The Rights of Man

Paine mocks Burke’s insistence that wisdom follows hereditary government. Paine predicts that the new governments in America and France will last for at least a thousand years; he further predicts that no counter-revolution could ever come to France. He denounces as despotic Burke’s claim that in England, the king occupies his throne independent of the will of the people. Where Burke attempts to minimize the role of the people in the making of their own government, Paine responds by diminishing the British monarchy, referring to the ruling “House of Brunswick”—also called the House of Hanover—as “one of the petty tribes of Germany” (73, emphasis added). In calling the royal family a “petty tribe” from “Germany,” Paine suggests that there is nothing inherently special about the family while also implying they are not exactly British, either. Whereas Burke regards hereditary monarchy as the key to British liberty, Paine equates hereditary monarchy with despotism, denouncing a system wherein a small part of the people chose the family that enjoy hereditary succession to the throne. 

Paine then questions the value of monarchy as a government system, which, he observes, has lost its luster in America and France. Paine remarks that only those who are personally enriched by monarchy, such as aristocrats and holders of tax-supported pensions and useless government offices, seem to support it.