Thomas Paine :: essays research papers

Library Historical Documents Thomas Paine Rights Of Man slice The First--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Order The Rights of Man now.Part The FirstBeing An root To Mr. Burkes Attack On The French revolution--------------------------------------------------------------------------------George WashingtonPRESIDENT OF THE get together STATES OF AMERICASIR,I present you a small treatise in defense team of those principles of freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to establish. That the Rights of Man whitethorn become as universal as your benevolence can coveting, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing the New World regenerate the Old, is the ingathering ofSIR,Your much obliged, andObedient humble Servant,THOMAS PAINE--------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Authors Preface to the English chance variableFrom the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural that I should take care him a friend to mankind and as our acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would throw away been more agreeable to me to have had cause to continue in that idea than to change it.At the time Mr. Burke made his violent rescue last winter in the English Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written to him but a dead time before to inform him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon afterward this I saw his advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to disoblige As the attack was to be made in a expression but little studied, and less understood in France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised nearly of the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burkes Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more necessary to be done, when I saw the conspicuous misrepresentations which Mr. Burkes Pamphlet contains and that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an guile on the rest of the world.I am the more astonished and discomfited at this conduct in Mr. Burke, as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed other expectations.I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found out to fall down the differences that should occasionally arise in the neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were tiro enough not to be made the dupes of Courts.