, are not founded
on the Rights of Man, and are founded on any rights at
all, they consequently must be founded on the right of
something that is not man. What then is that something ?
Generally speaking, we know of no other creatures
that inhabit the earth than man and beast ; and in all
cases where only two things offer themselves, and one
must be admitted, a negation proved on any one, amounts
to an affirmative on the other ; and therefore, Mr. Burke,
by proving against the Rights of Mm proves in behalf
^ What was called the livre rouge, or the red book, in France,
was not exactly' similar to the court calendar in England; but
it sufficiently shewed how a great part of the taxes was lavished. —
Author.*
RIGHTS OF MAJ^
171
j of the heast ; and consequently, proves that govem-
j ment is a beast; and as difficult things sometimes
i explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping
wild beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of
no other use tlian to shew the origin ojf the government.
They are in the place of a constitution. 0, John Bull,
what honours thou hast lost by not being a wild beast.
Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke’s system, have been in the
Tower for life.
If Mr. Burke’s arguments have not weight enough to
keep one serious, the fault is less mine than his ; and as
I am willing to make an apology to the reader for the
liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make
his for giving the cause.
Having thus paid Mr. Burke the compliment of
remembering him, I return to the subject.
From the want of a constitution in England to restrain
and regulate the wild impulse of power, many of the laws
are irrational and tyrannical, and the administration of
I them vague and problematical.
The attention of the government of England (for I
: rather chuse to call it by this name than the English
I government) appears since its political connection with
Germany to have been so completely engrossed and
absorbed by foreign affairs, and the means of raising
taxes, that it seems to exist for no other purposes.
Domestic concerns are neglected; and with respect to
regular law there is scarcely such a thing.* ^
Almost every case now must be determined bj’- some
precedent, be that precedent good or bad, or whether
it properly applies or not ; and the practice is become so
general as to suggest a suspicion, that it proceeds from a
deeper policy than at first sight appears,
i Since the revolution of America, and more so since
that of France, tliis preaching up tlie doctrines of pre-
cedents, drawn from times and circumstances antecedent
to those events, has been the studied practice of the
1 This paragraph was the fourth item in the indictment against
Paine. — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
172
English government. The generality of those pre-
cedents are founded on principles and opinions, the
reverse of what they ought ; and the greater distance of
time they are drawn from the more are to be suspected.
But by associating those precedents with a superstitious
reverence for ancient things, as monks shew relics and
call them holy, the generality of mankind are deceived
into the design. Governments now act as if they were
afraid to awaken a single reflection in man. They are
softly leading him to the sepulchre of precedents to
deaden his faculties and call attention from the scene of
revolutions. They feel that he is arriving at knowledge
faster than they wish, and their policy of precedents is
the barometer of their fears. This political popery, like
the ecclesiastical popery of old, has had its day, and is
hastening to its exit . The ragged relic and the antiquated
precedent, the monk and the monarch, will moulder
together.
Government by precedent, without any regard to the
principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems
that can be set up. In numerous instances the pre-
cedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an
example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated ;
but instead of this, precedents are taken in the lump,
and put at once for constitution and for law.
Either the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep man
in a state of ignorance, or it is a practical confession that
wisdom degenerates in governments as governments
increase in age, and can only hobble along by the stilts
and crutches of precedents. How is it that the same
persons who would proudly be thought wiser than their
predecessors appear at the same time only as the ghosts
of departed wisdom? How strangely is antiquity
treated ! To some purposes it is spoken of as the times
of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is
put for the light of the world.
If the doctrine of precedents is to be followed, the
expences of government need not continue the same.
Why pay men extravagantly, who have but little to do ?
If everything that can happen is already in precedent,
RIGHTS OF MAN
173
legislation is at an end, and precedent, like a dictionary,
determines every case. Either, therefore, government
has arrived at its dotage, and requires to be renovate^
or all the occasions for exercising its wisdom have
occurred.
We now see ail over Europe, and particularly in
England, the curious phaenomenon of a nation looking
one way, and the government the other — the one
forward and the other backward. If governments are
to go on by precedent, while nations go on by improve-
ment, they must at last come to a final sejiaration ; and
the sooner, and the more civilly they detemiine this
point, the better.^
Having thus spoken of constitutions generally, as
things distinct from actual governments, let us proceed
to consider the parts of which a constitution is
composed.
Opinions differ more on this subject than with respect
to the whole. That a nation ought to have a constitution,
as a rule, for the conduct of its government is a simple
question in which all men not directly courtiers, will
agree. It is only on the component part that questions
and opinions multiply.
But this difficulty, like every other, will diminish when
put into a train of being rightly understood.
The first thing is, that a nation has a right to establish
a constitution.
Vv'hether it exercises this right in the most judicious
1 In England the improvements in agriculture, useful arts,
manufactures, and commerce, have been made in opposition to
the genius of its government, which is that of following precedents.
It is from the enterprise and industry of the individuals, and their
numerous associations, in which, tritely speaking, government
is neither pillow nor bolster, that these improvements have
proceeded. No man thought about government, or who was in,
or who was oui, when he was planning or executing those things ;
and all he had to hope, with respect to government, was that ii
would let him alone. Three or four very silly ministerial news-
papers are continually offending against the spirit of national
improvement, by ascribing it to a nnnister. They may with
as much truth ascribe this book to a minister. — Author.
G
RIGHTS OF MAN
174
manner at first is quite another case. It exercises it
agreeably to the judgment it possesses; and by con-
tinuing to do so, all errors will at last be exploded.
When this right is established in a nation, there is no
fear that it will be employed to its own injury. A nation
can have no interest in being wrong.
Though all the constitutions of America are on one
general principle, yet no two of them are exactly alike
in their component parts or in the distribution of the
powers which they give to the actual governments.
Some are more, and others less complex.
In forming a constitution, it is first necessar3?’ to con-
sider what are the ends for which government is neces-
sary ? Secondly, what are the best means, and the least
expencive, for accomplishing those ends ?
Government is nothing more than a national association ;
and the object of this association is the good of all, as well
individually as collectivelJ^ Every man wishes to pursue
his occupation, and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and
the produce of his property in peace and safet3^ and wdth
the least possible expence. When these things are
accomplished, all the objects for which go\'‘ernment ought
to be established are answered.
It has been customary to consider government under
three distinct general heads. The legislative, the execu-
tive, and the judicial.
But if we permit our judgment to act unincumbered
by the habit of multiplied terms, we can perceive no
more than two divisions of power, of which civil govern-
ment is composed, namely that of legislating or enacting
laws, and that of executing or administering them.
Everything, therefore, appertaining to civil government,
classes itself under one or other of these tw^o divisions.
So far as regards the execution of the laws, that which
is called the judicial power, is strictly and properly the
executive power of every country. It is that power to
which every individual has to appeal, and which causes
the law to be executed ; neither have we any other clear
idea with respect to the official execution of the laws. In
England, and also in America and France, this power
RIGHTS OF MAN
175
begins with the magistrate, and proceeds up through all
the courts of judicature.
I leave to courtiers to explain what is meant by calling
monarchy the executive power. It is merely a name
in which acts of government are done ; and any other, or
none at all, would answer the same purpose.^ Laws
have neither more or less authority on this account. It
must be from the justness of their principles, and the
interest which a nation feels therein, that they derive
support ; if they require any other than this, it is a
sign that something in the system of government is
imperfect. Laws difficult to be executed cannot be
generally good.
With respect to the organization of the legislative
‘power, different modes have been adopted in different
countries. In America it is generally composed of two
houses. In France it consists but of one, but in both
countries it is wholly by representation.*
The case is, that mankind (from the long tyranny of
assumed power) have had so few opportunities of making
the necessary trials on modes and principles of govern-
ment, in order to discover the best, that government is
hut now beginning to he known, and experience is yet
wanting to determine many particulars.
The objections against two houses are, first, that there
is an inconsistency in any part of a whole legislature,
coming to a final determination by vote on any matter,
whilst that matter, with respect to that whole, is yet only in
a train of deliberation, and consequently open to new
i] lustrations.
Secondly, That by taking the vote on each, as a
separate body, it always admits of the possibility, and is
often the case in practice, that the minority governs the
majority, and that in some instances to a degree of great
inconsistency.
Thirdly. That two houses arbitrarily checking or
controuling each other is inconsistent ; because it cannot
be proved on the principles of just representation, that
either should be wiser or better than the other. They
may check in the wrong as well as in the right — and there-
RIGHTS OF MAN
176
fore, to give the power where we cannot give the wisdom
to use it, nor be assured of its being rightly used, renders
the hazard at least equal to the precaution. 1
The objection against a single house is, that it is always
in a condition of committing itself too soon. But it
should at the same time be remembered, that when there
is a constitution which defines the power, and establishes
the principles within which a legislature shall act, there
is already a more effectual check provided, and more
powerfully operating, than any other check can be. For
example.
Were a bill to be brought into any of the American
legislatures similar to that wliich was passed into an act
by the English parliament, at the commencement of
George the First, to extend the duration at the assemblies
to a longer period than they now sit, the check is in the
constitution, which in efiect says Thus far shalt thou go
and no further.
But in order to remove the objection against a single
house, that of acting with too quick an impulse, and at
the same time to avoid the inconsistencies, in some cases
absurdities, arising from two houses, the following
method has been proposed as an improvement upon both.
First, to have but one representation.
Secondly, to divide that representation, by lot, into two
or three parts.
Thirdly, that every proposed bill shall be first debated
in those parts by succession, that they may become the
hearers of each other, but without taking any vote.
After which the whole representation to assemble for a
general debate and determination by vote.
^ With respect to the two houses, of which the English Parlia-
ment is composed, they appear to be efiectually influenced into
one, and, as a legislature, to have no temper of its own. The
minister, whoever he at any time may be, touches it as with an
opium wand, and it sleeps obedience.
_ But if w'e look at the distinct abilities of the two houses, the
difference will appear so great, as to shew the inconsistency of
placing power where there can be no certainty of the judgment
to use it. Wretched as the state of representation is in England,
it is manhood compared vuth what is called the house of Lords ;
RIGHTS OF MAN
lyy
To this proposed improvement has been added another,
for the purpose of keeping the representation in the
state of constant renovation; which is that one-third of
the representation of each country shall go out at the
expiration of one year, and the number be replaced by
new elections. Another third at the expiration of the
second year replaced in like manner, and every third year
to be a general election. ^ ■
But in whatever manner the separate parts of a con-
stitution may be arranged there is one general principle
that distinguishes freedom from slavery, which is, that all
hereditary government over a people is to them a species of
slavery, and representative government is freedom.
Considering government in the only light in which it
should be considered, that of a National Association, it
ought to be so constructed as not to be disordered by any
accident happening among the parts ; and, therefore, no
extraordinary power, capable of producing such an effect,
should be lodged in the hands of any individual. The
and so little is this nick-named house regarded, that tlie people
scarcely inquire at any time what it is doing. It appears ^so to
be most under influence, and the furthest removed from the
general interest of the nation. In the debate on engaging in
the Russian and Turkish war, the majority in the house of peers
in favour of it was upwards of ninety, when in the other house,
which is more than double its numbers, the majority was sixty-
three.
The proceedings on Mr. Fox’s bill, respecting the rights of
juries, merit also to be noticed. The person.s called the peers
were not the objects of that bill. They are already in possession
of more privileges than that bill gave to others. They are
their own jury, and if any of that house were prosecuted for a
libel, he would not suffer, even upon conviction, for the first
offence. Such inequality in laws ought not to exist in any country.
The French constitution says. That the law is the same to eveiy
individual, whether to protect or to punish. All are equal in its
sight. — Author.*
The first twelve or thirteen lines of this note made the next
item in the information against Paine. — H. E. B.
^ As to the state of representation in England, it is too absurd
to he reasoned upon. Almost all the represented parts
decreasing in population, and the unrepresented parts are in-
creasing. A general convention of the nation is necessary to take
the whole state of its government into consideration. — Author.*
RIGHTS OF MAN
178
death, sickness, absence, or defection, of any one in-
dividual in a government, ought to be a matter of no
more consequence, with respect to the nation, than if the
same circumstance had taken place in a member of the
English Parliament, or the French National Assembly,
Scarcely anything presents a more degrading character
of national greatness, than its being thrown into con-
fusion, by anything happening to or acted by any
individual; and the ridiculousness of the scene is often
increased by the natural insignificance of the person by
whom it is occasioned. Were a government so con-
structed, that it could not go on unless a goose or a
gander were present in the senate, the difficulties would
be just as great and as real, on the flight or sickness of
the goose, or the gander, as if it were called a King. We
laugh at individuals for the silly difficulties they make to
themselves, without perceiving that the greatest of all
ridiculous things are acted in governments.^
Ail the constitutions of America are on a plan that
excludes the childish embarrassments which occur in
monarchical countries. No suspension of govemment
can there take place fo:r a moment, from any cir-
cumstances whatever. The system of representation
provides for everything, and is the onlj^ system in which
1 It is related that in the canton of Berne, in Switzerland,
it had been customary, from time immemorial, to keep a bear at
the public expence, and the people had been taught to believe,
that if they had not a bear they should all be undone. It happened
some years ago that the bear, then in being, was taken sick, and
died too suddenly to have his place immediately supplied with
another. During this interregnum the people discovered that
the com grew, and the vintage flourished, and the sun and
moon continued to rise and set, and everything went on the same
as before, and taking courage from these circumstances, they
resolved not to keep any more bears; for, said they, “ a bear is
a very voracious, expencive animal, and we were obliged to pull
out his claws, lest he should hurt the citizens.”
The stor^’- of the bear was related in some of the French
newspapers, at the time of the flight of Louis XVI. and the
application of it to monarchy could not be mistaken in France ;
but it seems that the aristocracy of Berne applied it to themselves,
and have since prohibited the reading of French newspapers. —
Author.*
RIGHTS OF mN
179
nations and governments can always appear in their
proper character.
As extraordina^ power ought not to be lodged in the
hands of any individual, so ought there to be no appro-
priations of public money to any person, beyond what his
services in a state may be worth. It signifies not whether
a man be called a president, a king, an emperor, a senator,
or by any other name which propriety or folly may devise
or arrogance assume, it is only a certain service he can
perform in the state; and the service of any such in-
dividual in the routine of office, whether such office be
called monarchical, presidential, senatorial, or by any
other name or title, can never exceed the value of ten
thousand pounds a year. All the great services that
are done in the world are performed by volunteer
characters, who accept nothing for them ; ’ but the
routine of office is alv/ays regulated to such a general
standard of abilities as to be within the compass of
numbers in every country to perform, and therefore
cannot merit very extraordinary recompence. Govern-
ment, says Swift, is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity
of many heads.
It is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid
out of the public taxes of any country, for the support
of an individual, whilst thousands who are forced to
contribute thereto, are pining with want, and straggling
with misery. Government does not consist in a contrast
between prisons and palaces, between poverty and pomp ;
it is not instituted to rob the needy of his mite, and increase
the wretchedness of the wretched. But of this part of
the subject I shall speak hereafter, and confine myself to
political observations.
When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are
allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes
the centre, round which every kind of corruption generates
and forms. Give to any man a million a-year, and add
thereto the power of creating and disposing of places, at
the expence of a country, and the liberties of that country
are no longer secure. What is called the splendour
of a throne is no other th^the corruption of the state.'
RIGHTS OF MAN
i i8o
i ) It is made np of a band of parasites living in luxurious
I 1 indolence out of the public taxes.*
I When once such a vicious system is established it
I becomes the guard and protection of all inferior abuses.
I The man who is in the receipt of a million a year is the
i last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest, in the event,
i it should reach to himself. It is always his interest to
■ defend inferior abuses, as so many outworks to protect
jj the citadel ; and on this species of political fortification,
: all the parts have such a common dependence that it is
! never to be expected they wiU attack each other, ^
I Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in
tEewoHoTTad it not been for the abuses it protects. It is
the masfer-fraud , which shelters all others. By admit-
tihg a participation of the spoil, it makes itself friends ;
^ and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of
courtiers.
i: As the principle on which constitutions are now formed
rejects all hereditary pretensions to government, it also
^ It is scarcely possible to touch on any subject, that will not
suggest an allusion to some corruption in governments.^ The
ji, simile of " fortifications,” unfortunately involves with it a circum-
stance, which is directly in point with the matter above alluded to.
' Among the numerous instances of abuse wdiich have been
; acted or protected by governments, ancient or modern, there is
( not a greater than that of quartering a man and his heirs upon
; the public, to be maintained at its expence.
Humanity dictates a provision for the poor; but by what
,4 right, moral or political, doe.s any government assume to say, that
\ the person called the Duke of Richmond, shall be maintained
by the public ? Yet, if common report is true, not a beggar in
London can purchase his wretched pittance of coal, without
paying towards the civil list of the Duke of Richmond. Were the
whole produce of this imposition but a shilling a year, the
f- , iniquitous principle would be still the same ; but when it amounts,
■' as it is said to do, to no less than twenty thousand pounds per
annum, the enormity is too serious to be permitted to remain.
"S, This is one of the effects of monarchy and aristocracy,
T In stating this case I am led by no personal dislike. Though
4 I think it mean in any man to live upon the public, the vice
Jf, originates in the government ; and so general is it become that,
whether the parties are in the ministiy'’ or in the opposition it
makes no difference : they are sure of the guarantee of each
other. — Auiliov.
RIGHTS OF MAN i8i
rejects all that catalogue of assumptions known by the
name of prerogatives.
If there is any government where prerogatives might
with apparent safety be entrusted to any individual, it
is in the federal government of America, The president
of the United States of America is elected only for four
years. He is not only responsible in the general sense of
the word, but a particular mode is laid down in the
constitution for trying him. He cannot be elected under
thirty-five years of age ; and he must be a native of the
country.
In a comparison of these cases with the Government of
England, the difference when applied to the latter
amounts to an absurdity. In England the person who
exercises prerogative is often a foreigner ; always half a
foreigner, and always married to a foreigner. He is
never in full natural or political connection with the
country, is not responsible for an3/'thing, and becomes of
age at eighteen years ; yet such a person is permitted to
form foreign alliances, without even the knowledge of
the nation, and to make war and peace without its
consent.
