“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.”
As a strong advocate of the French Revolution, Paine asserts the safeguarding of people’s natural rights should be the duty of any government. Thus, when these rights are violated by a tyrannical government the civilians have a responsibility to overthrow the regime. In the quotation, Paine expresses that the citizens have an obligation to each other to enjoy their natural rights. Inspired by essayists that advocated for the protection of rights of man, Paine makes strong opinions regarding the French Revolution and its significance despite critics.
“The vanity and presumption 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 in the generations which are to follow.”
A major argument in the articles is the criticism against aristocracy and its tyrannical tendencies. Henceforth the statement alludes to the absurdity of the hereditary government since it goes against the natural rights of man. He affirms this form of government tends to observe its people as its property rather than a freethinking mass that should choose their governors. As criticism of Burke’s argument, Paine explains that aristocrats are not fit to govern a mass of citizens who are starving in contrast to them.
“Every child born in the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is this new to him as it was to the first that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.”
The overarching theme of the book is the protection of the unalienable rights of man thus Paine stresses this fact to make his argument credible. Further broadening the argument on hereditary government, the statement aims to express the equality of every human since they possess the same sets of natural rights as the next. He criticizes the notion that particular genetic disposition makes for a great leader. This notion is what allows for the aristocratic system to turn into a tyrannical one because of the guaranteed license to leadership. To him, democracy is key to avoiding despotism since every human is equally qualified to be a leader as the next.
