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( Rights of Man)
Rights of Man (1791), by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. It defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's anti-democratic attack upon popular government in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). [1] Human rights originate in Nature, thus, rights cannot be granted via political charter, because that implies that rights are legally revocable, hence, would be privileges Government's sole purpose is safeguarding the individual and his/her inherent, inalienable rights; each societal institution that does not benefit the nation is illegitimate — especially the Monarchy, the Nobility, and the Military. The book's acumen derives from the Age of Enlightenment, especially from the Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke; for placing the person supreme to the government, the English government declared author Thomas Paine a traitor. Principally, Rights of Man opposes the idea of hereditary government — the belief that dictatorial government is necessary, because of Man's corrupt, essential nature. In Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) Edmund Burke, says that true, social stability arises if the nation's poor majority are governed by an exclusive, minority of wealthy aristocrats, and that lawful inheritance of power (wealth, religious, governing) ensured the propriety of political power being the exclusive domain of the nation's élite social class — the Nobility.
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