“Rights of man,”
The title of
Thomas Paine's famous reply to
Edmund Burke's
Reflections on the French Revolution.
It was issued in
England, and had an immense sale.
It was translated into
French, and won for the author a seat in the French National Assembly.
Thomas Jefferson, then
Secretary of State, had come from
France filled with the radical ideas of the
French Revolutionists, and thought he saw, in the coolness of the
President and others, a sign of decaying republicanism in
America.
The essays of
Adams, entitled
Discourses on Davila, disgusted him, and he believed that
Adams,
Hamilton,
Jay, and others were plotting for the establishment of a monarchy in the
United States.
To thwart these fancied designs and to inculcate the doctrines of the
French Revolution,
Jefferson hastily printed in America, and circulated,
Paine's
Rights of man, which had just been received from
England.
It was originally dedicated “to the
President of the
United States.”
It inculcated principles consonant with the feelings and opinions of the great body of the
American people.
The author sent fifty copies to
Washington, who distributed them among his friends, but his official position admonished him to be prudently silent about the work, for it bore hard upon the
British government.
The American edition, issued from a Philadelphia press, contained a commendatory note from
Mr. Jefferson, which had been privately written, and not intended for publication.
In it he had aimed some severe observations against the author of the
Discourses on Davila.
This created much bitterness of feeling.
Warm discussions arose.
John Quincy Adams, son of the
Vice-President, wrote a series of articles in reply to the
Rights of man, over the signature of “Publico.”
They were published in the
Boston Centinel, and reprinted in pamphlet form, with the name of
John Adams on the title-page, as it was supposed they were written by him. Several writers answered them.
“A host of champions entered the arena immediately in your defence,”
Jefferson wrote to
Paine.
See
Ingersoll, Robert Green;
Paine, Thomas.