But this is not aU. Though such a person cannot dis-
pose of the government in the manner of a testator, he
dictates the marriage connections, which, in effect,
accomplish a great part of the same end. He cannot
directly bequeath half the government to Prussia, but he
can form a marriage partnership that will produce almost
the same thing. Under such circumstances, it is happy
for England that she is not situated on the Continent, or
she might, lilce Holland, fall under the dictatorship of
Prussia. Holland, by marriage, is as effectually governed
by Prussia, as if the whole tyranny of bequeathing the
government had been the means.
The presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes
called, the executive) is the only ofhee from which a
foreigner is excluded, and in England it is the only one
to which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a
member of Parliament, but he may be what is called a
king. If there is any reason for excluding foreigners.
x 82
RIGHTS OF MAN
it ought to be from those offices where mischief can most
be acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest and
attachment, the trust is best secured. But as nations
proceed in the great business of forming constitutions,
they will examine with more precision into the nature and
business of that department which is called the executive.
What the legislative and judicial departments are every
one can see; but with respect to what, in Europe, is
called the executive, as distinct from those two, it is
either a political superfluity or a chaos of unknown
things.
Some kind of official department, to which reports shall
be m-ade from the different parts of a nation, or from
abroad, to be laid before the national representatives, is
all that is necessary ; but there is no consistency in calling
this the executive ; neither can it be considered in any
other light than as inferior to the legislative. The
sovereign authority in any country is the power of making
laws, and everything else is an official department.
Next to the arrangement of the principles and the
organization of the several parts of a constitution, is the
provision to be made for the support of the persons to
whom the nation shall confide the administration of the
constitutional powers.
A nation can have no right to the time and services of
any person at his own expence, whom it may choose
to employ or entrust in any department whatever;
neither can any reason be given for making provision
for the support of any one part of a government and not
for the other.
But admitting that the honour of being entrusted with
any part of a government is to be considered a sufficient
reward, it ought to be so to every person alike. If the
members of the legislature of any country are to serve at
their own expence, that which is called the executive,
whether monarchical or by any other name, ought to
serve in like manner. It is inconsistent to pay the one,
and accept the service of the other gratis.
In America, every department in the government is
decently provided for ; but no one is extravagantly paid.
RIGHTS OF MAN
183
Every member of congress, and of the assemblies, is
allowed a sufficiency for his expences. Whereas in
England, a most prodigal provision is made for the
support of one part of the government and none for the
other, the consequence of which is that the one is fur-
nished with the means of corruption and the other is
put into the condition of being corrupted. Less than a
fourth part of such expence, applied as it is in America,
would remedy a great part of the Corruption.
Another reform in the American constitutions is the
exploding all oaths of personality. The oath of allegiance
in America is to the nation only. The putting any
individual as a figure for a nation is improper. The
happiness of a nation is the superior object, and therefore
the intention of an oath of allegiance ought not to be
obscured by being figuratively taken to, or in the name of,
any person. The oath, called the civic oath, in France,
viz., the “ nation, the law, and the king,” is improper.
If taken at all, it ought to be as in America, to the nation
only. The law may or may not be good; but in this
place it can have no other meaning than as being con-
ducive to the happiness of the nation, and therefore is
included in it. The remainder of the oath is improper on
the ground that ail personal oaths ought to be abolished.
They are the remains of tyranny on one part and slavery
on the other ; and the name of the Creator ought not to
be introduced to witness the degradation of his creation ;
or if taken, as is already mentioned, as figurative of the
nation, it is in this place redundant. But whatever
apology may be made for oaths at the first establishment
of a government, they ought not to be permitted after-
wards, If a government requires the support of oaths,
it is a sign that it is not worth supporting, and ought
liot to be supported. Make government what it ought to
be, and it will support itself.
To conclude this part of the subject : — One of the
greatest improvements that have been made for the
perpetual security and progress of constitutional liberty,
is the provision which the new constitutions make for
occasionally revising, altering, and amending them.
RIGHTS OF MAN
184
The principle upon which Mr. Burke formed his
political creed, that of “ binding and controuUng posterity
to the end of time, and of renouncing and abdicating the
rights of all posterity for ever,*' is now become too detestable
to be made a subject of debate ; and therefore I pass it over
with no other notice than exposing it.
Government is but now beginning to be known.
Hitherto it has been the mere exercise of power which
forbade all effectual enquiry into rights, and grounded
itself wholly on possession. While the enemy of liberty
was its judge, the progress of its principle must have been
small indeed.
The constitutions of America, and also that of France,
have either affixed a period for their revision, or laid down
the mode by which improvement shall be made. It is
perhaps impossible to establish anything^ that combines
principles with opinions and practice, which the progress
of circumstances, through a length of jT’ears, will not in
some measure derange, or render inconsistent ; and,
therefore, to prevent inconveniences accumulating, till
they discourage reformations or provoke revolutions, it is
best to provide the means of regulating them as they
occur. The Rights of Man are the rights of all generations
of men, and cannot be monopolized by any. That
which is w^orth following will be followed for the sake of
its worth, and it is in this that its security lies, and not in
any conditions with which it may be encumbered. When
a man leaves property to his heirs, he does not connect
it with an obligation that they shall accept it. Why,
then, should we do otherwise with respect to constitutions?
The best constitutions that could now be devised,
consistently wuth the condition of the present moment,
may be far short of that excellence which a few years
may afford. There is a morning of reason rising upon
man on the subject of governments that has not appeared
before. As the barbarism of the present old governments
expires, the moral condition of nations with respect to
ea.ch other will be changed. Man will not be brought up
with the savage idea of considering his species as his
enemy, because the accident of birth gave the individuals
RIGHTS OF MAN 185
existence in countries distinguished by different names;
and as constitutions have always some relation to ex- \
temal as well as to domestic circumstances, the means of 1
benefitting by every change, foreign or domestic, should ]
be a part of every constitution. I
We already see an alteration in the national disposition j
of England and France towards each other, which, |
when we look back to only a few years, is itself a revolu- 1
tion. Who could have foreseen, or who could have j
believed, that a French National Assembly would ever
have been a popular toast in England, or that a friendly ;
alliance of the two nations should become the wish of r
either ? It shews that man, were he not corrupted by 1
governments, is naturally the friend of man, and that |
human nature is not of itself vicious. That spirit of ;
jealousy and ferocity, which the governments of the two |
countries inspired, and which they rendered subservient i
to the purpose of taxation, is now 5 delding to the dictates I
of reason, interest, and humanity. The trade of courts is :
beginning to be understood, and the affectation of
mystery, with all the artificial sorcery by which they |
impose upon mankind, is on the decline. It has received
its death wound ; and though it may linger, it will expire, I
Government ought to be as much open to improvement
as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it !
has been monopolized from age to age, by the most
ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any
other proof of their wretched management, than the
excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans,
and the quarrels into which they have precipitiated the h
world ? j'!
Just emerging from such a barbarous condition, it is “
too soon to determine to what extent of improvement
government may yet be carried. For what we can fore-
see, all Europe may form but one great republic, and Ij
man be free of the whole.
CHAPTER V
WAYS AND MEANS OF IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF
EUROPE, INTERSPERSED WITH MISCELLANEOUS
OBSERVATIONS
In contemplating a subject that embraces with equatorial
magnitude the whole region of humanity it is impos-
sible to confine the pursuit in one single direction. It
takes ground on every character and condition that
appertains to man, and blends the individual, the nation,
and the world.
From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has
arisen not to be .extinguished. Without consuming,
like the Ultima Ratio Regum, it winds its progress from
nation to nation and conquers by a silent operation.
Man finds himself changed, he scarcely perceives how.
He acquires a knowledge of his rights by attending justly
to his interest, and discovers in the event that the strength
and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of
resisting it, and that in order ” to he free it is sufficient that
he wills it.” *
Having in all the preceding parts of this work en-
deavoured to establish a system of principles as a basis on
which governments ought to be erected, I shall proceed
in this to the ways and means of rendering them into
practice. But in order to introduce this part of the sub-
ject with more propriety and stronger effect, some
preliminary observations, deducible from, or connected
with those principles, are necessary.
Whatever the form or constitution of government may
be, it ought to have no other object than the general
happiness. When instead of this it operates to create
and increase wickedness, in any of the parts of society,
it is on a wrong system and reformation is necessary.*
1 86
RIGHTS OF MAR 187
Customary language has classed the condition of man
under the two descriptions of civilized and uncivilized
life. To the one it has ascribed felicity and affluence :
to the other hardship and want. But, however our
imagination may be impressed by painting and compari-
son, it is nevertheless true, that a great portion of man-
kind, in what are called civilized countries, are in a state
of poverty and wretchedness, far below the condition of
an Indian, I speak not of one countrj?', but of all. It
is so in England, it is so all over Europe. Let us enquire
into the cause.
It lies not in any natural defect in the principles of
civilization, but in preventing those principles having an
universal operation; the consequence of which is a
perpetual system of war and expence, that drains the
country and defeats the general felicity of which civiliza-
tion is capable.
All the European governments (France now excepted)
are constructed not on the principle of universal civiliza-
tion, but on the reverse of it. So far as those govern-
ments relate to each other they are in the same condition
as we conceive of savage uncivilized life, they put them-
selves beyond the law as well of God as of man, and are
with respect to principle and reciprocal conduct like so
many individuals in a state of nature.*
The inhabitants of every country, under the civilization
of laws, easily civilize together, but governments being
yet in an uncivilized state, and almost continually at
war, they pervert the abundance which civilized life
produces to carry on the uncivilized part to a greater
extent. By thus engrafting the barbarism of govern-
ment upon the internal civilization of a country, it draws
from the latter, and more especially from the poor, a
great portion of those earnings which should be applied
to their own subsistence and comfort. Apart from aU
reflection of morality and philosophy, it is a melancholy
fact that more than one-fourth of the labour of mankind
is annualty consumed by this barbarous system.
Wliat has served to continue this evil is the pecuniary
advantage which all the governments of Europe have
i88
RIGHTS OF MAN
found in keeping up this state of uncivilization. It
affords to them pretences for power and revenue, for
which there would be neither occasion nor apology if
the circle of civilization were rendered complete. Civil
government alone, or the government of laws, is not
productive of pretences for many taxes ; it operates at
home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes
the possibility of much imposition. But when the scene
is laid in the uncivilized contention of governments, the
field of pretences is enlarged, and the country being no
longer a judge, is open to every imposition which govern-
ments please to act.
Not a thirtieth, scarcely a fortieth, part of the taxes
which are raised in England are either occasioned by, or
applied to, the purposes of civil government. It is not
difficult to see that the whole which the actual govern-
ment does in this respect is to enact laws, and that the
country administers and executes them, at its own ex-
pence, by means of magistrates, juries, sessions, and
assize, over and above the taxes which it pays.
In this view of the case, we have two distinct characters
of government; the one the civil government, or the
government of laws, which operates at home, the other
the court or cabinet government, which operates abroad,
on the rude plan of uncivilized life ; the one attended with
little charge, the other with boundless extravagance;
and so distinct are the two, that if the latter were to
sink, as it were, by a sudden opening of the earth, and
totally disappear, the former would not be deranged. It
would still proceed, because it is the common interest of
the nation that it should, and all the means are in practice.
Revolutions, then, have for their object a change in
the moral condition of governments, and with this
change the burden of public taxes will lessen, and
civilization will be left to theenjoyment of that abundance
of which it is now deprived.
In contemplating the whole of this subject, I extend my
views into the department of commerce. In all my
publications, where the matter would admit, I have been
an advocate for commerce, because I am a friend to its
i
i
f
RIGHTS OF MAN
rSg
effects. It is a pacific system, operating to cordialize
mankind, by rendering nations, as well as individuals,
useful to each other. As to the mere theoretical re-
formation, I have never preached it up. The most
effectual process is that of improving the condition of
man by means of his interest; and it is on this ground
that I take my stand.
If commerce were permitted to act to the universal
extent it is capable of, it would extirpate the system of
war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilized state of
governments. The invention of commerce has arisen
since those governments began, and it is the greatest
approach towards universal civilization that has yet been
made by any means not immediately flowing from moral
principles.
Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil inter-
course of nations by an exchange of benefits, is a subject
as worthy of philosophy as politics. Commerce is no
other than the traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a
scale of number ; and the same rule that nature intended
for the intercourse of two, .she intended for that of all.
For this purpose she has distributed the materials of
manufactures and commerce in various and distant parts
of a nation and of the world; and as they cannot be
procured by war so cheaply or so commodiously as by
commerce, she has rendered the latter the means of
extirpating the former.
As the two are nearly the opposite of each other,
consequently, the uncivilized state of the European
governments is injurious to commerce. Every kind of
destruction or embarrassment serves to lessen the quan-
tity, and it matters but little in what part of the com-
mercial world the reduction begins. Like blood, it can- |
not be taken from any of the parts, without being taken I
from the whole mass in circulation, and all partake of |
the loss. When the ability in any nation to buy is |
destroyed, it equally involves the seller. Could the
government of England destroy the commerce of all other 'ii
nations, she would most effectually ruin her own. |
It is possible that a nation may be the carrier for the
RIGHTS OP MAN
igo
world, but she cannot be the merchant. She cannot
be the seller and buyer of her own merchandize. The
ability to buy must reside out of herself ; and, therefore,
the prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by
the prosperity of the rest. If they are poor she cannot
be rich, and her condition, be it what it may, is an index
of the heights of the commercial tide in other nations.
That the principles of commerce, and its universal
operation, may be understood, without understanding
the practice, is a position that reason will not deny;
and it is on this ground only that I argue the subject. It
is one thing in the counting-house, in the world it is
another. With respect to its operation it must neces-
sarily be contemplated as a reciprocal thing; that only
one-half of its powers resides within the nation, and that
the whole is as effectually destroyed by destroying the
half that resides without, as if the destruction had been
committed on that which is within ; for neither can act
without the other.
When in the last, as well as in former wars, the com-
merce of England sunk, it was because the quantity was
lessened everywhere ; and it now rises, because commerce
is in a rising state in every nation. If England, at this
day, imports and exports more than at any former
period, the nations with which she trades must necessarily
do the same; her imports are their exports, and vice
versa.
There can be no such thing as a nation flourishing alone
in commerce; she can only participate; and the
destruction of it in any part must necessarily affect all.
When, therefore, governments are at war, the attack is
made upon a common stock of commerce, and the conse-
quence is the same as if each had attacked his own.
The present increase of commerce is not to be attri-
buted to ministers, or to any political contrivances, but
to its own natural operation in consequence of peace.
The regular markets had been destroyed, the channels of
trade broken up, the high road of the seas infested with
robbers of every nation, and the attention of the world
called to other objects. Those interruptions have
RIGHTS OF MAN 191
ceased, and peace has restored the deranged condition of
things to their proper order.^
It is worth remarking, that every nation reckons the
balance of trade in its own favour; and therefore
something must be irregular in the common ideas upon
this subject.
The fact, however, is true, according to what is called
a balance ; and it is from this cause that commerce is
universally supported. Every nation feels the advantage,
or it would abandon the practice ; but the deception lies
in the mode of making up the accounts, and in attributing
what are called profits to a wrong cause.
Mr. Pitt has sometimes amused himself, by showing
what he called a balance of trade from the custom-house
books. This mode of circulation, not only affords no
rule that is true, but one that is false.
In the first place. Every cargo that departs from the
custom-house, appears on the books as an export ; and
according to the custom-house balance, the losses at sea,
and by foreign failures, are all reckoned on the side of
profits because they appear as exports.
Secondly, Because the importation by the smuggling
trade does not appear on the custom-house books, to
arrange against the exports.
No balance, therefore, as applying to superior ad-
vantages, can be drawn from these docmnents : and if
we examine the natural operation of commerce, the idea
is fallacious, and if true, would soon be injurious. The
great support of commerce consists in the balance being
a level of benefits among all nations.
Two merchants of dffferent nations trading together,
will both become rich, and each makes the balance in his
1 In America, the increase of commerce is greater in pro-
portion than in England. It is, at this time, at least one half
more than at any period prior to Hxe revolution. The greatest
number of vessels cleared out of the port of Philadelphia, before
the commencement of the war, was between eight and nine
hundred. In the year 1788, the number was upwards of twelve
hundred. As the state of Pennsylvania is estimated as an
eighth part of the United States in population, the whole number
of vessels must now be nearly ten thousand. — A%ithor.*
RIGHTS OP MAN
192
own favour ; consequently they do not get rich of each
other ; and it is the same with respect to the nations in
which they reside. The Ccise must be, that each nation
must get rich out of its own means, and encrease that
riches by something which it procures from another in
exchange.
If a merchant in England sends an article of English
manufacture abroad which costs him a shilling at home
and imports something which sells for two, he makes a
balance of one shilling in his favour; but this is not
gained out of the foreign nation or the foreign merchant,
for he also does the same by the articles he receives,
and neither has the advantage upon the other. The
original value of the two articles in their proper countries
was but two shillings, but by changing their places, they
acquire a new idea of v^ue equal to double what
they had first, and that encreased value is equally
divided.
There is no otherwise a balance on foreign than on
domestic commerce. The merchants of London and
Newcastle trade on the same principles, as if they resided
in different nations, and make their balances in the same
manner; yet London does not get rich out of Newcastle,
any more than Newcastle out of London ; but coals, the
merchandize of Newcastle, have an additional value at
London, and London merchandize has the same at
Newcastle.
Though the principle of all commerce is the same, the
domestic, in a national view, is the part the most bene-
ficial ; because the w>'hoie of the advantages, on both sides,
rests within the nation ; whereas, in foreign commerce, it
is only participation of one-half.
H The most unprofitable of all commerce is that con-
I nected with foreign dominion. To a few individuals it
may be beneficial, merely because it is commerce ; but
to the nation it is a loss. The expence of maintaining
dominion more than absorbs the profit of any trade.
