Paine argues that rights are something inherent to all of humanity and are not something bestowed by a certain government or legal system. Instead, all rights come from the Creator, and for this reason all human beings are born free and equal, which means that sovereignty resides in the people as a whole. Paine uses the idea of natural rights to argue that the basis of legitimate government rests in the sovereign will of the common people, who deserve to express their will through representative republican government.

Paine champions natural rights in opposition to those who insist that rights come from tradition, charters, or some other man-made source. Paine argues that those who cite historical “precedents” are too selective in their use of history and “do not go far enough into antiquity” (28). He argues that rights can be traced to the very beginning, when God created the world. Any theory of precedents leaves mankind “thrown back to a vast distance from his Maker” (30), rendering rights something artificial and man-made instead of a divinely-bestowed state of being. Those who argue for rights from precedents, therefore, believe that society grants a man his rights, but Paine claims that society “grants him nothing” (31), since all rights are inherent.