On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man by Philip Freneau
"On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man" by Philip Freneau is a poem responding to Thomas Paine's influential work advocating for individual rights and the principles of the French Revolution. Written shortly after Paine's publication, the poem diverges from Freneau’s typical satirical style, instead adopting a rationalist-Deist approach that emphasizes the moral underpinnings of governance without reference to divine authority. It critiques monarchy as the root of human suffering, highlighting issues such as war, plunder, and the suppression of freedom, while also celebrating the promise of a new social order rooted in the natural rights of individuals.
The poem is structured in four stanzas, presenting a stark contrast between the oppressive state of affairs under monarchies and the hopeful vision of a republic where citizens thrive without kings. Freneau articulates responsibilities for the newly independent Americans, urging them to remain vigilant against political ambition and to uphold the tenets of liberty and justice. The final lines convey an optimistic vision of the United States as a bastion of virtue and human rights, positioning it as a significant model for nations worldwide. This work serves as both a reflection on the challenges of governance and a call to embrace the ideals of freedom and equality.
On this Page
On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man by Philip Freneau
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1791 (collected in Poems Written and Published During the American Revolutionary War, 1809)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
This poem, which is sometimes published under the title “To a Republican, with Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man,” was written immediately after the publication of Thomas Paine’s great and influential book in defense of the French Revolution. It was later included in Freneau’s Poems (1809). In many ways, the poem is uncharacteristic of Freneau: While trenchant in its criticism of monarchy and enthusiastic in its endorsement of Paine’s thinking, it is neither overtly satiric nor especially lyrical, though it does make reference to the laws of Nature and to personified Virtue. As might be expected, it makes no allusion to God: It is, therefore, essentially a rationalist-Deist poem on the morality of the national polity.
Further, the structure of the poem is a departure from the usual forms that Freneau used: The fifty lines are divided into four stanzas of ten, fourteen, ten, and sixteen lines of iambic pentameter that are end-rhymed—that is, in closed couplets. The first three stanzas bemoan the ugly fate of the “sacred Rights of Man” as they have been travestied by monarchs; the final two celebrate the great plan for the enunciation and protection of the natural rights of the common person that was contained in Paine’s treatise and was being worked out in the new Constitution of the United States, which is addressed as “Columbia.”
Just as “A Political Litany” and “To Sir Toby” are characterized by catalogs of deficiencies and shortcomings, so too is “On Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man.” Kings are presented as the source of discord, murder, slavery, knavery, plunder, and—worst of all—the restraint of freedom and “Nature’s law reversed.” The indictment is detailed and extensive. For example, after complaining that ships are ordered to sail the distant seas on royal orders, Freneau states that the benefits of these voyages, the proceeds of the “plundered prize,” are used not to benefit humankind but “the strumpet,” or they serve “to glut the king.” These abuses of royal prerogatives are neither unusual nor passing: The reader is invited to scan the record of history for confirmation, for the poet is sure that he will be inflamed “with kindling rage” to see human rights aspersed and freedom restrained. The “manly page” of Paine and the reasoned argument of his treatise will not fail to convince any reader of the soundness of his thesis.
Then comes the bifurcation in the poem: In rather traditional Enlightenment manner, Freneau, having presented the present condition, offers a glimpse of the corrections to be obtained by pursuing the course proposed by Paine. Though the final stanza has sixteen lines, it is in the form of a rather loosely constructed sonnet. It opens with an apostrophe to Columbia and then lists some of the future’s great boons: Without a king, the colonists—now American citizens—will peacefully and profitably till the fields to their own advantage. They have already “traced the unbounded sea,” and they have instituted the rule of law, which is honored by one and all.
Freneau does not conclude with a listing of the immediate advantages of the new social order, however; he offers a list of responsibilities for the newly independent Americans. These include the restraint of the politically ambitious and the propagation of a few basic truths: that rulers are vain, that warfare inevitably brings ruin to a republic, and that monarchies subsist by waging war.
Then, in the concluding four lines, Freneau offers a magnificent view of the goals and future of the United States in language of undoubted sincerity. There is no suggestion of cliché or slogan, no inflated or bombastic vocabulary, no circumlocution or literary idiom—only the simple language of the new citizen of the new republic enunciating the rights of everyone to such things as life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness:
So shall our nation, form’d on Virtue’s plan,
Bibliography
Andrews, William D. “Philip Freneau and Francis Hopkinson.” In American Literature, 1764-1789: The Revolutionary Years, edited by Everett Emerson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.
Elliott, Emory. “Philip Freneau: Poetry of Social Commitment.” In Revolutionary Writers: Literature and Authority in the New Republic, 1725-1810. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Leary, Lewis. “Philip Freneau.” In Major Writers of Early American Literature, edited by Everett Emerson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972.
Pearce, Roy Harvey. “Antecedents: The Case of Freneau.” In The Continuity of American Poetry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961.
Ronnick, Michele Valerie. “A Note on the Text of Philip Freneau’s ’Columbus to Ferdinand’: From Plato to Seneca.” Early American Literature 29, no. 1 (1994): 81.
Tichi, Cecelia. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans Through Whitman. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.
Wertheimer, Eric. “Commencement Ceremonies: History and Identity in ’The Rising Glory of America,’ 1771 and 1786.” Early American Literature 29, no. 1 (1994): 35.