It does not encrease the general quantity in the world,
but operates to lessen it, and as a greater mass would be
afloat by relmquishing dominion, the participation with-
RIGHTS OF MAN
^93
out the expence would be more valuable than a greater
quantity with it. i
But it is impossible to engross commerce by dominion ; !
and therefore it is still more fallacious. It cannot exist j
in confined channels, and necessarily breaks out by regular I
or irregular means, that defeat the attempt; and to f
succeed would be still worse. France, since the revolu-
tion, has been more indifferent as to foreign possessions,
and other nations will become the same when they investi-
gate the subject with respect to commerce. S
To the expence of dominion is to be added that of j
navies, and when the amounts of the two are subtracted “
from the profits of commerce, it will appear that what is 5
called the balance of trade, even admitting it to exist, s*
is not enjoyed by the nation, but absorbed by the i
government. }
The idea of having navies for the protection of com- |}
merce is delusive. It is putting means of destruction for []
the means of protection. Commerce needs no other <
protection than the reciprocal interest which every nation j
feels in supporting it — ^it is common stock — it exists by a |
balance of advantage to all ; and the only interruption it |
meets, is from the present uncivilized state of governments, I
and which it is its common interest to reforni.^ |
Quitting this subject, I now proceed to other matters. 1
As it is necessary to include England in the prospect of if
general reformation, it is proper to enquire into the i'
defects of its government. It is only by each nation I
reforming its own, that the whole can be unproved, and F
the full benefit of reformation enjoyed. Only partial ■■
advantages can flow from partial reforms. _ ^ F
France and England are the only two countries in
Europe where a reformation in government could have
successfully begun. The one secure by the ocean, and
^ When I savtT Mr. Pitt's mode of estimating the balance of ,
trade, in one of his parliamentary speeches, he appeared to me to '
know nothing of the nature and interest of commerce; and no
man has more wantonly tortured it than himself. During a
period of peace it has been havocked with the calamities of war. s
Three times it has been thrown into stagnation, and the vessels |
unmanned by impressing, within less than four years of peace. "
RIGHTS OF MAN
194
the other by the immensity of its internal strength, could
defy the malignancy of foreign despotism. But it is
with revolutions as with commerce, the advantages
increase by their becoming general, and double to either
what each would receive alone.
As a new S3^stem is now opening to the view of the world,
the European courts are plotting to counteract it.
Alliances, contrary to all former systems, are agitating,
and a common interest of courts is forming against the
common interest of man. This combination draws a
line that runs throughout Europe, and presents a cause
so entirely new as to exclude all calculations from former
circumstances. While despotism warred with despotism,
man had no interest in the contest ; but in a cause that
unites the soldier with the citizen, and nation with nation,
the despotism of courts, though it feels the dangers, and
meditates revenge, is afraid to strilce.
No question has arisen within the records of history
that pressed with the importance of the present. It is
not whether this or that party shall be in or out, whether
whig or tory, high or low shaU prevail ; but whether man
shall inherit his rights, and universal civilization take
place? Whether the fruits of his labours shaU be en-
joyed by himself or consumed by the profligacy of govern-
ments ? Whether robbery shaU be banished from courts,
and wretchedness from countries ?
When, in countries that are called civUized, we see
age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows,
something must be wrong in the system of government.
It would seem, by the exterior appearance of such
countries, that aU was happiness ; but there lies hidden
from the eye of common observation, a mass of wretched-
ness that has scarcely any other chance, than to expire in
poverty or infamy. Its entrance into life is marked with
the presage of its fate ; and until this is remedied, it is
in vain to punish.
.Civil government does not copsist in _exec Htionsj but
in ]tTiS3ang"lucirprowSionTortK^^
and the support of age, as to exclude, as much as possible,
profligacy from the one and despair from the other.
RIGHTS OF MAN
195
Instead of this, the resources of a country are lavished
upon kings, upon courts, upon hirelings, impostors, and
prostitutes ; and even the poor themselves, with all their
wants upon them, are compelled to support the fraud
that oppresses them.
Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor ?
The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness
in their condition. Bred up without morals, and cast
upon the world without a prospect, they are the exposed
sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity. The millions that
are superfluously wasted upon governments are more
than sufficient to reform those evils, and to benefit the
condition of every man in a nation, not included within
the purlieus of a court. This I hope to make appear in
the progress of this work.
It is the nature of compassion to associate with mis-
fortune. In taking up this subject I seek no recompence
— I fear no consequence. Fortified with that proud
integrity that disdains to triumph or to yield, I will
advocate the Rights of Man.
It is to my advantage that I have served an apprentice-
ship in life. I know the value of moral instruction, and
I have seen the danger of the contrary.
At an early period, little more than sixteen years of
age, raw and adventurous, and heated with the false
heroism of a master ^ who had served in a man-of-wnr, I
became the carver of my own fortune, and entered op
board the Terrible, Privateer, Captain Death. From this
adventure I was happily prevented by the affectionate
and moral remonstrance of a good father, who, from his
own habits of life, being of the Quaker profession, must
begin to look upon me as lost. But the impression,
much as it effected at the time, began to wear away, and
I entered afterwards in the King of Prussia Privateer,
Captain Mendez, and went with her to sea. Yet from
such a beginning, and with all the inconvenience of early
life against me, I am proud to say that with a persever-
ance undismayed by difficulties, a disinterestedness that
^ Rev. William Knowles, master of the grammar school of
Thetford, in Norfolk. — Author.
196 RIGHTS OF MAN
compelled respect, I have not only contributed to raise
a new empire in the world, founded on a new systeni of
government, but I have arrived at an eminence in political
literature, the most difficult of all lines to succeed and
excel in, which aristocracy with all its aids has not been
able to reach or to rival.
Knowing my own heart and feeling myself as I now
do, superior to all the skirmish of party, the inveteracy
of interested or mistaken opponents, I answer not to
falsehood or abuse, but proceed to the defects of the
English government.^
^Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected
that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be
suspicious of public characters, but with regard to myself I
am perfectly easy on this head. I did not, at my first setting
out in public life, nearly seventeen years ago, turn my thoughts
to subjects of governinent from motives of interest, and my !
conduct from that moment to this proves the fact. I saw an
opportunity in wliich I thought I could do some good, and I ,
followed exactly what my heart dictated. I neither read books,
nor studied other people’s opinion. I thought for myself. The ,
case was this : —
During the suspension of the old governments in America, }
both prior to and at the breaking out of hostilities, I was struck !
uith the order and decorum with which everything was con- !
ducted, and impressed with the idea that a little more than what
society naturally performed was all the government that was ■
necessary, and that monarchy and aristocracy were frauds and
impositions upon mankind. On these principles I published
the pamphlet Common Sense. The success it met with was beyond
anything since the invention of printing. T gave the copyright
to every state in the Union, and the demand ran to not less than
one hundred thousand copies. I continued the subject in the
same manner, under the title of The Crisis, till the complete
e-stablishment of the revolution. ^
After the declaration of independence Congress unanimously,
and unknown to me, appointed me secretary in the foreign
department. This was agreeable to me, because it gave me the
opportunity of seeing into the abilities of foreign courts, and their
manner of doing business. But a misunderstanding arising ;
between Congress and me respecting one of their commissioners
then in Europe, Mr. Silas Deane, I resigned the office, and
declined at the same time the pecuniary offers made by the j
Ministers of France and Spain, M. Gerard and Don Tuane !
Mirralles.
I had by tliis time so completely gained the ear and confidence :
RIGHTS OF MAN
197
I begin with charters and corporations.
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives
of America, and my own independence was become so visible,
as to give me a range in political writing beyond, perhaps, what
any man ever possessed in any country, and, what is more
extraordinary, I held it undiminished to the end of the war,
and enjoy it in the same manner to the present moment. As
my object was not myself, I set out with, the determination, and
happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or
censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my
purpose by any personal altercation, and the man who cannot do
this is not fit for a public character.
When the war ended I v/ent from Philadelphia to Borden-
Town, on the east bank of the Delaware, where I have a small
place. Congress was at this time at Prince Town, fifteen miles
distant, and General Washington had taken his headquarters
at Rocky Hill, within the neighbourhood of Congress, for the
purpose of resigning up his commission (the object for which, he
accepted it being accomplished), and of retiring to private life.
While he was on this business he wrote me the letter wtdeh we
here subjoin : —
" Rocky Hill, Sept. 10, 1783.
" I have learned since I have been at this place that you are at
Borden-Town. Whether for the sake of retoement or economy
I know not. Be it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if
you will come to this place, and partake with me, I shall be
exceedingly happy to see you at it.
“ Your presence may remind Congress of your pa.st services
to this country, and if it is in my power to impress them, com-
mand my best exertions wdth freedom, as they will be rendered
cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance
of your works, and who, with much pleasure, subscribes liimself —
Your sincere friend,
" G. Washington.”
During the war, in the latter end of the year 1780, I formed
to myself a design of coming over to England, and communicated
it to General Greene, who was then in Philadelphia on his route
to the southward. General Washington being tben at too great
a distance to communicate with immediately. I was strongly
impressed with the idea that if I could get over to England
without being known, and only remain in safety till I could
get out a publication, that I could open the eyes of the country
with respect to the madness and stupidity of its government.
I saw that the parties in parliament had pitted themselves as
far as they could go, and could make no new impressions on each
other. General Greene entered fully into my vie\rs, but the
affair of Arnold and Andr6 happening just after, he changed his
mind, and under strong apprehensions for my safety, wrote very
RIGHTS OF MAN
198
rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking
rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants ;
but charters, by annulling those rights in the majority,
leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. If
charters were constructed so as to express in direct
terms, " that every inhabitant, who is not a member of a
corporation, shall not exercise the right of voting,” such
charters would, in the face, be charters not of rights,
but of exclusion. The effect is the same under the form
they now stand; and the only persons on whom they
operate are the persons whom they exclude. Those
whose rights are guaranteed, by not being taken away,
exercise no other rights than as members of the com-
munity they are entitled to without a charter; and,
pressingly to me from Annapolis, in Maryland, to give up the
design, which, with some reluctance, I did. Soon after this I
accompanied Colonel Lawrens, son of Mr. Lawrens, who was
then in the Tower, to France on business from Congress. We
landed at L'Orient, and while I remained there, he being gone '
forward, a circumstance occurred that renewed my former
design. An English packet from Falmouth to New York, with *
the Government dispatches on board, was brought into L’Orient. I
That a packet should be taken is no extraordinary thing, but that ;
the dispatches should be taken with it will scarcely bo credited,
as they are always slung at the cabin window in a bag loaded
with cannon-ball, and ready to be sunk at a moment. The fact,
however, is as I have stated it, for the dispatches came into my
hands, and I read them. The capture, as I was informed,
succeeded by the following stratagem : — The captain of the
Madame privateer, who spoke English, on coming up with the
packet, passed himself for the captain of an English frigate, and
invited the captain of the packet on board, which, when done,
he sent some of his own hands back, and secured the mail. But
be the circumstance of the capture what it majr, I speak with
certainty as to the government dispatches. They were sent up
to Paris to Count Vergennes, and when Colonel Lawrens and
myself returned to America we took the originals to Congress.
By these dispatches I saw into the stupichty of the English
Cabinet far more than I otherwise could have done, and I re-
newed my former design. But Colonel Lawrens was so un-
willing to return alone, more especially as, among other matters,
we had a charge of upwards of two hundred thousand pounds 1
sterling in money, that I gave in to his wishes, and finally gave ■
up my plan. But I am now certain that if I could have executed
it that it w'ould not have been altogether unsuccessful. — Author, j
RIGHTS OF MAN
199
therefore, all charters have no other than an indirect
negative operation. They do not give rights to A, but
they make a difference in favour of A by taking away the
right of B, and consequently are instruments of injustice.
But charters and corporations have a more extensive
evil effect than what relates merely to elections. They
are sources of endless contentions in the places where
they exist, and they lessen the common rights of national
society. A native of England, under the operation of
these charters and corporations, cannot be said to be an
Englishman in the full sense of the word. He is not free
of the nation in the same manner that a Frenchman is
free of France, and an American of America. His rights
are circumscribed to the town, and in some cases to the
parish of his birth ; and all other parts, though in his
native land, are to him as a foreign country. To acquire
a residence in these he must undergo a local naturalization
by purchase, or he is forbidden or expelled the place.
I'his species of feudality is kept up to aggrandize the cor-
poration by the ruin of towns ; and the effect is visible.
The generality of corporation towns are in a state of
solitary decay, and prevented from further ruin only by
some circumstance in their situation, such as a navigable
river, or a plentiful surrounding country. As population
is one of the chief sources of wealth (for without it land
itself has no value), everything wiiich operates to prevent
it must lessen the value of property ; and as corporations
have not only this tendency, but directly this effect, they
cannot but be injurious. If an^^ policy were to be fol-
lowed, instead of that of general freedom to every person
to settle where he choose (as in France or America) it
would be more consistent to give encouragement to new
comers than to preclude their admission by exacting
premiums from them.^
1 It is difficult to account for the origin of charter and cor-
poration towns, unless we suppose them to have arisen out of,
or been connected with, some species of garrison service. The
times in which they began justify this idea. The generality of
those towns have been garrisons, and the corporations were
charged witli the care of the gates of the towns when no military
200
RIGHTS OF MAN
The persons most immediately interested in the
abolition of corporations are the inhabitants of the towns
where corporations are established. The instances of
Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield shew, by con-
trast, the injury which these Gothic institutions are to
property and commerce. A few examples may be found,
such as that of London, whose natural and commercial
advantages, owing to its situation on the Thames, are
capable of bearing up against the political evils of a
corporation ; but in almost all other cases the fatality is
too visible to be doubted or denied.
Though the whole nation is not so directly affected by
the depression of jiroperty in corporation towns as the
inhabitants themselves, it partakes of the consequence.
By lessening the value of property, the quantity of
national commerce is curtailed. Every man is a cus-
tomer in proportion to his ability ; and as all parts of a
nation trade with each other, whatever affects any of the
parts must necessarily communicate to the whole.
As one of the houses of the English parliament is, in a
great measure, made up of elections from these cor-
porations; and as it is unnatural that a pure stream
should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a
continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral
honour and good political principles cannot submit to
the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts by which such
elections are carried. To be a successful candidate he
must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just
legislator; and being thus disciplined to corruption by
the mode of entering into parliament, it is not to be
expected that the representative should be better than
the man.
Mr. Burke, in spealdng of the English representation,
garrison was present. Their refusing or granting admission to
strangers, wliich has produced the custom of giving, selling, and
buying freedom, has more of the nature of garrison authority
than civil government. Soldiers are free of all corporations
throughout the nation, by the same propriety that every soldier
is free of every garrison, and no other persons are. He can follow
any employment, with the permission of his oficers, in any
corporation town throughout the nation. — Author.*
SOI
RIGHTS OF MAN
lias advanced as bold a challenge as ever was given in
the days of chivalry. “Our representation/' says he,
“ has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for
which a representation of the people can be desired or
devised. I defy/’ continues he, “ the enemies of our
constitution to .shew the contrary.” This declaration
from a man who has been in constant opposition to all the
measures of parliament the whole of his political life, a
year or two excepted, is most extraordinary; and,
comparing him with himself, admits of no other alterna-
tive, than that he acted against his judgment as a member,
or has declared contrary to it as an author.
But it is not in the representation only that the defects
lie, and therefore I proceed in the next place to the
aristocracy.
What is called the House of Peers is constituted on a
ground very similar to that against which there is
a law in other cases. It amounts to a combination
of persons in one common interest. No better reason
can be given why a house of legislation should be com-
posed entirely of men whose occupation consists in
letting landed property, than why it should be composed
of those who hire, or of brewers, of bakers, or any
other separate class of men.
Mr. Burke calls this house “ the great ground and pillar
of security to the landed interest.' ’ Let us examine
this idea.
What pillar of security will the landed interest require
more than any other interest in the state, or what
right has it to a distinct and separate representation
from the general interest of a nation? The only use
to be made of this power (and which it has always made)
is to ward off taxes from itself, and throw the burden
upon such articles of consumption by which, itself would
be least affected.
That this has been the consequence (and will always
be the consequence) of constructing governments on
combinations, is evident with respect to England from
the history of its taxes.
Notwithstanding taxes have encreased and multiplied
202
RIGHTS OF MAN
Upon every article of common consumption, the land-
tax, which more particularly affects this “ pillar,” has
diminished. In 1778 the amount of the land-tax
was ;^i,95o,ooo, which is half-a-million less than it pro-
duced almost a hundred years ago,^ notwithstanding
the rentals are in many instances doubled since that
period.
Before the coming of the Hanoverians, the taxes were
divided in nearly equal proportions between the land
and articles of consumption, the land bearing rather the
largest share ; but since that sera nearly thirteen millions
annually of new taxes have been thrown upon con-
sumption ; the consequence of which has been a constant
encrease in the number and wretchedness of the poor,
and in the amount of the poor rates. Yet here again
the burden does not fall in equal proportions on the
aristocracy with the rest of the community. Their
residences, whether in town or country, are not mixed
with the habitations of the poor. They live apart from
distress and the expence of relieving it. It is in manu-
facturing towns and labouring villages , that those burdens
press the heaviest, in many of which it is one class of poor |
supporting another. I
Several of the most heavy and productive taxes are ^
so contrived as to give an exemption to this pillar, I
thus standing in its own defence. The tax upon beer
brewed for sale does not affect the aristocracy, who
brew their own beer free from this duty. It falls only
on those who have not conveniency or ability to brew,
and who must purchase it in small quantities. But
what will mankind think of the justice of taxation when
they know that this tax alone, from which the aristocracy
are from circumstances exempt, is nearly equal to the
whole of the land-tax, being in the year 1788, and it is
not less now, £1,666,152, and v/ith its proportion of the
taxes on malt and hops, it exceeds it. That a single
article, thus partially consumed, and that chiefly by the ;
working part, should be subject to a tax, equal to that on
^ See Sir John Sinclair’s History of the Revenue, The land-tax
in 1646 was £2,473,499. — Author.
RIGHTS OF MAN
203
the whole rental of a nation, is, perhaps, a fact not to be
paralleled in the histories of revenue.
This is one of the consequences resulting from a house
of legislation composed on the ground of a combination
of common interest ; for whatever their separate politics
as to parties may be, in this they are united. Whether
a combination acts to raise the price of any article for
sale, or the rate of wages, or whether it acts to throw
taxes from itself upon another class of the community,
the principle and the effect are the same; and if the
one be illegal, it will be difficult to shew that the other
ought to exist.
It is no use to say that taxes are first proposed in the
house of commons ; for as the other house has always a
negative, it can always defend itself; and it would be
ridiculous to suppose that its acquiescence in the measures
to be proposed were not understood beforehand. Be-
sides which it has obtained so much influence by borough-
traffic, and so many of its relations and connections are
distributed on both sides the commons, as to give it,
besides an absolute negative in one house, apreponderancy
in the other in all matters of common concern.
