A Vindication of the Rights of Men: Second Edition

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Mary Wollstonecraft 

Published by Joseph Johnson 1790

In 1789 Dr Richard Price, the minister at the Dissenters' Church on Newington Green, gave a sermon 'A Discourse on the Love of Our Country'' in which he supported republicanism and the French Revolution. This sermon started a pamphlet war and Edmund Burke followed this with his publication 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' in which he attacked Dr Price's ideas. One week later, Joseph Johnson published  Mary Wollstonecraft's pamphlet 'A Vindication of the Rights of Men', written in support of Dr Price.

Some quotes from A Vindication of the Rights of Men:

'...I war not with an individual when I contend for the rights of men and the liberty of reason' 

'The birthright of man..... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact...

'Allowing (Mr Burke's) servile reverence for antiquity, and prudent attention to self-interest, to have the force which he insists on, the slave trade ought never to be abolished; and because of our ignorant forefathers, not understanding the native dignity of man, sanctioned a traffic that outrages every suggestion of reason and religion, we are to submit to the inhuman custom, and term an atrocious insult to humanity the love of our country, and a proper submission to the laws by which our property is secured. - Security of property! Behold in a few words, the definition of English liberty. And to this selfish principle every nobler one is sacrificed....'

'In reprobating Dr Price's opinions you might have spared the man.... whose talents and modest virtues place him high in the scale of moral excellence'

'No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.'

'Virtue can only flourish amongst equals'.

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