The rights of man
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- The rights of man
- Creator
- Paine, Thomas
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XIV (No.9) September 1962
- Year
- 1962
- Rights
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- Abstract
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One of the great defenders of human freedom reminds us of its significance.. Written 160 years ago, these words are still valid today.
- Fulltext
- One of the great defenders of human freedom re minds us of its significance. Written 160 years ago, these words are still valid today. W RIGHTS CP MAN When we speak of right we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties: rights become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy be comes my duty to guarantee it to another, and he to me: and those who violate the duty justly incur a forfeiture of the right. In a political view of the case, the strength and perma nent security of government is in proportion to the num ber of people interested in supporting it. The true po licy therefore is to interest the whole by an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions.^ It is possi ble to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is im possible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and when all other rights are taken away the right of rebellion is made perfect. While men could be per suaded they had no rights, or that rights appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their con sequence by their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once de tected cannot be re-acted. To ^attempt it is to provoke deri sion, or invite destruction. That property will ever be September 1962 9 unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dex terity of management, ex treme frugality, fortunate op portunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence, while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punish able; it makes the sole busi ness of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclu sive rights. In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a commer cial company, the rights of the members composing that company are wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights are represented in the govern ment of that company than what arise out of that pro perty; neither has that gov ernment cognizance of any thing but property. But the case is totally dif ferent with respect to the ins titution of civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a gov ernment has cognizance of everything, and of every man as a member of the national society, whether he has pro perty or not; and, therefore, the principle requires that every man, and every kind of right, be represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man’s person is more sacred than the protection of property; and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of property. It is property to him; he has ac quired it; and it is as much the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without that faculty, can be 10 Panorama the object of protection in another person. I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every mo tive to violence; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when pro perty is made a pretense for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumult; for it is unnatural to believe that property can be secure under the guarantee of a society in jured in its rights by the in fluence of that property. — Thomas Paine. O WOMAN! If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost — without exception — at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave. Nature herself, in forming beings so susceptible and tender, appears to have been more attentive to their charms than to their happiness. Continually surrounded with griefs and fears, the women more than share all our miseries, and are besides subjected to ills which are peculiarly their own. They cannot be the means of life without exposing them selves to the loss of it; every revolution which they undergo, alters their health, and threatens their existence. Cruel dis tempers attack their beauty — and the hour which confirms their release from those is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex. They can then only hope for protection from the humiliating claims of pity, or the feeble voice of gra titude. — Thomas Paine. September 1962 11
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