It is difficult to discover what is meant by the landed
interest, if it does not mean a combination of aristocratical
landholders opposing their own pecuniary interest to
that of the farmer, and every branch of trade, commerce,
and manufacture. In all other respects it is the only
interest that needs no partial protection. It enjoys the
general protection of the world. Every individual,
high or low, is interested in the fruits of the earth;
men, women, and children, of all ages and degrees,
will turn out to assist the farmer, rather than a harvest
should not be got in; and they will not act thus by an^r
other property. It is the only one for which the common
prayer of mankind is put up, and the only one that can
never fail from the want of means. It is the interest,
not of the policy, but of the existence of man, and when
it ceases he must cease to be.
No other interest in a nation stands on the same united
support. Commerce, manufactures, arts, sciences, and
RIGHTS OF MAN
204
everything else, compared with this, are supported but
in parts. Their prosperity or their decay has not the
same universal influence. When the vallies laugh and
sing it is not the farmer only but all creation that rejoices.
It is a prosperity that excludes all envy ; and this cannot
be said of anything else. I
Why, then, does Mr. Burke talk of his house of peers i
as the pillar of the landed interest ? Were that pillar to
sink into the earth, the same landed property would ;
continue, and the same ploughing, sovdng, and reaping
would go on. The aristocracy are not the farmers who
work the land and raise the produce, but are the mere .
consumers of the rent; and when compared with the
active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who
neither collect the honey nor foim the hive, but exist
only for lazy enjoyment.
Mr. Burke, in his first essay, called aristocracy “ the
Corinthian capital of polished society.’' Towards com- !
pleating the figure he has now added the pillar) but '
still the base is wanting : and whenever a nation chuse .
to act as Samson, not blind, but bold, down will go the j
temple of Dagon, the Lords and the Philistines. :
If a house of legislation is to be composed of men ■
of one class for the purpose of protecting a distinct i
interest, all the other interests should have the same. ^
The inequality as well as the burden of taxation arises i
from admitting it in one case and not in all. Had there i
been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws; i
or a house of merchants and manufacturers, the taxes
had neither been so unequal nor so excessive. It is :
from the power of taxation being in the hands of those !
who can throw so great a part of it from their own
shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
Men of small or moderate estates are more injured
by the taxes being throwm on articles of consumption
than they are eased by warding it from landed property
for the following reasons :
First, They consume more of the productive taxable j
articles, in proportion to their property, than those,!
of large estates. |
RIGHTS OF MAN 205
Secondly, their residence is chiefly in towns, and their
property in houses ; and the encrease of the poor-rates,
occasioned by taxes on consumption, is in much greater
proportion than the land-tax has been favoured. In
Binningham, the poor-rates are not less than seven
shillings in the pound. From this, as is already observed,
the aristocracy are in a great measure exempt.
These are but a part of the mischiefs flowing from the
wretched scheme of a house of peers.
As a combination, it can always throw a considerable
portion of taxes from itself; and as an hereditary
house, accountable to nobody, it resembles a rotten
borough, whose consent is to be courted by interest.
There are but a few of its members, who are not in some
mode or other participators, or disposers of the public
money. One turns a candle-holder, or a lord in waiting ;
another a lord of the bed-chamber, a groom of the stole,
or any insignificant nominal office to which a salary is
annexed, paid out of the public taxes, and which avoids
the direct appearance of corruption. Such situations
are derogatory to the character of man ; and where they
can be submitted to, honour cannot reside.
To all these are to be added the numerous dependents,
the long list of younger branches and distant relations,
who are to be provided for at the public expence; in
short, were an estimation to be made of the charge of
aristocracy to a nation, it will be found nearly equal to
that of supporting the poor. The Duke of Richmond
alone (and there are cases similar to his) takes away as
much for himself as would maintain two thousand poor
and aged persons. Is it, then, any wonder that under
such a system of government, taxes and rates have
multiplied to their present extent ? ^
In stating these matters, I speak in open and disin-
terested language dictated by no passion but that of
humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers
because I thought them improper, but have declined
rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no
wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful.
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as
H
RIGHTS OF MAN
ao6
they are, without regard to place or person ; my country
is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Mr. Burke, in speaking of the aristocratical law of
primogeniture, says ; “ It is the standing law of our
landed inheritance ; and which, without question, has a
tendency, and I think,'’ continues he, “ a happy ten-
dency, to preserve a character of weight and conse-
quence.”
Mr. Burke may call this law what he pleases, but
humanity and impartial reflection will denounce it as a
law of brutal injustice. Were we not accustomed to the
daily practice, and did we only hear of it as the law of some
distant part of the world, we should conclude that the
legislators of such countries had not yet arrived at a
state of civilization.
As to its preserving a character of weight and conse-
quence, the case appears to me directly the reverse.
It is an attaint upon character ; a sort of privateering on
family property. It may have weight among dependent
tenants, but it gives none on a scale of national, and
much less of universal, character. Speaking for myself,
my parents were not able to give me a shilling beyond
what they gave me in education ; and to do this they dis-
tressed themselves ; 5'’et I possess more of what is called
consequence in the world, than any one in Mr. Burke’s
catalogue of aristocrats.
Having thus glanced at some of the defects of the two
houses of parliament, I proceed to what is called the crown,
upon which I shall be very concise.
^ It signifies a nominal office of a million sterling a-year,
1 This and the succeeding paragraph were omitted in the
Symonds edition, witli this comment : " There follows on p- 107
of the original edition, two paragraphs, making together about
eleven lines of the same printing as in this edition. Those two
short paragraphs are taken into the information as prosecutable
matter ; but on what ground such a prosecution can be supported
I am at a loss to discover. Every part of which a government is
composed must be alike fully open to examination and investiga-
tion ; and where this is not the case the country is not in a state
•of freedom ; for it is only by the free and rational exercise of this
right, that errors, imjjositions, and absurdities can be detected
and remedied either in the parts severally, or in the whole.
RIGHTS OF MAN
207
the business of which consists in receiving the money.
Whether the person be wise or foolish, sane or insane,
a native or a foreigner, matters not. Every ministry
acts upon the same idea that Mr. Burke writes, namely
that the people must be hood-winked, and held in
superstitious ignorance by some bugbear or other;
, and what is called the crown answers this purpose,
I and therefore it answers all the purposes to be expected
from it. This is more than can be said of the other
I two branches,
1 The hazard to which this office is exposed in all
i countries is not from anything that can happen to the
! man, but from what may happen to the nation — the
j danger of its coming to its senses.
It has been customary to call the crown the executive
power, and the custom is continued, though the reason
has ceased.
It was called the executive, because the person whom
it signified used formerly to act in the character of a
judge, in administering or executing the laws. The
tribunals were then a part of the court. The power,
therefore, which is now called the judicial, is what was
called the executive ; and, consequently, one or other of
the terms is redundant, and one of the offices useless.
When we speak of the crown now, it means nothing;
it signifies neither a judge nor a general; besides which
it is the laws that govern, and not the man. The old
terms are kept up, to give an appearance of consequence
to empty forms ; and the only effect they have is that
of encreasing expences.
Before I proceed to the means of rendering govern- ,
ments more conducive to the general happiness of
' mankind than they are at present, it will not be improper
to take a review of the progress of taxation in England.
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on,
they are never taken off. However true this may
If there is any part of a government on which the exercise
of this right ought to be more fully insisted upon by a nation
than on another part, it is on that part for which the nation pays
the most money, and which, in England, is called the crown.”’
2o8
RIGHTS OF MAN
i
have been of late, it was not always so. Either, there-
fore, the people of former times were more watchful
over government than those of the present, or govern-
ment was administered with less extravagance.
It is now seven hundred years since the Norman
Conquest, and the establishment of what is called the
crown. Taking this portion of time in seven separate
periods of one hundred years each, the amount of annual
taxes, at each period, will be as follows ; —
Annual amount of taxes levied by William the Con-
queror, beginning in the year 1066 00,000
Annual amount of taxes at one hundred years from
the conquest (1166) 200,000
Annual amount of taxes at two hundred years from
the conquest (1266) ... 150,000
Annual amount of taxes at three hundred years from
the conquest (1366) 130,000
Annual amount of taxes at four hundred years from
the conquest (1466) 100,000
These statements and those which foUow, are talcen
from Sir John Sinclair’s History of the Revenue) by
which it appears, that taxes continued decreasing for
four hundred years, at the expiration of which time they
were reduced three-fourths, viz., from four hundred
thousand pounds to one hundred thousand. The people
of England of the present day, have a traditionary and
historical idea of the bravery of their ancestors ; but
whatever their virtues or their vices might have been,
they certainly were a people who would not be imposed
upon, and who kept governments in awe as to taxation,
if not as to principle. Though they were not able to
expel the monarchical usurpation, they restricted it to a
republican oeconomy of taxes.
Let us now review the remaining three hundred years.
Annual amount of taxes at five hundred years fi'om
the conquest (1566) ... ... ... ... ... ^^500,000
Annual amount of taxes at six hundred yeans from
the conquest (1666) 1,800,000
Annual amount of taxes at the present time (1791) ... 17,000,000
The difference between the first four hundred years
, RIGHTS OF MAN zog
I and the last three is so astonishing, as to warrant an
i opinion that the national character of the English has
i changed. It would have been impossible to have
dragooned the former English into the excess of taxation
that now exists ; and when it is considered that the pay
of the army, the navy, and all the revenue officers, is
the same now as it was above a hundred years ago,
! when the taxes were not above a tenth part of what they
I are at present, it appears impossible to account for the
enormous expenditure on any other ground than
i extravagance, corruption, and intrigue.^
: ^ Several of the court newspapers have of late made frequent I
I mention of W at Tyler. That his memory should be traduced by I
j court sycophants and all those who live on the spoil of a public |
j is not to be wondered at. He was, however, the means of checking |
I the rage and injustice of taxation in his time, and the nation I
j owed much to his valour. The history is concisely this : — In |
the time of Richard II. a poll tax was levied of one shilling per I
head upon every person, of whatever estate or condition, on poor I
as well as rich, above the age of fifteen years. If any favour I
was shown in the law it was to the rich rather than to the poor, I
as no person could be charged more than twenty shillings for i
himself, family, and servants, though ever so numerous, while aU
other families under the number of twenty were charged per head. !
Poll taxes have always been odious, but this being also oppressive '
and unjust, it excited, as it naturally must, universal detestation
among the poor and middle classes. The person known by the
name of Wat Tyler, whose proper name was Walter, and a tyler
by trade, lived at Deptford. The gatherer of the poll tax, on I
coming to his house demanded tax for one of his daughters,
whom Tyler declared was under the age of fifteen. The tax- f
gatherer insisted on satisfying himself, and began an indecent !
examination of the girl, which, enraging the father, he struck i
him with a hammer that brought him to the ground, and was the I
cause of his death.
This circumstance served to bring the discontent to an issue. I
The inhabitants of the neighbourhood espoused the cause of ,
Tyler, who in a few days was joined, according to some historians, I
by upwards of fifty thousand men, and chosen their chief. With ■-
this force he marched to London to demand an abolition of the f
tax and a redress of other grievances. The court, finding itself |
in a forlorn condition, and unable to make resistance, agreed, f
with Richard at its head, to hold a conference with Tyler in I
Smithfield, maldng many fair professions, courtier-like, of its
dispositions to redress the oppressions. While Richard and <:
Tyler were in conversation on these matters, each being on
210
RIGHTS OF MAN
With the revolution of 1688, and more so since the
Hanover succession, came the destructive system of
continental intrigues, and the rage for foreign wars
and foreign dominion; systems of such secure mystery
that the expences admit of no accounts; a single liae
stands for millions. To what excess taxation might
have extended, had not the French revolution contributed
to break up the system, and put an end to pretences,
is impossible to say. Viewed, as that revolution ought
to be, as the fortunate means of lessening the load of
taxes of both countries, it is of as much importance
to England as to France; and, if properly improved
to all the advantages of which it is capable, and to which
it leads, deserves as much celebration in one country as
the other.
In pursuing this subject, I shall begin with the matter
that first presents itself, that of lessening the burden of
taxes ; and shall then add such matter and propositions,
respecting the three countries of England, France, and
America, as the present prospect of things appears to
justify. I mean, an alliance of the three, for the purposes
that will be mentioned in their proper place.
What has happened may happen again. By the state-
ment before shown of the progress of taxation, it is seen
that taxes have been lessened to a fourth part of what
they had formerly been. Though the present circum-
stances do not admit of the same reduction, yet they
admit of such a beginning as may accomplish that end
in less time than in the former case.
horseback, Walworth, then Mayor of London, and one of the
creatures of the court, watched an opportunity, and like a
cowardly assassin, stabbed Tyler with a dagger, and two or three
others falling upon him he was instantly sacrificed.
Tyler appears to have been an intrepid disinterested man with
respect to himself. All his proposals made to Richard were on a
more just and public ground than those which had been made to
John by the Barons, and notwithstanding the sycophancy of his-
torians and men like Mr. Burke who seek to gloss over a base
action of the court by traducing Tyler, his fame will outlive their
falsehood. If the Barons merited a monument to be erected
at Runnymede, Tyler merits one in Smitbiield. — Author.
RIGHTS OF man-
211
The amount of taxes for the year ending at Michaelmas,
1788, was as follows ; —
Land tax
Customs ...
Excise (including old and new malt)
Stamps ... ...
Miscellaneous taxes and incidents ...
£^5.57^.970
3,789,274
6,751.727
1,278,214
Since the year 1788 upwards of one million new taxes,
have been laid on, besides the produce from the lotteries,
and as the taxes have in general been more productive
since than before, the amount may be taken in round
numbers at £iy,ooo,ooo.
N.B. — ^The expence of collection and the drawbacks,
which together amount to nearly two miHions, are
paid out of the gross amount, and the above is the nett
sum paid into the exchequer.
This sum of seventeen millions is applied to two
different purposes, the one to pay the interest of the
national debt, the other to the current expences of each
year. About nine millions are appropriated to the
former, and the remainder, being nearly eight millions,
to the latter. As to the milUon said to be applied
to the reduction of the debt, it is so much Idee paying
with one hand and taking out with the other as not to
merit much notice.
It happened fortunately for France that she possessed
national domains for paying off her debt, and thereby
lessening her taxes; but as this is not the case with
England, her reduction of taxes can only take place by
reducing the current expences, which may now be done
to the amount of four or five millions annually, as will
hereafter appear. When this is accomplished it will
more than counterbalance the enormous charge of the
American war, and the saving will be from the same
source from whence the evil arose.
As for the national debt, however heavy the interest
may be in taxes, yet as it serves to keep alive a capital
212
RIGHTS OF MAN
useful to commerce, it balances by its effects a con-
siderable part of its own weight; and as the quantity
of gold and silver in England, is by some means or other,
short of its proper proportion ^ (being not more than
twenty millions whereEis it should be sixty) it would,
besides the injustice, be bad policy to extinguish a capital
that serves to supply that defect. But with respect
to the current expence whatever is saved therefrom
is gain. The excess may serve to keep corruption alive,
but it has no reaction on credit and commerce like
the interest of the debt.*
It is now very probable that the English government
(I do not mean the nation) is unfriendly to the French
revolution. Whatever serves to expose the intrigue
and lessen the influence of courts by lessening taxation
will be unwelcome to those who feed upon the spoil.
Whilst the clamour of French intrigue, arbitrary power,
popery, and wooden shoes could be kept up the nation
was easily allured and alarmed into taxes. Those days
are now past ; deception, it is to be hoped, has reaped
its last harvest, and better times are in prospect for
both countries and for the world.
Taking it for granted that an alliance may be formed
between England, France, and America for the purposes
hereafter to be mentioned, the national expences of
France and England may consequently be lessened.
The same fleets and armies will no longer be necessary
to either, and the reduction can be made ship for ship
on each side. But to accomplish these objects the
governments must necessarily be fitted to a common
and correspondent principle. Confidence can never
take place while an hostile disposition remains in either,
or where mystery and secrecy on one side is opposed
to candour and openness on the other.
These matters admitted, the national expences might
be put back for the sake of a precedent, to what they
were at some period when France and England were not
enemies. This, consequently, must be prior to the
^Foreign intrigue, foreign wars, and foreign dominions wUl
in a great measure account for the deficiency. — Author.
RIGHTS OF MAN 213
Hanover succession, and also to the revolution of 1688.^
^ I happened to be in England at the celebration of the
centenary of the Revolution of 16S8. The characters of William
and Mary have always appeared to me detestable — ^the one
seeking to destroy his uncle, and the other her father, to get
possession of power themselves — yet as the nation was disposed
to think something of that event, I felt hurt as seeing it ascribe
the whole reputation of it to a man who had undertaken it as
a jobb, and -who, besides what he otherwise got, charged six
hundred thousand pounds for the expence of the little fleet that
brought him from Holland. George I. acted the same close-
fisted part as William had done, and bought the Duchy of Bremen
wdth the money he got from England, two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds over and above his pay as king. He thus
purchased it at the expence of England, and added it to his
Hanoverian dominions for his own private profit. In fact,
every nation that does not govern itself is governed as a jobb.
England has been the prey of jobbs ever since the revolution. —
Author.
As the above note formed part of the indictment against
Paine he omitted it from the Symonds edition and inserted the
following in its place :
" On page 116 of the original edition of this work is a note
in which similar remarks are made on the characters of William
and Mary, the one fighting against his uncle, and the other against
her own father, as have been made by other writers. Dr. Johnson,
I believe, even while he was a pensioner of the present court
expressed himself in stronger terms of disapprobation than I
have done. Why a change of policy has now taken place, of
prosecuting at this time what was permitted and apparently
encouraged at another time, the persons concerned can best
explain. In the same note it is stated that William charged six
hundred thousand pounds for the expences of the Dutch fleet
that brought him from Holland ; and that George the First pur-
chased the duchies of Bremen and Verden with two hundred and
fifty thousand pounds which he got from England and added them
to his Hanoverian dominions for his own use. The note in which
these matters are contained is put into the prosecution; but
for what purpose I do not discover.
“ The bill of costs delivered in for the Dutch fleet, as stated
in Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue (Part the third,
p. 40) was £6^6,500 and was reduced to £600,000 by parliament.
