Thomas Paine's Rights of Man

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense had urged American independence in 1776, answered Burke in Rights of Man (Part I, 1791; Part II, 1792). Paine argued that natural rights are those which belong to a person by the fact of their existence, such as freedom of thought, while civil rights are natural rights that people place in the common stock of society because they cannot secure them alone.

He attacked Burke's reliance on precedent, insisting that each generation has the same rights as the one before and that 'the vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave' is the most ridiculous of tyrannies. No generation, he said, can bind its descendants forever. Part II went further, proposing public support for the poor, the elderly and the education of children, paid for by taxes.

Paine's writing was clear and aimed at ordinary readers, which alarmed the British government: he was tried in his absence for seditious libel in 1792 and convicted.