Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an Anglo-American political philosopher known for pamphlets he wrote in support of the American Revolution. In 1791 he wrote The Rights of Man, a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. In the following viewpoint, excerpted from his book, Paine defends the decision of French citizens to revolt against the monarchy. He argues that the French people were not rebelling against the person of King Louis XVI, who was a good king, but against the endemic despotism that marked all political, economic, and religious affairs in France. He contends that the French masses quite reasonably wanted to overcome this political and economic repression and establish new civil and political rights.

We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. [Edmund] Burke’s book...