And in 1701 the house of commons came to a resolution, by which
it appears that William was not very scrupulous or veiy careful
in his expenditure of English money. The resolution is as
follows : — ' That it is notorious that many millions of money
had been given to his majesty (meaning the said William) for
the service of the public, which remain yet unaccounted for.'
See the Journal.
RIGHTS OF MAN
214
The first instance that presents itself, antecedent to
those dates, is in the very wasteful and profligate times of
Charles the Second ; at which time England and France
acted as allies. If I have chosen a period of great
extravagance it will serve to show modern extravagance
in a still worse light ; especially as the pay of the navy,
the anny, and the revenue officers has not encreased since
that time.
The peace establishment vras then as follows (see Sir
John Sinclair’s “ History of the Revenue ”) : —
Navy ...
Army . . ,
Ordnance
Civil List
/■:! 00,000
212,000
40,000
462,115
014,115
The parliament, however, settled the whole annual
peace establishment at £1,200,000.^ - If we go back to
the time of Elizabeth the amount of all the taxes was
but half a million, yet the nation sees nothing during
that period that reproaches it with want of consequence.
All circumstances, then, taken together, arising from
the French revolution, from the approaching harmony
and reciprocal interest of the two nations, the abolition
of the court intrigue on both sides, and the progress of
knowledge in the science of governing, the annual
expenditure might be put back to one million and a
half, viz. : —
Navy ... ... £500,000
Army ... ... ... ... ... ... 500,000
Expences of government ... ... ... 500,000
jfi,5oo,ooo
“ As to the purchase of Bremen and Verden with the money
obtained from England by George the First, the Journals of
parliament will prove the fact, and the opposition it met with in
parliament will shew the manner in which it was very generally
considered by the faction.”
^ Charles, like his predecessors and successors, finding that war
was the harvest of governments, engaged in a war with the
Dutch, the expence of which encreased the annual expenditure
to 1, 800,000, as stated under the date of 1666, but the peace
establishment was but ;^i,2oo,ooo. — Author.
RIGHTS OF MA.N
215
Even this sum is six times greater than the expences
of government are in America, yet the civil internal
government in England {I mean that administered by
quarter sessions, juries, and assize, and which, in fact,
is nearly the whole, and performed by the nation),
is less expence upon the revenue than the same species
and portion of government is in America.
It is time that nations should be rational, and not be
governed like animals, for the pleasure of their riders.
To read the history of kings, a man would be almost
inclined to suppose that government consisted in stag-
hunting, and that every nation paid a million a-year
to a huntsman. Man ought to have pride or shame
enough to blush at being thus imposed upon, and when
he feels his proper character he will. Upon all subjects
of this nature, there is often passing in the mind a train
of ideas he has not yet accustomed himself to encourage
and communicate. Restrained by something that puts
on the character of prudence, he acts the hypocrite upon
himself as well as to others. It is, however, curious, to
observe how soon this speU can be dissolved. A single
expression, boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes
put a whole company into their proper feelings : and
whole nations are acted upon in the same manner.
As to the ofHces of which any civil government may be
composed, it matters but little by what names they
are described. In the routine of business, as before
observed, whether a man be styled a president, a king,
an emperor, a senator, or anything else, it is impossible
that any service he can perform can merit from a nation
more than ten thousand pounds a year ; and as no man
should be paid beyond his services, so every man of
a proper heart will not accept more. Public money
ought to be touched with the most scrupulous conscious-
ness of honour. It is not the produce of riches only,
but of the hard earnings of labour and poverty. It is
drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery.
Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose
mite is not in that mass.
Were it possible that the Congress of America could
2i6
RIGHTS OF MAN
I S’:
I
jli be so lost to their duty, and to the interest of their
* / constituents, as to offer General Washington, as president
liT of America, a million a year, he would not, and he could
jj not, accept it. His sense of honour is of another kind.
It has cost England almost seventy millions sterling
to maintain a family imported from abroad, of very
inferior capacity to thousands in the nation; and
scarcely a year has passed that has not produced some
new mercenary application. Even the physicians’ bills
' f have been sent to the public to be paid. No wonder
*1 that jaUs are crowded, and taxes and poor rates in-
•)f creased. Under such systems, nothing is to be looked
1 f for but what has already happened; and as to reforma-
;| tion, whenever it come, it must be from the nation,
’Iji and not from the government.
' I To show that the sum of five hundred thousand pounds
I is more than sufficient to defray all the expences of the
government, exclusive of navies and armies, the follow-
I ing estimate is added, for any country, of the same extent
as England.
j In the first place, three hundred representatives
i fairly elected, are sufficient for all the purposes to which
I I legislation can apply, and preferable to a larger number.
' 1 They may be divided into two or three houses, or meet
1 in one, as in France, or in any manner a constitution
4 shall direct.
As representation is always considered in free countries,
A as the most honourable of all stations, the allowance
i made to it is merely to defray the expence which the
representatives incur by that service, and not to it as
f an office.
t ■
If an allowance, at the rate of five hundred
pounds per annum, be made to every
I representative, deducting for non-atten-
dance, the expence, if the whole number
■’ attended for six months each year, would
■i he ... ... ... £ 75,000
j The official departments cannot reasonably
exceed the following number, with the
salaries annexed : —
' ; Three offices at ten thousand pounds each . . .
^30,000
RIGHTS OF MAN
217
Ten ditto, at five thousand pounds each ... ^50,000
Twenty ditto, at two thousand pounds each 40,000
Forty ditto, at one thousand pounds each ... 40,000
Two hundred ditto, at five hundred pounds
each ... ... ... ... ... 100,000
Three hundred ditto, at two hundred pounds
each ... ... ... ... ... 60,000
Five hundred ditto, at one hundred pounds
each ... ... ... ... ... 50,000
Seven hundred ditto, at seventy-five pounds
each ... ... 52,500
£m.5oo
If a nation chuse, it can deduct four per cent, from all
offices, and make one of twenty thousand per annum.
All revenue officers are paid out of the monies they
collect, and therefore are not in this estimation.
The foregoing is not offered as an exact detail of
offices, but to show the number of rates and salaries
which five hundred tliousand pounds will support;
and it will, on experience, be found impracticable to
find business sufficient to justify even this expence.
As to the manner in which office business is now per-
formed, the chiefs in several offices, such as the post
office and certain offices in the exchequer, etc., do little
more than sign their names three or four times a year ;
and the whole duty is performed by under-clerks.
Taking, therefore, one million and a half as a sufficient
peace establishment for aU the honest purposes of
government, which is three hundred thousand pounds
more than the peace establishment in the profligate
and prodigal times of Charles the Second (notwithstand-
ing, as has been already observed, the pay and salaries
of the army, navy, and revenue officers continue the same
as at that period), there will remain a surplus of upwards
of six millions out of the present current expences.
The question then will be, how to dispose of this
surplus ?
Whoever has observed the manner in which trade and
taxes twist themselves together, must be sensible of
the impossibility of separating them suddenly.
First. Because the articles now on hand are already
2I8
RIGHTS OF MAN
charged with the duty ; and the reduction cannot take
place on the present stock.
Secondly, Because, on all those articles on which
the duty is charged in the gross, such as per barrel,
hogshead, hundred weight, or tun, the abolition of the duty
does not admit of being divided down so as fully to
relieve the consumer, who purchases by the pint, or
the pound. The last duty laid on strong beer and ale,
was three shillings per barrel, which, if taken off, would
lessen the purchase only half a farthing per pint, and
consequently, would not reach to practical relief.
This being the condition of a great part of the taxes,
it will be necessary to look for such others as are free
from this embarrassment and where the relief will be
direct and visible, and capable of immediate operation.
In the first place, then, the poor-rates are a direct
tax which every housekeeper feels, and who knows
also, to a farthing, the sum which he pays. The national
amount of the whole of the poor-rates is not positively
known, but can be procured. Sir John Sinclair, in his
History of the Revenue, has stated it at ;^3, 100,587. A
considerable part of which is expended in litigations,
in which the poor, instead of being relieved, are tor-
mented. The expence, however, is the same to the parish
from whatever cause it arises.
In Birmingham the amount of poor-rates is fourteen
ihousand pounds a year. This, though a large sum, is
moderate compared with the population. Birmingham
is said to contain seventy thousand souls, and on a
proportion of seventy thousand to fourteen thousand
poor-rates, the national amount of poor-rates, taking
the population of England as seven millions, would be
but one million four hundred thousand pounds. It is,
therefore, most probable, that the population of Birming-
ham is overrated. Fourteen thousand pounds is the
proportion upon fifty thousand souls, taking two
millions of poor-rates, as the national amount.
Be it, however, what it may, it is no other than the
Inconsequence of the excessive burden of taxes, for, at the
-.time when the taxes were very low, the poor were able
RIGHTS OF MAN 219
to maintain themselves; and there were no poor-rates.^
In the present state of things a labouring man, with a
wife and two or three children, does not pay less than
between seven and eight pounds a-year in taxes. He
is not sensible of this, because it is disguised to him in
the articles which he buys, and he thinks only of their
dearness ; but as the taxes take from him, at least, a
fourth part of his yearly earnings, he is consequently
disabled from providing for a family, especially if
himself or any of them are afflicted with sickness.
The first step, therefore, of practical relief, would be
to abolish the poor-rates entirely, and in lieu thereof,
to make a remission of taxes to the poor of double the
amount of the present poor-rates, viz., four millions
annually, out of the surplus taxes. By this measure,
the poor would be benefited two millions, and the
housekeepers two millions. This alone would be
equal to a reduction of one hundred and twenty millions
of the National Debt, and consequently equal to the
whole expence of the American War.
It will then remain to be considered, which is the most
effectual mode of distributing this remission of four
millions.
It is easily seen, that the poor are generally composed
of large families of children, and old people past their
labour. If these two classes are provided for, the remedy
will so far reach to the full extent of the case, that
what remains will be incidental, and in a great measure,
fall within the compass of benefit clubs, which, though
of humble invention, merit to be ranked among the best
modern institutions.
Admitting England to contain seven millions of souls ;
if one-fifth thereof are of that class of poor which need
support, the number will be one million four hundred
thousand. Of this number, one hundred and forty
thousand will be aged poor, as will be hereafter shown,
and for which a distinct provision will be proposed.
1 Poor-rates began about the time of Henry VIII., when the
taxes began to encrease, and they have encreased as the taxes
encreased ever since. — Author.
230
RIGHTS OF MAN
There will then remain one million two hundred and
sixty thousand which, at five souls to each family,
amount to two hundred and fifty-two thousand families,
rendered poor from the expence of children and the
weight of taxes.
The number of children under fourteen years of age,
in each of those families, will be found to be about
five to every two families ; some having two, and others
three ; some one, and others four : some none, and
others five; but it rarely happens that more than five
are under fourteen years of age, and after this age they
are capable of service or of being apprenticed.
Allowing five children (under fourteen years) to every
two families.
The number of children will be 630,000
The number of parents, were they all living,
would be 504,000
It is certain, that if the children are provided for, the
parents are relieved of consequence, because it is from
the expence of bringing up children that their poverty
arises.
Having thus ascertained the greatest number that
can be supposed to need support on account of young
families, I proceed to the mode of relief or distribution,
which is,
To pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family,
out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four
pounds a-year for every child under fourteen years of
age; enjoining the parents of such children to send them
to school, to learn reading, writing, and common
arithmetic; the ministers of every parish, of every
denomination to certify jointly to an ofiice, for that
purpose, that this duty is perfonned. The account
of this expence will be.
For six hundred and thirty thousand children
at /4 per annum each ^^2,520,000
By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the
parents will be relieved, but ignorance will be banished
221
RIGHTS OF MAN
from the rising generation, and the number of poor will
hereafter become less, because their abilities, by the aid
of education, will be greater. Many a youth, with good
natural genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical
trade, such as a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright,
blacksmith, etc., is prevented from getting forward the
whole of his life by the want of a little common education
when a boy.
I now proceed to the case of the aged.
I divide age into two classes. First, the approach
of age, beginning at fifty. Secondly, old age com-
mencing at sixty.
At fifty, though the mental faculties of man are in
full vigour, and his judgment better than at any preceding
date, the bodily powers for laborious life are on the decline.
He cannot bear the same quantity of fatigue as at an
earlier period. He begins to earn less, and is less
capable of enduring wind and weather; and in those
more retired employments where much sight is required,
he fails apace, and sees himself, like an old horse, be-
ginning to be turned adrift.
At sixty his labour ought to be over, at least from
direct necessity. It is painful to see old age working
itself to death, in what are called civilized countries,
for daily bread.
To form some judgment of the number of those above
fifty years of age, I have several times counted the
persons I met in the streets of London, men, women,
and children, and have generally found that the average
is about one in sixteen or seventeen. If it be said that
aged persons do not come much into the streets, so
neither do infants; and a great proportion of grown
children are in schools and in workshops as apprentices.
Taking, then, sixteen for a divisor, the whole number of
persons in England of fifty years and upwards, of both
sexes, rich and poor, wiU be four hundred and twenty
thousand.
The persons to be provided for out of this gross number
will be husbandmen, common labourers, journe3nnen
of every trade and their wives, sailors, and disbanded
222
RIGHTS OF MAN
soldiers, worn out servants , of both sexes, and poor
widows.
There will be also a considerable number of middling
tradesmen, who having lived decently in the former
part of life, begin, as age approaches, to lose their
business, and at last fall to decay.
Besides these there will be constantly thrown off from
the revolution of that wheel which no man can stop
nor regulate, a number from every class of life connected
with commerce and adventure.
To provide for all those accidents, and whatever else
may befall, I take the number of persons who, at one
time or other of their lives, after fifty years of age, may
feel it necessary or comfortable to be better supported
than they can support themselves, and that not as a
matter of grace and favour, but of right, at one-third of
the whole number, which is one hundred and forty
thousand, as stated in page 219, and for whom a distinct
provision was proposed to be made. If there be more,
society, notwithstanding the show and pomposity of
government, is in a deplorable condition in England.
Of this one hundred and forty thousand, I take one
half, seventy thousand, to be of the age of fifty and
under sixty, and the other half to be sixty years and
upwards. Having thus ascertained the probable pro-
portion of the number of aged persons, I proceed to the
mode of rendering their condition comfortable, which is,
To pay to every such person of the age of fifty years,
and until he shall arrive at the age of sixty, the sum of
six pounds per annum out of the surplus taxes, and ten
pounds per annum during life after the age of sixty.
The expence of which will be.
Seventy thousand persons, at per
annum ... ... ... ... ... ^420,000
Seventy thousand ditto, at £10 per annum . . . 700,000
;^i, 120,000
This support, as already remarked, is not of the nature
of a charity but of a right. Every person in England,
male and female, pays on an average in taxes two pounds
RIGHTS OF MAN
223
eight shillings and sixpence per annum from the day
of his, (or her) birth; and if the expence of collection
be added, he pays two pounds eleven shillings and
sixpence ; consequently, at the end of fifty years he has
paid one hundred and twenty-eight pounds fifteen
shillings, and at sixty one hundred and fifty-four pounds
ten shillings. Converting, therefore, his (or her) in-
dividual tax into a tontine, the money he shall receive
after fifty years is but little more than the legal interest
of the nett money he has paid ; the rest is made up from
those whose circumstances do not require them to draw
such support, and the capital in both cases defrays
the expences of government. It is on this ground that I
have extended the probable claims to one-third of the
number of aged persons in the nation. Is it, then, better
that the lives of one hundred and forty thousand aged
persons be rendered comfortable, or that a million a
year of public money be expended on any one individual,
and him often of the most worthless or insignificant
character? Let reason and justice, let honour and
humanity, let even hypocrisy, sycophancy and Mr.
Burke, let George, let Louis, Leopold, Frederic, Catherine,
Cornwallis, or Tippoo Saib, answer the question.^
The sum thus remitted to the poor -will be,
To two hundred and fifty-two thousand poor
families, containing six hundred and
thirty thousand children ^2,520,000
To one hundred and forty thousand aged
persons ... ... ... ... ... 1,120,000
640,000
There will then remain three hundred and sixty
thousand pounds out of the four millions, part of which
may be applied as follows : —
1 Reckoning the taxes by families, five to a family, each
family pays on an average £12 17s. 6d. per annum. To this sum
are to be added the poor rates. Though ail pay taxes in the
articles they consume, all do not pay poor rates. About two
millions are exempted — some as not being housekeepers, others
as not being able, and the poor themselves who receive the
relief. The average, therefore, of poor rates on the remaining
f
I
224 3 R.IGHTS OF MAN
After all the above cases are provided for there will
still be a number of families who, though not properly
of the class of poor, yet find it difficult to give education
to their children; and such children, under such a case,
would be in a worse condition than if their parents were
actually poor. A nation under a well-regulated govern-
ment should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is
monarchical and aristocratical government only that
requires ignorance for its support.
Suppose, then, four hundred thousand children to be
in this condition, which is a greater number than ought
to be supposed after the provisions already made, the
method will be :
To aUow for each of these children ten shillings a year
for the expence of schooling for six years each, which
will give them six months' schooling each year, and half-a-
crown a year for paper and spelling books.
The expence of this will be annually ^ £ 2 ^ 0 , 000 .
number is forty shillings for every family of five persons, which
makes the whole average amount of taxes and rates 17s. 6d.
For six persons £iy 17s. For seven persons £10 16s. 6d.
The average of taxes in America, under the new or representa-
tive system of government, including the interest of the debt
contracted in the war, and taking the population at four million
of souls which it now amounts to, and is daily encreasing, is
five shillings per head, men, women, and children. The difierence,
therefore, between the two governments is as under : —
England America
/ s. d. £ s. d.
For a family of five persons ... ... 14 17 6 ... i 5 o
For a family of six persons 17 17 o ... i 10 o
For a family of seven persons ... 20 16 6 ... 115 o
— Author.
1 Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor.
They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country
towns and villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance
occasions a great loss of time. Education, to be useful to the
poor, should be on the spot, and the best method, I believe, to
accomplish this is to enable the parents to pay the expences
themselves. There are always persons of both sexes to be found
in every village, e-specially when growing into years, capable
of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings each
(and that not more than six months each year) w'ould be as much
RIGHTS OF MAN
225
. There will then remain one hundred and ten thousand
pounds.
Notwithstanding the great modes of relief which the
best instituted and best principled government may
devise, there will be a number of smaller cases, which
it is good policy as well as beneficence in a nation to
consider.
