Jusitification For The French Revolution Essay, Research Paper

Thomas Paine?s Rights of Man opposes the

ridiculous conservative standpoint that Edmund Burke took towards the French

Revolution. Paine supported natural rights, and understood that democratic

institutions must be implemented in order to guarantee those rights. Paine

applied a combination of logic and common sense to discredit Burke?s opinion,

thereby proving the legitimacy of the revolution.

Burke understood a constitution to be an

inherited system, believing that as property is passed from father to son,

man must also transmit political privileges and the power of government.

However, Paine argued that no description of man has the right to such

power, and that every generation must be free to act for itself. He believed

that ? the vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the

most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.? Paine argued that the traditions

and polices inherited from father to son, aspects that Burke valued, must

be disposed, and that the circumstances and opinions of the world are continually

changing. Governments are for the living, not for the dead, and therefore

he reasonably concluded that only the living has the right to control their

political system.

Burke opposed the rights of man and supported

the privileges of the aristocracy, one of the main causes of the French

Revolution. While most European revolutions have been excited by personal

hatred, the revolution in France was generated by the rational contemplation

of the rights of man, and ?distinguishing from the beginning between persons

and principles.? Burke does not contemplate the important position of principles

in government; he instead focuses on the rights of the men serving the

government. Thus, most of his opinion towards the occasions of the

French Revolution are disqualified. The revolution was mainly concerned

with the unjust polices of French politics, and did not represent a personal

vendetta against the men in charge of the French government.

Paine wrote that ? [the French people]

did not enter into society to become worse than [they were] before, nor

to have fewer rights than [they had] before, but to have those rights better

secured.? He protested that the National Assembly was the means for the

people of France, without noble fathers, to be delegates of the nation.

At the same time, he understood that the authority of the National Assembly

would be different from the authority of future assemblies.