ABSTRACT
A pamphlet that a modern reader scorns may have been read because of timeliness or as the latest installment in the controversy that many persons followed. The exception was Tom Paine's Rights of Man, the first part of which appeared in March 1791 and the second part the following February. The publication of the first part of the Rights of Man was followed quickly enough by the first attempt to pass Fox's Libel Bill to sustain them into the summer. The newspapers reported this coincidence and commented impishly upon the irony of it. The disagreement among English radicals over the extent of parliamentary reform in England was less about basic theory than about practical applications. Paine found the origin of government in the natural rights, contract philosophy, but he derived its purpose from the principle of utility.