Were twenty shillings to be given immediately on the
birth of a child, to every woman who should make
the demand, and none will make it whose circumstances
do not require it, it might relieve a great deal of instant
distress;
There are about two hundred thousand births yearly
j in England, and if claimed, by one fourth,
The amount would be . . . . ;^ 5 o,ooo.
And twentjr shillings to every new'-married couple
who should claim in like manner. This would not exceed
the sum of £ 20 , 000 ,
Also twenty thousand pounds to be appropriated to
defray the funeral expences of persons, who, travelling
for work, may die at a distance from their friends, By
relieving parishes from this charge, the sick stranger
will be better treated.
I shall finish this part of the subject with a plan
adapted to the particular condition of a metropolis,
such as London.
Cases are continually occurring in a metropolis
different from those which occur in the country, and for
which a different, or rather an additional, mode of relief
is necessary. In the country, even in large towns,
people, have a knowledge of each other, and distress
never rises to that extreme height it sometimes does in
a metropolis. There is no such thing in the country
as persons, in the literal sense of the word, starved to
death, or dying with cold from the want of a lodging.
as some livings amonnt to in the remote parts of England, and
there are often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such
an income would be acceptable. Whatever is given on this
account to children answers two jpuiposes; to them it is education
— ^to those who educate them it is a livelihood. — Author.
226
RIGHTS OF MAN
Yet such cases, and others equally as miserable, happen
in London.
Many a youth comes up to London full of expectations,
and with little or no money, and unless he get immediate
employment he is already half-undone ; and boys bred
up in London without any means of a livelihood, and
as it often happens of dissolute parents, are in a sthl
worse condition; and servants long out of place are
not much better off. In short, a world of little cases is
continually arising, which busy or affluent life knows not
of, to open the first door to distress. Hunger is not
among the postponeable wants, and a day, even a few
hours, in such a condition is often the crisis of a fife of
ruin.
These circumstances which are the general cause of
the little thefts and pilferings that lead to greater, may
be prevented. There yet remain twenty thousand
pounds out of the four millions of surplus taxes, which
with another fund hereafter to be mentioned, amounting
to about twenty thousand pounds more, cannot be
better applied than to this purpose. The plan will then
be :
First, — ^To erect two or more buildings, or take some
already erected, capable of containing at least six
thousand persons, and to have in each of these places
as many kinds of employment as can be contrived,
so that every person who shall come may find something
which he or she can do.
Secondly, — ^To receive all who shall come, without
inquiring who or what they are. The only condition
to be, that for so much, or so many hours' work, each
person shall receive so many meals of wholesome food
and a warm lodging, at least as good as a barrack.
That a certain portion of what each person's work shall
be worth shall be reserved, and given to him or her, on
their going away; and that each person shall stay as
long or as short a time, or come as often as he chuse,
on these conditions,
If each person stayed three months, it would assist
by rotation twenty-four thousand persons annually.
RIGHTS OF ]VIAN
237
though the real number, at all times, would be but six
thousand. By establishing an asylum of this kind, such
persons to whom temporary distresses occur, would have
an opportunity to recruit themselves, and be enabled to
look out for better emplo5nnent.
Allowing that their labour jgaid but one half the expence
of supporting them, after reserving a portion of their
earnings for themselves, the sum of forty thousand
pounds additional would defray all other charges for
even a greater number than six thousand.
The fund very properly convertible to this purpose,
in addition to the twenty thousand pounds remaining
of the former fund, will be the produce of the tax upon
coals, so iniquitously and wantonly applied to the
support of the Duke of Richmond. It is horrid that any
man, more especially at the price coals now are, should
live on the distress of a community ; and any government
permitting such an abuse, deserves to be dismissed.
This fund is said to be about twenty thousand pounds
per annum.
I shall now conclude this plan with enumerating the
several particulars, and then proceed to other matters.
The enumeration is as follows : —
First — Abolition of two millions poor-rates.
Secondly — Provision for two hundred and fifty
thousand poor families.
Thirdly — ^Education for one milhon and thirty
thousand children.
Fourthly — Comfortable provision for one hundred
and forty thousand aged persons.
Fifthly — Donation of twenty shillings each for fifty
thousand births.
Sixthly — ^Donation of twenty shillings each for twenty
thousand marriages.
Seventhly — Allowances of twenty thousand pounds
for the funeral expences of persons travelling for work,
and djdng at a distance from their friends.
Eighthty — Employment, at all times, for the casual
poor in the cities of London and Westminster.
By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those
228
RIGHTS OF MAN
instraments of civil torture, will be superseded, and the
wasteful expence of litigation prevented. The hearts
of the humane will not be shocked by ragged and hungry
children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age,
begging for bread. The d5dng poor will not be dragged
from place to place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of
parish upon parish. Widows will have a maintenance
for their children, and not be carted away, on the death
of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and
children will no longer be considered as encreasing the
distresses of their parents. The haunts of the wretched
will be known, because it will be to their advantage,
and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of distress
and poverty, will be lessened. The poor, as well as the
rich, will then be interested in the support of govern-
ment, and the cause and apprehension of riots and
tumults will cease. Ye who sit in ease, and solace
yourselves in plenty — ^and such there are in Turkey
and Russia, as well as in England — and who say to
yourselves, “ Are we not well off ? " have ye thought of
these things ? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and
feel for yourselves alone.
The plan is easy in practice. It does not embarrass
trade by a sudden interruption in the order of taxes, but
effects the relief by changing the application of them;
and the money necessary for the purpose can be drawn
from the excise collections, which are made eight times
a year in every market town in England.
Having now arranged and concluded this subject,
I proceed to the next.
Taking the present current expences at seven millions
and a half, which is the least amount they are now at,
there will remain (after the sum of one million and a half
be taken for the new current expences and four millions
for the before-mentioned service) the sum of two millions;
part of which to be applied as follows :
Though fleets and armies, by an alliance with France,
will, in a great measure, become useless, yet the persons
who have devoted themselves to those services, and have
thereby unfitted themselves for other lines of life, are
RIGHTS OF MAN 229
not to be sufferers by the means that make others happy.
They are a different description of men from those who
form or hang about a court.
A part of the army will remain, at least for some
years, and also of the navy, for which a provision is
already made in the fom;j,6r part of this plan of one
million, which is almost half a million more than the
peace establishment of the army and navy in the prodigal
times of Charles the Second.
Suppose, then, fifteen thousand soldiers to be disbanded
and to allow to each of those men three shillings a-week
during life, cleai' of all deductions, to be paid in the same
manner as the Chelsea College pensioners are paid, and
for them to return to their trades and their friends;
and also to add fifteen thousand sixpences per week to
the pay of the soldiers who shall remain. The annual
expence will be : —
To the pay of fifteen thousand disbanded
soldiers, at 3s. per week 17,000
Additional pay to the remaining soldiers ... 19,500
Suppose that the pay to the officers of the
banded corps be of the same amount as the
sum allowed to the men ... ... ... 117,000
7 ^^ 53.500
To prevent bulky estimates, admit the same
sum to the disbanded navy as to the army,
and the same increase of pay 253-50°
Total ;i507,ooo
Every year some part of this sum of half a million
(I omit the odd seven thousand pounds for the purpose
of keeping the account unembarrassed) will fall in, and
the whole of it in time, as it is on the ground of life
annuities, except the encreased pay of thirty-nine ^
1 In Paine’s own edition and in nearly all subsequent ones
this appears as " twenty-nine but since the sum mentioned
is twice the additional pay— that is, twice £ 19 , 500 —" twenty-
nine ” is an obvious blunder. — ^H. B. B.
230
RIGHTS OF MAN
thousand pounds. As it falls in, part of the taxes may
be taken off ; for instance, when thirty thousand pounds
fall in, the duty on hops may be wholly taken off;
and as other parts fall in, the duties on canoes and soap
may be lessened, till at Isist they will totally cease.
There now remains at least^^one million and a half of
surplus taxes.
The tax on houses and windows is one of those direct
taxes which, like the poor rates, is not confounded with
trade, and when taken off, the relief will be instantly
felt. This tax falls heavy on the middling class of
people.
The amount of this tax by the returns of 1788 was —
Houses and windows, by the Act of
X766 ^ 383,459 XX 7
Ditto, by the Act of 1779 ... 130.739 14 Si
;^5i6,I99 6 O'J
If this tax be struck off, there will then remain about
one miQion of surplus taxes ; and as it is always proper
to keep a sum in reserve for incidental matters, it may
be best not to extend reductions further in the first
instance, but to consider what may be accomplished
by other modes of reform.
Among the taxes most heavily felt is the commutation
tax. I shall therefore offer a plan for its abolition, by
substituting another in its place, which will effect three
objects at once.
First, That of removing the burden to where it can best
be borne.
Secondly, Restoring justice among families by a
distribution of property.
Thirdly, Extirpating the overgrown influence arising
from the unnatural law of primogeniture, and which is
one of the principal sources of corruption at elections.
The amount of the commutation tax by the returns
of 1788 was £ 771 , 657 *
RIGHTS OF MAN
231
When taxes are proposed, the country is amused b3?'
the plausible language of taxing luxuries. One thing
is called a luxury at one time, and something else at
another; but the real luxury does not consist in the
article, but in the means of procuring it, and this is
always kept out of sight.
I know not why any plant or herb of the field should
be a greater luxury in one country than another; but
an overgrown estate in either is a luxury at all times,
and, as such, is the proper object of taxation. It is,
therefore, right to take these kind tax-making gentlemen
upon their own word, and argue on the principle them-
selves have laid down, that of taxing hmmes. If they
or their champion, Mr. Burke, who, I fear, is growing
out of date, like the man in armour, can prove that an
estate of twenty, thirty, or forty thousand pounds
a year is not a luxury, I will give up the argument.
Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, a
thousand pounds, is necessary for the support of a
family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature
of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding
on we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not im-
properly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be
impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry,
and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond
the probable acquisition to which industry can extend ;
but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumula-
tion of it by bequest. It should pass in some other line.
The richest in every nation have poor relations, and those
often very near in consanguinity.
The following table of progressive taxation is con-
structed on the above principles, and as a substitute for
the commutation tax. It will reach the point of prohibi-
tion by a regular operation, and thereby supersede the
aristocratical law of primogeniture.
233 RIGHTS OF MAN
TABLE I
A tax on all estates of the clear yearly value of £$o, after
deducting the land tax, and up
To £500
s.
.. 0
d.
3 per pound
From ;{500 to £ 1,000 ...
.. 0
P
On the second thousand
.. 0
9
On the third thousand
.. I
0
On the fourth thousand
.. I
6
On the fifth thousand
.. 2
0
On the sixth thousand
•• 3
0
On the seventh thousand
.. 4
0
On the eighth thousand
•• 5
0
On the ninth thousand ...
.. 6
0
On the tenth thousand
•• 7
0
On the eleventh thousand . . .
.. 8
0
On the twelfth thousand
.. 9
0
On the thirteenth thousand ...
.. 10
0
On the fourteenth thousand
.. II
0
On the fifteenth thousand ...
.. 12
0
On the sixteenth thousand . . .
•• 13
0
On the seventeenth thousand
.. 14
0
On the eighteenth thousand
•• 15
0
On the nineteenth thousand
.. 16
0
On the twentieth thousand ...
17
0
On the twenty-first thousand
.. 18
0
On the twenty-second thousand
.. 19
0
On the twenty-third thousand
.. 20
0
The foregoing table shows the progression per pound
on every progressive thousand. The following table
shows the amount of the tax on every thousand separately,
and in the last column the total amount of all the separate
sums collected.
TABLE II
An estate of £50 per ann., at 3d. per pound, pays £0 12 6
100 „
.. I
5
0
200 „
.. 3
10
0
300 »
>, ,, 3
15
0
400 „
.. 5
0
0
500
,1 ,1 6
5
0
After £500 the tax of 6d. per pound takes place on the
second £500; consequently an estate of £j,ooo per
annum pays 15s., and so on.
233
RIGHTS OP MAN
Total amoimt.
s.
d.
1
d.
£
d.
1st
2nd
500 at 0
/> 0
3 per pound 6
d „ ,, 13
5 \
10}
iS
15
2nd 1000 at 0
9 »
» 37
10
56
5
3rd
» r
0 ..
50
0
106
5
4th
.. I
6
.. T-* 75
0
181
5
5th
„ 2
0 ,,
„ xoo
0
281
5
6th
»> 3
0
.. 150
0
431
5
7th
4
0 ..
,, 200
0
631
5
8th
.. 5
0 ..
„ 250
0
881
5
9th
» 6
0 >>
.. 300
0
1181
5
10th
” ?
0 ..
•> 350
0
1531
5
nth
11 S
0
M 400
0
1931
5
i2th
M 9
0 ..
» 450
0
2381
5 ,
13th
,, 10
0
>> 500
0
2SS1
5
14th
,, 11
0
» 550
0
3431
5
15th
M 12
0 ,,
,, 600
0
4031
5
i6th
» 13
0 „
650
0
4681
5
17th
„ 14
0
„ 700
0
53S1
5
1 8th
M 15
0 ,,
.. 750
0
6131
5
19th
„ 16
0
„ 800
0
6931
5
20th
» 17
0 ,,
850
0
7781
5
2 ISt
18
0 ,,
900
0
8681
5
22nd
19
0 „
„ 950
0
9631
5
23rd
„ 20
0
„ 1000
0
10631
5
At the twenty-third thousand the tax becomes 20s.
in the pound, and consequently every thousand beyond
can produce no profit but by dividing the estate. Yet,,
formidable as this tax appears, it will not, I believe,
produce so much as the commutation tax : should it
produce more, it ought to be lowered to that amount
upon estates under two or three thousand a year.
On small and middling estates it is lighter {as it is
intended to be) than the commutation tax. It is not till
after seven or eight thousand a year that it begins to be
heavy. The object is not so much the produce of the
tax as the justice of the measure. The aristocracy
has screened itself too much, and this serves to restore
a part of the lost equilibrium.
As an instance of its screening itself, it is only necessary
to look back to the first estabhshment of the excise laws,
at what is called the Restoration, or the coming of Charles
the Second. The aristocratical interest then in power
RIGHTS OF MAN
234
commuted the feudal services itself was under, by
laying a tax on beer brewed for sale) that is, they
compounded with Charles for an exemption from those
services for themselves and their heirs by a tax to be
paid by other people. The aristocracy do not purchase
beer brewed for sale, but bftw their own beer free of the
duty; and if any commutation at that time were
necessary, it ought to have been at the expence of those
for whom the exemptions from those services were
intended; ^ instead of which, it was thrown on an
entirely different class of men.
But the chief object of this progressive tax (besides
the justice of rendering taxes more equal than they
are), is, as already stated, to extirpate the overgrown
influence arising from the unnatural law of primo-
geniture, which is one of the principal sources of corrup-
tion at elections.
It would be attended with no good consequences
to inquire how such vast estates as thirty, forty, or fifty
thousand a year could commence, and that at a time
when commerce and manufacture were not in a state
to admit of such acquisitions. Let it be sufficient to
remedy the evil by putting them in a condition of
descending again to the community, by the quiet
means of apportioning them among all the heirs and
heiresses of those families. This will be the more
necessary, because hitherto the aristocracy have quartered
their younger children and connections upon the public,
in useless posts, places and offices, which when abolished
will leave them destitute, unless the law of primogeniture
be also abolished or superseded.
A progressive tax will, in a great measure, effect this
object, and that as a matter of interest to the parties
most immediately concerned, as will be seen by the
^ The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy
•are exempt, is almost one million more than the present com-
mutation tax, being by the returns of 1788 1,666, 152, and
consequently they ought to take on themselves the amount of
the commutation tax, as they are already exempted from one
which is almost one million greater. — Author.*
RIGHTS OF MAN
235
following table, which shows the nett produce upon
every estate, after subtracting the tax. By this it will
appear that after an estate exceeds thirteen or fourteen
thousand a year the remainder produces but little profit
to the holder, and consequently will pass either to the
younger children or to otheq^ikindred.
TABLE III
Shewing the nett produce of every estate from one
thousand to twenty-three thousand pounds a year : —
of Thousands
Total Tax
Net
per Ann.
Subtracted.
Produce.
£
£
£
1,000
18
982
2,000
56
1,944
3,000
106
2,894
4,000
181
3,819
5,000
281
4,719
6,000
431
5,569
7,000
631
6,369
8,000
881
7,119
9,000
i,i8i
7,819
10,000
1.531
8,469
11,000
1.931
9,069
12,000
2,381
9.619
13,000
2,881
10,119
14,000
3,431
10,569
15,000
4,031
10,969
16,000
4,68r
11,319
17,000
5,381
11,619
18,000
6,131
11,869
ig,ooo
6,931
12,069
20,000
7,781
12,219
21,000
8,681
12,319
22,000
9,631
12,369
23,000
10,631
12.369
N.B. — ^Tlie odd shilliags are dropped in this table.
According to this table, an estate cannot produce more
than ;^I2,370 clear of the land tax and the progressive
tax, and therefore the dividing such estates will follow
as a matter of family interest. An estate of £ 2^,000
a year, divided into five estates of four thousand each
and one of three, will be charged only 1^1,129, which is
RIGHTS OF MAN
236
but 5 per cent., but if beld by one possessor will be
charged £10,630.
Although an enquiry into the origin of those estates
be unnecessary, the continuation of them in their
present shape is another subject. It is a matter of
national concern. As herj^tary estates, the law has
created the evil, and it ought also to provide the remedy.
Primogeniture ought to be abolished, not only because
it is unnatural and unjust, but because the country
suffers by its operation. By cutting off (as before
observed) the younger children from their proper
portion of inheritance the public is loaded with the
expence of maintaining them; and the freedom of
elections violated by the overbearing influence which
this unjust monopoly of family property produces.
N or is this all . It occasions a waste of national property.
A considerable part of the land of the country is rendered
unproductive by the great extent of the parks and chases
which this law serves to keep up, and this at a time when
the annual production of grain is not equal to the national
consumption.^ In short, the evils of the aristocratical
system are so great and numerous, so inconsistent with
everything that is just, wise, natural, and beneficent,
that when they are considered, there ought not to be a
doubt that many, who are now classed under that
description, will wish to see such a system abolished.
