Rights of Man

Rights of Man (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It was published in two parts in March 1791 and February 1792. Rights of Man was a highly controversial work in its time, causing Paine to flee England for asylum in France. It remains one of the most articulate defenses of the Enlightenment-era conception of human rights.