Remembering the Past: The Rights of Man

BY

SHANE Mac THOMÁIS

Few people seemed less likely to change history than Thomas Paine. According to one chronicler, he was an "unkempt nomad who loved to talk and to drink, he would drop in on friends for a brief visit and stay for five years". Yet he emerged as one of the world's most devoted, eloquent, influential advocates of human liberty.

In 1787 after taking part in the American War of Independence, Paine returned to England. Soon after the opening phase of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, a scathing denunciation of the revolutionary movement in France. Burke's attack infuriated Paine, who promptly set out to write his defence of the Revolution. In so doing he produced one of the finest political statements of democratic philosophy ever formulated — The Rights of Man.

In Ireland, The Rights of Man encountered a response like no other in publishing history. The poor pooled their pennies, supplementing it with meagre savings, to buy the book. People who could not read, gathered at taverns to hear it being read out. The Rights of Man became an underground manifesto, passed from hand to hand, even when it became a crime to be found with it in one's possession.

The book became a bible to thousands of citizens who dreamed of a free Ireland. Time after time, when men were tried for treason, invariably the crown offered as evidence to the jury the fact that those accused possessed a copy of The Rights of Man.

Outlawed for treason, Paine fled to France in 1792, never to return to England again.

The book shook the British Government. It set thousands of people to thinking. It stirred the currents in what had been placid water, and once stirred revolutionaries like Wolfe Tone and Ann Devlin would not rest until all men and women were free. This not only occurred in Ireland, but everywhere people longed for freedom, The Rights of Man became an inspiration and a hope.

All of Paine's works reflected his belief in natural reason and natural rights, political equality, tolerance, civil liberties and the dignity of man. Paine has been described as a professional radical and a revolutionary propagandist without peer. Born in England, he was dismissed as an excise officer while lobbying for higher wages. Impressed by Paine, Benjamin Franklin sponsored Paine's emigration to America in 1774.

In Philadelphia Paine became a journalist and essayist, contributing articles on all subjects to The Pennsylvania Magazine. After the publication of Common Sense, Paine continued to inspire and encourage the patriots during the Revolutionary War with a series of pamphlets entitled The American Crisis.

When Paine wrote Common Sense he was venturing into uncharted waters. By the time he settled into writing The Rights of Man, he did so with hindsight and deliberately set out to write a document that would shake the whole fabric of England.

The Rights of Man has stood for more than two centuries, pointing out paths in democratic government. Even today, it would be considered radical by many of those who wish to maintain the status quo.

It is one of history's ironies that the volume written by one of England's greatest statesman is by and large forgotten... while Thomas Paine's answer to it has become a inspiration to lovers of freedom. Despite his fame, Paine endured hardship throughout his life as he pursued his ideas. He was jailed in France for his controversial views. He would have been jailed in Britain if he had stayed there, since Paine opposed the Federalist Alien & Sedition Acts and challenged established churches, and he was hounded in the United States. He never made much money from his pamphlets, because he used most of it to help print more copies. He died penniless in 1809. After his death the papers read: He had lived long, did some good and much harm, which history has judged to be an unworthy epitaph.

On the 15 October 1787, 218 years ago, The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine was first published.

Email: [email protected]