What pleasure can they derive froni contemplating the
exposed condition and ^most certain beggary of their
younger offspring? Every aristocratical family has an
appendage of family beggars hanging round it, which
in a few ages or a few generations are shook off, and
console themselves with telling their tale in almshouses,
workhouses, and prisons. This is the natural con-
sequence of aristocracy. The peer and the beggar
are often of the same family. One extreme produces
the other; to make one rich many must be made poor;
neither can the system be supported by other means.
There are two classes of people to whom the laws of
England are particularly hostile, and those the most
^ See the reports on the com trade. — Author.
RIGHTS OF MAN
237
helpless : younger children and the poor. Of the former
I have just spoken; of the latter I shall mention one
instance out of the many that might be produced, and
with which I shall close this subject.
Several laws are in existence for regulating and limit-
ing workmen’s wages. not leave them as free
to make their own bargains as the law-makers are to let
their farms and houses? Personal labour is all the
property they have. Why is that little, and the little
freedom they enjoy, to be infringed? But the injustice
will appear stronger if we consider the operation and
effect of such laws. When wages are fixed by what is
called a law, the legal wages remain stationary, while
everything else is in progression ; and as those who make
that law still continue to lay on new taxes by other laws,
they encrease the expence of Kving by one law and take
away the means by another.
But if those gentlemen law-makers and tax-makers
thought it right to limit the poor pittance which personal
labour can produce, and on which a whole family is to
be supported, they certainly must feel themselves
happily indulged in a limitation on their own part of
not less than twelve thousand a year, and that of property
they never acquired (nor properly any of their ancestors),
and of which they have made so ill a use.
Having now finished this subject, I shall bring the
several particulars into one view, and then proceed to
other matters.
The first Eight Articles are brought forward from
p. 227.
1. Abolition of two millions poor-rates.
2. Provision for two hundred and fifty-two thousand
poor families at the rate of four pounds per head for
each child under fourteen years of age ; which, with the
addition of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,
provides also education for one million and thirty
thousand children.
3. Annuity of six pounds per annum each for all poor
persons, decayed tradesmen, and others (supposed
I
RIGHTS OF MAN
238
seventy thousand) of the age of fifty years, and until
sixty.
4. Annuity of ten pounds each for life for all poor
persons, decayed tradesmen, and others (supposed
seventy thousand), of the age of sixty years.
5. Donations of 20s. eac%tfor fifty thousand births,
6. Donations of 20s. efich for twenty thousand
marriages,
7. Allowances of twenty thousand pounds for the
funeral expences of persons travelling for work, and
dying at a distance from their friends.
8. Employment at all times for the casual poor in
the cities of London and Westminster.
Second Enumeration.
9. Abolition of the taxes on houses and windows.
^ 10. Allowance of 3s. per week for life to fifteen
thousand disbanded soldiers, and a proportionable
allowance to the officers of the disbanded corps.
11. Encrease of pay to the remaining soldiers of
£19,500 annually.
12. The same allowance to the disbanded navy, and
the same increase of pay as to the army.
13. Abolition of the commutation tax.
14. Plan of a progressive tax, operating to extirpate
the -unjust and unnatural law of primogeniture, and
the vicious influence of the aristocratical system.^
When enquiries are made into the condition of the poor,
various degrees of distress will most probably be found, to render
a different arrangement preferable to that which is already
proposed. Widows with famihes will be in greater want than
where there are husbands living. There is also a difference in
the expence of living in different counties, and more so in fuel.
Suppose, then, 50,000 extraordinary cases at
the rate of ;^io per annum ... ... ^^500,000
100,000 families, at ;f8 per family per
annum ... ... ... ... ... 800,000
100.000 families, at £7 per family per
annum ... ... ... ... ... yoo,ooo
104.000 families, at £5 per family per
annum ... ... ... ... 520,000
RIGHTS OF MAN
239
j There yet remains, as already stated, one million of
surplus taxes. Some part of this will be required for
I circumstances that do not immediately present them-
selves, and such part as shall not be wanted will admit a
I further reduction of taxes equal to that amount.
Among the claims that tyftice requires to be made,
the condition of the inferi^ revenue officers will merit
attention. It is a reproach to any government to waste
such an immensity of revenue in sinecures and nominal
and unnecessary places and offices, and not allow even
i a decent livelihood to those on. whom the labour falls.
I The salary of the inferior officers of the revenue has
I stood at the petty pittance of less than fifty pounds a
I year for upwards of one hundred years. It ought to
■[ be seventy. About one hundred and twenty thousand
pounds applied to this purpose will put all those salaries
in a decent condition.
i This was proposed to be done almost twenty years
ago, but the treasury board then in being startled at
it, as it might lead to similar expectations from the
army and navy; and the event was that the King, or
somebody for him, applied to parliament to have his
own salary raised a hundred thousand a year, which
being done, everything else was laid aside.
With respect to another class of men, the inferior
clergy, I forbear to enlarge on their condition ; but all
partialities and prejudices for or against different modes
And instead of los. per head for the educa-
tion of other children, to allow 50s. per
family for that purpose to 50,000 families
- . (sic) 350,000
140,000 aged persons, as before 1,120,000
^^3,890,000
This arrangement amounts to the same sum as stated on
p, 223, including the £250,000 for education; but it provides
(including the aged people) for four hundred and four thousand
families, which is almost one-third of all the families in England.
— Author.
There is plainly a blunder both in the calculations in this
note and also in the statement based upon them; but Paine’s
idea is clear enough. — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
240
and forms of religion aside, common justice will deter-
mine whether there ought to be an income of twenty or
thirty pounds a year to one man and of ten thousand
to another. I speak on this subject with the more
freedom because I am known not to be a Presbyterian;
and therefore the cant cr^of court sycophants about
church and meeting, kept lip to amuse and bewilder the
nation, cannot be raised against me.
Ye simple men, on both sides of the question, do ye
not see through this courtly craft ? If ye can be kept
disputing and wrangling about church and meeting, ye
just answer the purpose of every courtier, who lives
the while on the spoil of the taxes, and laughs at your
credulity. Every religion is good that teaches man to
be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be
bad.
All the before-mentioned calculations, suppose only
sixteen millions and a half of taxes paid into the ex-
chequer, after the expence of collection and drawbacks
at the custom house and excise office are deducted;
whereas the sum paid into the exchequer, is very nearly,
if not quite, seventeen millions. The taxes raised in
Scotland and Ireland are expended in those countries,
and therefore their savings wiU come out of their own
taxes ; but if any part be paid into the English ex-
chequer it might be remitted. This will not make one
hundred thousand pounds a year difference.
There now remains only the national debt to be con-
sidered. In the year 1789 the interest, exclusive of the
tontine, was ;^9,i50,i38. How much the capital has
been reduced since that time the minister best knows.
But after paying interest, abolishing the tax on houses
and windows, the commutation tax, and the poor rates,
and making all the provisions for the poor, for the
education of children, the support of the aged, the dis-
banded part of the army and navy, and encreasing the
pay of the remainder, there will be a surplus of one
million.
The present scheme of paying off the national debt
appears to me, speaking as an indifferent person, to be
RIGHTS OF MAN 241
an ill-concerted, if not a fallacious job. The burden of
the national debt consists not in its being so many
millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quan-
tity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest.
If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the
national debt is the same to all intents and purposes,
be the capital more or lesgr The only knowledge which
the public can have of the reduction of the debt, must
be through the reduction of taxes for paying the interest.
The debt, therefore, is not reduced one farthing to the
public by all the millions that have been paid; and it
would require more money now to purchase up the
capital than when the scheme began.
Digressing for a moment at this point, to which I
shall return again, I look back to the appointment of
Mr. Pitt as minister.
I was then in America. The war was over; and
though resentment had ceased, memory was still alive.
When the news of the coalition arrived, though it was
a matter of no concern to me as a citizen of America,
I felt it as a man. It had something in it which shocked,
by publicly sporting with decency, if not with principle.
It was impudence in Lord North ; it was want of firm-
ness in Mr. Fox.
Mr. Pitt was, at that time, what may be called a
maiden character in politics. So far from being hack-
neyed, he appeared not to be initiated into the first
mysteries of court intri^e. Everything was in his
favour. Resentment against the coalition served as
friendship to him, and his ignorance of vice was credited
for virtue. With the return of peace, commerce and
prosperity would arise of itself; yet even this encrease
was thrown to his account.
Wlien he came to the helm the storm was over, and
he had nothing to interrupt his course. It required
even ingenuity to be wrong, and he succeeded. A little
time shewed him the same sort of man as his predecessors
had been. Instead of profiting by those errors which
had accumulated a burden of taxes unparalleled in the
world, he sought, I might almost say he advertised, for
12
EIGHTS OF MAN
242
enemies, and provoked means to encrease taxation.
Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked
Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the
fair pretensions he began with, became the knight-
errant of modern times.
It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away.
It is more so to see one’s ^?df deceived. Mr. Pitt had
merited nothing, but he promised much. He gave
symptoms of a mind superior to the meanness and
corruption of courts. His apparent candour encouraged
expectations ; and the public confidence, stunned,
wearied, and confounded by a chaos of parties, revived
and attached itself to him. But mistaking, as he has
done, the disgust of the nation against the coalition, for
merit in himself, he has rushed into measures which a
man less supported would not have presumed to act.
AU this seems to shew that change of ministers
amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in,
and still the same measures, vices, and extravagance
are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The
defect lies in the system. The foundation and the
superstructure of the government are bad. Prop it as
you please, it continually sinks into court government,
and ever will.
I return, as I promised, to the subject of the national
debt — that offspring of the Dutch-Anglo revolution, and
its handmaid the Hanover succession.
But it is now too late to enquire how it began. Those
to whom it is due have advanced the money; and
whether it was well or ill spent, or pocketed, is not
their crime. It is, however, easy to see, that as the
nation proceeds in contemplating the nature and prin-
ciples of government, and to understand taxes, and
make comparisons between those of America, France,
and England, it will be next to impossible to keep it
in the same torpid state it has hitherto been. Some
reform must, from the necessity of the case, soon begin.
It is not whether these principles press with little or
much force in the present moment. They are out.
They are abroad in the world, and no force can stop
RIGHTS OF MAN
243
them. Like a secret told, they are beyond recall ; and
he must be blind indeed that does not see that a change
is already beginning.
Nine millions of dead taxes is a serious thing; and
this is not only for bad, but in a great measure for
foreign government. By wtting the power of making
war into the hands of fc^igners who came for what
they could get, little else was to be expected than what
has happened.
Reasons are already advanced in this work shewing
that whatever the reforms in the taxes may be, they
ought to be made in the current expences of govern-
ment, and not in the part applied to the interest of
the national debt. By remitting the taxes of the poor,
they will be totally relieved, and all discontent on their
part will be taken away; and by striking off such of
the taxes as are already mentioned the nation will more
than recover the whole expence of the mad American
war.
There will then remain only the national debt as a
subject of discontent; and in order to remove, or
rather to prevent this, it would be good policy in the
stockholders themselves to consider it as property,
subject, like all other property, to bear some portion of
the taxes. It w^ould give to it both popularity and
security, and as a great part of its present inconvenience
is balanced by the capital which it keeps alive, a measure
of this kind would so far add to that balance as to
silence objections.
This may be done by such gradual means as to
accomplish all that is necessary with the greatest ease
and convenience.
Instead of taxing the capital the best method would
be to tax the interest by some progressive ratio, and to
lessen the public taxes in the same proportion as the
interest diminished.
Suppose the interest was taxed one halfpenny in the
pound the &st year, a penny more the second, and to
proceed by a certain ratio to be determined upon,
always less than any other tax upon property. Such a
RIGHTS OF MAN
244
tax would be subtracted from the interest at the time
of payment without any expence of collection.
One halfpenny in the pound would lessen the interest,
and consequently the taxes, twenty thousand pounds.
The tax on waggons amounts to this sum, and this
tax might be taken off the 2|ifst year. The second year
the tax on female servants, 'A)r some other of the like
amount, might also be taken off, and by proceeding in
this manner, always applying the tax raised from the
property of the debt towards its extinction, and not
carry it to the current services, it would liberate itself.*
The stockholders, notwithstanding this tax, would
pay less taxes than they do now. What they would
save by the extinction of the poor-rates, and the tax on
houses and windows, and the commutation tax, would
be considerably greater than what this tax, slow but
certain in its operation, amounts to.
It appears to me to be prudence to look out for
measures that may apply under any circumstances that
may approach. There is, at this moment, a crisis in
the affairs of Europe that requires it. Preparation now
is wisdom. If taxation be once let loose it will be
difficult to reinstate it ; neither would the relief be so
effectual as to proceed by some certain and gradual
reduction.
The fraud, hypocrisy, and impositions of governments,
are now beginning to be too well understood to promise
them any long career. The farce of monarchy and
aristocracy in all countries is following that of chivalry,
and Mr. Burke is dressing for the funeral. Let it then
pass quietly to the tomb of all other follies, and the
mourners be comforted.
The time is not very distant when England will laugh
at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or
Brunswick, for men, at the expence of a million a year,
who understood neither her laws, her language, nor her
interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have
fitted them for the office of a parish constable. If
government could be trusted to such hands, it must be
some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
RIGHTS OF MAN
245
for all the purposes may be found in every town and
village in England. ^
When it shall be said by any country in the world
my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is
to be found among them ; my jails are empty of prisoners,
my streets of beggars ; t^ aged are not in want ; the
taxes are not oppressive; the rational w'orld is my
friend, because I am the friend of its happiness : When
these things can be said, then may that country boast
its constitution and its government.
Within the space of a few years we have seen two
revolutions, those of America and France. In the
former the contest was long, and the conflict severe ; in
the latter the nation acted with such a consolidated
impulse, that, having no foreign enemy to contend with,
the revolution was complete in power the moment it
appeared. From both those instances it is evident that
the greatest forces that can be brought into the field of
revolutions are reason and common interest. Where
these can have the opportunity of acting opposition dies
with fear, or crumbles away by conviction. It is a
great standing which they have now universally obtained ;
and we may hereafter hope to see revolutions, or changes
in government, produced with the same quiet operation,
by which any measure, determinable by reason and
discussion, is accomplished.
When a nation changes its opinion and habits of
thinking it is no longer to be governed as before ; but it
would not only be wrong, but bad policy, to attempt by
force what ought to be accomplished by reason. Re-
bellion consists in forcibly opposing the general will of a
nation, whether by a party or by a government. There
ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of
occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion
with respect to government. On this point the old
government of France was superior to the present
government of England, because, on extraordinary
occasions, recourse could be had to what was then called
1 T Tiifi and the preceding paragraph were included in the
information against Paine. — ^H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN
246
the States-General. But in England there are no such
occasional bodies ; and as to those who are now called
representatives, a great part of them are mere machines
of the court, placemen, and dependents.
I presume that though all the people of England pay-
taxes, not an hundredth pagfcr of them are electors, and
the members of one of the houses of parliament repre-
sent nobody but themselves. There is, therefore, no
power but the voluntary will of the people that has a
right to act in any matter respecting a general reform ;
and by the same right that two persons can confer on
such a subject, a thousand may. The object in all such
preliminary proceedings, is to find out what the general
sense of a nation is and to be governed by it. If it
prefer a bad or defective government to a reform, or
chuse to pay ten times more taxes than there is occa-
sion for, it has a right so to do : and so long as the
majority do not impose conditions on the minority,
different from what they impose on themselves, though
there may be much error, there is no injustice. Neither
will the error continue long. Reason and discussion will
soon bring things right, however wrong they may begin.
By such a process no tumult is to be apprehended. The
poor in all countries are naturally both peaceable and
grateful in all reforms in which their interest and happi-
ness is included. It is only by neglecting and rejecting
them that they become tumultuous.*
The objects that now press on the public attention
are the French revolution, and the prospect of a general
revolution in governments. Of all nations in Europe
there is none so much interested in the French revolu-
tion as England. Enemies for ages, and that at a vast
expence, and without any rational object, the oppor-
tunity now presents itself of amicably closing the scene,
and joining their efforts to reform the rest of Europe.
By doing this they will not only prevent the further
effusion of blood and encrease of taxes, but be in a
condition of getting rid of a considerable part of their
present burdens, as has been already stated. Long
experience, however, has shown that reforms of this
RIGHTS OF MAN
247
kind are not those which old governments wish to pro-
mote ; and therefore it is to nations, and not to such
governments, that these matters present themselves.
In the preceding part of this work I have spoken of
an alliance between England, France, and America, of
purposes that were to be aMrwards mentioned. Though
I have no direct authorny on the part of America I
have good reason to conclude that she is disposed to
enter into a consideration of such a measure, provided ;
that the governments with which she might ally act as ;
national governments, and not as courts enveloped in j
intrigue and mystery. That France as a nation, and a
national government, would prefer an alliance with •
England, is a matter of certainty. Nations, like indi- |
viduals, who have long been enemies without knowing
each other, or knowing why, become the better friends
when they discover the errors and impositions under
which they had acted.
Admitting, therefore, the probability of such a con-
nection, I will state some matters by which such an
alliance, together with that of Holland, might render
service, not only to the parties immediately concerned,
but to all Europe.
It is, I think, certain, that if the fleets of England,
France, and Holland were confederated they could
propose, with eflect, a limitation to, and a general
dismantling of, all the navies in Europe, to a certain
proportion to be agreed upon.
First, That no new^ ship of war shall be built by any
power in Europe, themselves included.
Secondly, That all navies now in existence shall be
put back, suppose to one-tenth of their present force. |
This will save to France and England at least two millions |
sterling annually to each, and their relative force will |
be in the same proportion as it is now. If men will |
permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to |
think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, |
exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the |
expence of building navies, filling them with men, and i
then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink f
RIGHTS OF MAN
248
each other fastest. Peace, which costs nothing, is
attended with infinitely more advantage than any vic-
tory with all its expence. But this, though it best
answers the purpose of nations, does not that of court
governments, whose habited policy is pretence for
taxation, places, and offices^
It is, I think, also certain, feat the above confederated
powers, together with that of the United States of
America, can propose with effect, to Spain, the inde-
pendence of South America, and the opening those
countries of immense extent and wealth to the general
commerce of the world, as North America now is.
With how much more glory and advantage to itself
does a nation act when it exerts its powers to rescue the
world from bondage and to create itself friends, than
when it employs those powers to encrease ruin, desola-
tion, and misery. The horrid scene that is now acting
by the English government in the East Indies, is fit
only to be told of Goths and Vandals, who, destitute of
principle, robbed and tortured the world they were
incapable of enjoying.
