Thomas Paine Despotism

In Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man we read essentially a letter, a rebuttal to another man, Edmund Burke, and what Burke said of the French Revolution and The National Assembly in his book, Reflections on the Revolution in France. It is clear from the start that Thomas Paine disagrees with much if not completely all of what Edmund Burke had said. Chiefly, speaking in regards to aristocracy despotism and hereditary despotism, Paine believed the delegators of parliament cannot and do not have the power to abdicate for people of the future, their whole law and all of its clauses are null and void. “The parliament or the people of 1688 or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence” (Paine, Rights of Man, 1791, p. 2).The removal of primogeniture was a pivotal point in the Rights of Man along with the removal of aristocratic titles and the pursuit of democratic styled society. …show more content…
7).This serves as not only the main reason for The Revolution but also the reason Paine suggests removing the hereditary aspect of government because it could lead back to the use and abuse of old law and