Rights of Man opens by lamenting the “incivilities” of Edmund Burke’s “unprovoked attack” (7) on the French Revolution. Paine quotes from Burke’s criticism of Dr. Richard Price, the English radical, and then defends Price’s assertion that the people are sovereign. Paine then counters Burke’s assertion that, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, the English nation forever relinquished the right of revolution. Turning to France, Paine contrasts Burke’s principles with those of the Marquis de Lafayette, whose “soul-animating sentiments” (12) in favor of liberty, coupled with his history of service in the American Revolution, Paine admires. 

Paine rejects Burke’s claim that the French people rebelled against King Louis XVI, arguing that they rebelled against absolute monarchy and all of its corruption. Absolute monarchy, according to Paine, consists of more than the person of the king, for it permeates and distorts every institution. Paine then accuses Burke of allowing his imagination to run wild by lamenting that the death of aristocracy in France will mean the death of chivalry. Paine contrasts the mildness of the French Revolution with the bloodthirsty vengeance British troops visited upon Scotland after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.