The opening of South America would produce an
immense field of commerce, and a ready money market
for manufactures, which the eastern world does not.
The east is already a country full of manufactures, the
importation of which is not only an injuty to the manu-
factures of England, but a drain upon its specie. The
balance against England by this trade is regularly up-
wards of half a million annually sent out in the East
India ships in silver; and this is the reason, together
with German intrigue and German subsidies, there is so
little silver in England.
But any war is harvest to such governments, however
ruinous it may be to a nation. It serves to keep up
deceitful expectations, which prevent a people looking
into the defects and abuses of government. It is the
lo here I and the lo there ! that amuses and cheats the
multitude.
Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to
England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two
RIGHTS OF MAN 249
revolutions of America and France, By the former,
freedom has a national champion in the western world;
and by the latter, in Europe. When another nation
shall join France, despotism and bad government will
scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite expression, the
iron is becoming hot all i^er Europe. The insulted
German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the
Pole, are beginning to think. The present age will
hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the
present generation will appear to the future as the
Adam of a new world.
Wlien all the governments of Europe shall be estab-
lished on the representative system, nations will become
acquainted, and the animosities and the prejudices
fomented by the intrigue and artifice of courts will
cease. The oppressed soldier will become a freeman;
and the tortured sailor, no longer dragged along the
streets like a felon, will pursue his mercantile voyage in
safety. It would be better that nations should con-
tinue the pay of their soldiers during their lives, and
give them their discharge, and restore them to freedom
and their friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such
multitudes at the same expence in a condition useless
to society and themselves. As soldiers have hitherto
been treated in most countries they might be said to be
without a friend. Shunned by the citizens on an
! apprehension of being enemies to liberty, and too often
insulted by those who commanded them, their condition
was a double oppression. But where general principles
of liberty pervade a people everything is restored to
order; and the soldier, civilly treated, returns the
civility.
In contemplating revolutions, it is easy to perceive
that they may arise from two distinct causes ; the one,
to avoid or get rid of some great calamity ; the other,
to obtain some great and positive good; and the two
may be distinguished by the names of active and passive
revolutions. In those which proceed from the former
cause, the temper becomes incensed and sowered ; and
the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by
250 RIGHTS OF MAN
revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter,
the heart, rather animated than agitated, enters serenely
upon the subject. Reason and discussion, persuasion
and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and
it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed
that recourse is had to vi«|ence. When men unite in
agreeing that a thing is gooSp could it be obtained, such
as relief from a burden of taxes and the extinction of
corruption, the object is more than half accomplished.
What they approve as the end they will promote in the
means.
Will any man say, in the present excess of taxation,
falling so heavily on the poor, that a remission of five
pounds annually of taxes to one hundred and four
thousand poor families is not a good thing} Will he
say that a remission of seven pounds annually to another
hundred thousand poor families, of eight pounds annually
to another hundred thousand poor families, and of ten
pounds annually to fifty thousand poor and widowed
families, are not good things} And to proceed a step
farther in this climax, will he say that to provide against
the misfortunes to which human life is subject, by
securing six pounds annually for all poor, distressed,
and reduced persons of the age of fifty and until sixty,
and of ten pounds annually after sixty, is not a good
thing }
Will he say that an abolition of two millions of poor-
rates to the housekeepers, and of the whole of the house
and window light tax, and the commutation tax, is not
a good thing ? Or will he say that to abolish corruption
is a had thing}
If, therefore, the good to be obtained be worthy of
a passive, rational, and costless revolution, it would be
bad policy to prefer waiting for a calamity that should
force a violent one. I have no idea, considering the
reforms which are now passing and spreading throughout
Europe, that England will permit herself to be the last ;
and where the occasion and the opportunity quietly
offer, it is better than to wait for a turbulent necessity.
It may be considered as an honour to the animal faculties
RIGHTS OF MAN 251
of man to obtain redress by courage and danger, but it
is far greater honour to the rational faculties to accom-
plish the same object by reason, accommodation, and
general consent.^
As reforms, or revolutions, call them which you please,
extend themselves among juiations, those nations will
form connections and convlntions, and when a few are
thus confederated, the progress will be rapid, till
despotism and corrupt government be totally expelled,
at least out of two quarters of the world, Europe and
America. The Algerine piracy may then be commanded
to cease, for it is only by the malicious policy of old
governments, against each other, that it exists.*
Throughout this work, various and numerous as the
subjects are, which I have taken up and investigated,
there is only a single paragraph upon religion, viz.
“ that every religion is good, that teaches man to he good”
I have carefully avoided to enlarge upon the subject,
because I am inclined to believe, that what is called the
present ministry wish to see contentions about religion
kept up, to prevent the nation turning its attention to
subjects of government. It is, as if they were to say,
" Look that way, or any way, hut this” *
I know it is the opinion of many of the most enlightened
characters in France (there always will be those who see farther
into events than othei's) not only among the general mass of
citizens, but of many of the principal members of the former
National Assembly, that the monarchical plan will not continue
many years in that country. They have found out, that as
wisdom cannot be made hereditary, power ought not; and,
that, for a man to merit a million sterling a year from a nation,
he ought to have a mind capable of comprehending from an
atom to a universe ; which, if he had, he would be above receiving
the pay. But they wished not to appear to lead the nation
faster than its own reason and interest dictated. In all the
conversations where I have been present upon this subject,
the idea always was, that when such a time, from the general
opinion of the nation, shall arrive, that the honourable and
liberal method would be, to make a handsome present in fee
simple to the person, whoever he may be, that shall then be in
the monarchical office, and for him to retire to the enjoyment of
private life, possessing his share of general rights and privileges,
and to be no more accountable to the public for his time and his
conduct than any other citizen. — Author*
252
RIGHTS OF MAN
But as religion is very improperly made a political
machine, and the reality of it is thereby destroyed, I
will conclude this work with stating in what light
religion appears to me.
If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any
particular day, or particu.^r circumstances, make it a
custom to present to their Cparent some token of their
afEection and gratitude, each of them would make a
different offering, and most probably in a different
manner. Some would pay their congratulations in
themes of verse or prose; some, by little devices, as
their genius dictated, or according to what they thought
would please; and, perhaps least of aU, not able to do
any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or
the field, and gather what it thought the prettiest flower
it could find, though perhaps it might be but a simple
weed. The parent would be more gratified by such
variety than if the whole of them had acted on a con-
certed plan, and each had made exactly the same offer-
ing. This would have had the cold appearance of con-
trivance, or the harsh one of controul. But of all
unwelcome things nothing could nore afflict the parent
than to know that the whole of them had afterwards
gotten together by the ears, boys and girls fighting,
scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about
which was the best or the worst present.
Why may we not suppose that the great Father of all
is pleased with variety of devotion ? and that the greatest
offence we can act is that by which we seek to tonnent
and render each other miserable? For my own part I
am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an
endeavour to conciliate mankind, to render their con-
dition happy, to unite nations that have hitherto been
enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of war,
and break the chains of slavery and oppression, is
acceptable in his sight ; and being the best service I can
perform I act it cheerfully.
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called
doctrinal points, think ahke, who think at all. It is
only those who have not thought that appear to agree.
RIGHTS OF MAN
353
It is in this case as with what is called the British
constitution. It has been taken for granted to be good,
and encomiurns have supplied the place of proof. But
when the nation comes to examine into its principles
and the abuses it admits, it will be found to have more
defects than I have pointe(| out in this work 'and the
former. 4
As to what are called national' religions, we may with
as much propriety talk of national Gods. It is either
political craft or the remains of the Pagan system, when
every nation has its separate and particular deity.
Among all the writers of the English church clergy, who
have treated on the general subject of religion, the
present Bishop of Llandaff ^ has not been excelled :
and it is with much pleasure that I take the opportunity
of expressing this token of respect.
I have now gone through the whole of the subject, at
least as far as it appears to me at present. It has been
my intention for the five years I have been in Europe to
offer an address to the people of England on the subject
of government, if the opportunity presented itself, before
I returned to America. Mr. Burke has thrown it in my
way and I thank him. On a certain occasion, three years
ago, I pressed him to propose a national convention, to
be fairly elected, for the purpose of taking the state of
the nation into consideration; but I found that however
strongly the parliamentary current was then setting
against the party he acted with, their policy was to keep
everything within the field of corruption, and trust to
accidents. Long experience has shewn that parliaments
would follow any change of ministers, and on this they
rested their hopes and expectations.
Formerly, when divisions arose respecting govern-
ments, recourse was had to the sword, and a civil war
ensued. That savage custom is exploded by the new
system; and reference is had to national conventions.
^ In Ms recently published edition of Paine’s works, Moncuro
D. Conway remarks that, " TMs homage, in 1792, to the writer
whose fame rests chiefly on Ms answer to Paine's Age of Reason
{Apology for the Bible, 1796) is worthy of note." — H. B. B.
Discussion and the general will arbitrate the question,
and to this private opinion yields with a good grace, and
order is preserved uninterrupted.
Some gentlemen have aifected to call the principles
upon which this work and the former part of the Rights of
Man are founded “ a new fangled doctrine.” The
question is not whether thdfef principles are new or old,
but whether they are right or wrong. Suppose the
former, it will shew their effect by a figure easily under-
stood.
It is now towards the middle of February. Were I
to take a turn into the country the trees would present a
leafless winterly appearance. As people are apt to pluck
twigs as they walk along, I perhaps might do the same,
and by chance might o&erve that a single bud on that
twig had begun to swell, I should reason very un-
naturally, or rather not reason at aU, to suppose that this
was the ottly bud in England which had this appearance.
Instead of deciding thus, I should instantly conclude
that the same appearance was beginning, or about to
begin, everywhere ; and though the vegetable sleep will
continue longer on some trees and plants than on others,
and though some of them may not blossom for two or
three years, all will be in leaf in the summer, except those
which are rotten. What pace the political summer may
keep with the natural, no human foresight can deteimine.
It is, however, not difficult to perceive that the spring is
begun. Thus wishing, as I sincerely do, freedom and
happiness to all nations, I close the Second Part.
APPE|?DIX *
: As the publication of this work has been delayed beyond
^ the time intended, I think it not improper, all circum-
stances considered, to state the causes that have
occasioned the delay.
The reader will probably observe, that some parts in
the plan contained in this work for reducing the taxes, and
certain parts in Mr. Pitt’s speech at the opening of the
present session, Tuesday, January 31, are so much alike,
as to induce a belief, that either the Author had taken
the hint from Mr. Pitt, or Mr. Pitt from the Author, — I
will first point out the parts that are similar, and then
state such circumstances as I am accjuainted with, leaving
the reader to make his own conclusion.
Considering it almost an unprecedented case, that
taxes should be proposed to be taken off, it is equally as
f extraordinary that such a measure should occur to two
! persons at the same time ; and still more so, (considering
the vast variety and multiplicity of taxes) that they should
hit on the same specific taxes. Mr, Pitt has mentioned,
in his speech, the tax on Carts and Waggotvs — that on
Female Servants — ^the lowering the tax on Candles^ and
the taking off the tax of three shillings on Houses having
under seven windows.
Every one of those specific taxes are a part of the
plan contained in this work, and proposed also to be
taken off. Mr, Pitt’s plan, it is true, goes no farther than
to a reduction of three hundred and twenty thousand
j pounds; and the reduction proposed in this work to
nearly six millions. I have made my calculations on
only sixteen millions and a half of revenue, still asserting
that it was “ very nearly, if not quite, seventeen millions.”
Mr. Pitt states it at 16,690,000. I know enough of the
255
RIGHTS OF RIAN
256
matter to say, that he has not owey-stated it. Having
thus g^ven the particulars, which con'espond in this work
and his speech, I will state a chain of circumstances that
may lead to some explanation.
The first hint for lessening the taxes, and that as a
consequence flowing from t;^ French revolution, is to be
found in the Address and Declaration of the Gentle-
men who met at the Thatched-House Tavern, August 20,
1791. Among many other particulars stated in that
Address, is the following, put as an interrogation to the
government opposers of the French revolution. “Are
they soyyy that the pyetence, foy new oppyessive taxes, and
the occasion foy continuing many old taxes will he at an
end? "
It is well known, that the persons who chiefly frequent
the Thatched-House Tavern, are men of court con-
nections, and so much did they talce this Address and
Declaration respecting the French revolution and the
reduction of taxes in disgust, that the Landlord was under
the necessity of informing the Gentlemen, who composed
the meeting of the twentieth of August, and who pro-
posed holding another meeting, that he could not
receive them.^
1 The gentleman who signed the address and declaration as
chairman of the meeting, Mr. Home Tooke, being generally-
supposed to be the person who drew it up, and having spoken
much in commendation of it. has been jocularly accused of
praising his own work. To free him from this embarrassment,
and to save him the repeated trouble of mentioning the author,
as he has not failed to do, I make no hesitation in saying, that
as the opportunity of benefiting by the French revolution
easily occurred to me, I drew up the publication in question, and
showed it to him and some other gentlemen ; who, fully approving
it, held a meeting for the purpose of making it pnblic, and sub-
scribed to the- amount of fifty guineas to defray the expence
of advertising. I believe there are at this time, in England, a
greater number of men acting on disinterested principles, and
determined to look into the nature and practices of govern-
ment themselves, and not blindly trust, as has hitherto been the
case, either to government generally, or to parliaments, or to
parliamentary opposition, than at any former period. Had this
been done a century ago, corruption and taxation had not arrived
to the height they are now at. — Author.
RIGHTS OF MAN
■257
What was only hinted at in the Address and Declaration,
respecting taxes and principles of government, wUl be
found reduced to a regular system in this work. But
as Mr, Pitt’s speech contains some of the same things
respecting taxes, I now come to give the circumstances
before alluded to.
The case is: This work ^as intended to be published
just before the meeting of Parliament, and for that
purpose a considerable part of the copy was put into the
printer’s hands in September, and all the remaining
copy, as far as page 244, which contains the parts to
which Mr. Pitt’s speech is similar, was given to him full
six weeks before the meeting of parliament, and he was
informed of the time at which it was to appear. He had
composed nearly the whole about a fortnight before the
time of parliament meeting, and had printed as far as
page 186, and had given me a proof of the next sheet,
up to page 215. It was then in sufficient forwardness to
be out at the time proposed, as two other sheets were
ready for striking off. I had before told him, that if he
thought he should be straitened for time, I would get
part of the work done at another press, which he desired
me not to do. In this manner, the work stood on the
Tuesday fortnight preceding the meeting of parliament,
when all at once, without any previous mtimation, though
I had been with him the evening before, he sent me, by
one of his workmen, all the remaining copy, from page
186, declining to go on with the work on any consideration.
To account for this extraordinary conduct I was totally
at a loss, as he stopped at the part where the arguments
on systems and principles of government closed, and
where the plan for the reduction of taxes, the education
of children, and the support of the poor and the aged
begins ; and still more especially, as he had, at the time
of his beginning to print, and before he had seen the whole
copy, offered a thousand pounds for the copy-right,
together with the future copy-right of the former part of
the Rights of Man. I told the person who brought me
this offer that I should not accept it, and wished it not
to be renewed, giving him as my reason, that though I
RIGHTS OF MAN
258*
believed the printer to be an honest man, I would never
put it in the power of any printer or publisher to suppress
or alter a work of mine, by making him master of the
copy, or give to him the right of selling it to any minister,
or to any other person, or to treat as a mere matter of
traffic that which I intended should operate as a principle.
His refusal to complete th§, work (which he could not
purchase) obliged me to seek for another printer, and this
of consequence would throw the publication back till
after the meeting of parliament, otherways it would have
appeared that Mr. Pitt had only taken up a part of the
plan which I had more fully stated.
Whether that gentleman, or any other, had seen the
work, or any part of it, is more than I have authority to
say. But the manner in which the work was returned,
and the particular time at which this was done, and that
after the offers he had made, are suspicious circumstances.
I know what the opinion of booksellers and publishers is
upon such a case, but as to my own opinion, I chuse to
make no declaration. There are many ways by which
proof sheets may be procured by other persons before a
work publicly appears; to which I shall add a certain
circumstance, which is,
A ministerial bookseller in Piccadilly who has been
employed, as common report says, by a clerk of one of the
boards closely connected with the ministry (the board of
trade and plantation of which Hawksbury is president)
to publish what he calls my Life ^ (I wish that his own
life and the lives of all the ?:abinet were as good) used to
have his books printed at the same printing-office that I
employed ; but when the former part of Rights of Man
came out, he took his work away in dudgeon ; and about
a week o^igadays before the printer returned my copy,
he came^tp^nake him an offer of his work again, which was
accepted. This would, consequently give him admission
into the printing-ojEfice^here the sheets of this work were
This was the libellous Life ^Thomas written by George
Chalmers under the pseudon^^ of ” Francis Oldys, A.M. of
the University of Pennsylvania.” — H. B. B.
RIGHTS OF MAN 259
then lying ; and as booksellers and printers are free with
each other, he would have the opportunity of seeing what
was going on. — ^Be the case however as it may, Mr. Pitt’s
plan, little and diminutive as it is, would have had a
very awkward appearance, had this work appeared at the
time the printer had engaged to finish it,
I have now stated the particulars which occasioned the
delay, from the proposal to purchase, to the refusal to
print. If all the Gentlemen are innocent, it is very
unfortunate for them that such a variety of suspicious
circumstances should, without any design, arrange
themselves together.
Having now finished this part, I will conclude with
stating another circumstance.
About a fortnight or three weeks before the meeting of
Parliament, a small addition, amounting to about twelve
shillings and six pence a year, was made to the pay of
the soldiers, or rather, their pay was docked so much less.
Some Gentlemen who knew, in part, that this work
would contain a plan of reforms respecting the oppressed
condition of soldiers, wished me to add a note to the work,
signifying, that the part upon that subject had been in
the printer’s hands some weeks before that addition of
pay was proposed. I declined doing this, lest it should
be interpreted into an air of vanity, or an endeavour to
excite suspicion (for which, perhaps, there might be no
grounds) that some of the government gentlemen, had,
by some means or other, made out what this work would
contain : and had not the'printing been interrupted
so as to occasion a delay beyond the time fixed for publi-
cation, nothing contained in this appendix would have
appeared.
