Mary Wollstonecraft, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
You ask me to choose between the two, and I will not, because the second is the occasion and the first is the argument. I do not hide the occasion. I took up Mr. Burke's Reflections as the transient topic of the day, read it more for amusement than information, and found my indignation roused by sophistical arguments that crossed me at every moment in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense.
Many pages were the effusions of the moment; they swelled imperceptibly, and the idea of a short vindication followed.1 I had neither leisure nor patience to pursue so desultory a writer through all the tracks where his fancy started fresh game, and so I confined myself to the grand principles at which he had levelled his ingenious arguments in a specious garb.
I called my answer hasty myself, and I left unmarked passages I had meant to censure, because to refute him fairly I should have had to set his contradictions against each other, and I feared I should then be read only by the patient eye that scarcely wanted my help to detect them.2 As for learning, he may keep it. A reader who accuses me of lacking his has not asked what the learning is spent on.
He asks us to reverence the rust of antiquity and to call the unnatural customs that ignorance and mistaken self-interest have consolidated the sage fruit of experience. Where we discover errors, our feelings are to excuse them with blind love, and we are to remain in frozen inactivity because a thaw, though it nourishes the soil, spreads a temporary inundation.
That is sound reasoning in the mouth of the rich and short-sighted.3 I glowed with indignation because I could find in his pages no fixed first principle to refute. It would have been something like cowardice to fight a man who had never exercised the weapons with which his opponent chose to combat.3 The principle I set against him is not anger.
There are rights which men inherit at their birth as rational creatures, raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties, and they receive these not from their forefathers but from God, so that prescription can never undermine natural rights. A father may squander his property and his child has no complaint; but if he sell the child for a slave or fetter him with laws contrary to reason, nature, in enabling the child to discern good from evil, teaches him to break the ignoble chain.4
Whether that makes me a rational theist I leave to those who like labels. I know that I ground liberty in the eternal foundation of right, in immutable truth, in the attributes of God, and that I ask who will presume to deny it who pretends to rationality.5 What I call the idolatry of rank is simply the other side of this. Mr. Burke's reverence for antiquity, followed to its end, settles slavery on an everlasting foundation, and the slave trade ought never to be abolished, because our ignorant forefathers sanctioned it.6
The security of property is his whole definition of English liberty, and to that selfish principle every nobler one is sacrificed; and it is only the property of the rich that is secure, for the man who lives by the sweat of his brow has no asylum from oppression.6 He has an antipathy to reason, and I have none. It is reflection, the operation of that reason which he contemns with flippant disrespect, that makes affections rational at all; the common passions bind brutes together as well as men.7
Time may show that the obscure throng of the National Assembly knew more of the human heart and of legislation than the profligates of rank, emasculated by hereditary effeminacy.8 I wrote in a month, and the principle in it took longer than that to form.
Burke weeps for a queen led from her bedchamber and has no tears for the women who sell their bodies in the streets his system makes; his reverence for inherited property, rank and precedent is the sensibility of a man who has made the manners of the great his conscience. The rights of men are not an inheritance from ancestors but the birthright of rational creatures created by God for improvement; property secured by hereditary honours corrupts those who hold it and degrades those who serve it, and the poor are made brutes and then blamed for brutality.9 She wrote fast because the case was plain, and she signed the second edition because a woman had written it.10111213
my indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense. Many pages of the following letter were the effusions of the moment; but, swelling imperceptibly to a considerable size, the idea was suggested of publishing a short vindication of the Rights of Men.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Taking a retrospective view of my hasty answer, and casting a cursory glance over your Reflections, I perceive that I have not alluded to several reprehensible passages... after such a tedious drudgery, I fear I should only be read by the patient eye that scarcely wanted my assistance to detect the flagrant errors.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
we are to reverence the rust of antiquity, and term the unnatural customs, which ignorance and mistaken self-interest have consolidated, the sage fruit of experience... This is sound reasoning, I grant, in the mouth of the rich and short-sighted.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
there are rights which men inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties; and that, in receiving these, not from their forefathers but, from God, prescription can never undermine natural rights.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
But that it results from the eternal foundation of right—from immutable truth—who will presume to deny, that pretends to rationality—if reason has led them to build their morality and religion on an everlasting foundation—the attributes of God?A Vindication of the Rights of Men
the whole tenor of his plausible arguments settles slavery on an everlasting foundation... Security of property! Behold, in a few words, the definition of English liberty. And to this selfish principle every nobler one is sacrificed.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
The common affections and passions equally bind brutes together; and it is only the continuity of those relations that entitles us to the denomination of rational creatures; and this continuity arises from reflection—from the operations of that reason which you contemn with flippant disrespect.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Time may shew, that this obscure throng knew more of the human heart and of legislation than the profligates of rank, emasculated by hereditary effeminacy.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
It is necessary emphatically to repeat, that there are rights which men inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties; and that, in receiving these, not from their forefathers but, from God, prescription can never undermine natural rights.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Further, that we ought cautiously to remain for ever in frozen inactivity, because a thaw, whilst it nourishes the soil, spreads a temporary inundation; and the fear of risking any personal present convenience should prevent a struggle for the most estimable advantages. This is sound reasoning, I grant, in the mouth of the rich and short-sighted.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
If they were, it is time we broke loose from dependence——Time that Englishmen drew water from their own springs; for, if manners are not a painted substitute for morals, we have only to cultivate our reason, and we shall not feel the want of an arbitrary model.A Vindication of the Rights of Men
These lively conjectures are the breezes that preserve the still lake from stagnating. We should be aware of confining all moral excellence to one channel, however capacious; or, if we are so narrow-minded, we should not forget how much we owe to chance that our inheritance was not Mahometism; and that the iron hand of destiny, in the shape of deeply rooted authority, has not suspended the sword of destruction over…A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Are we to seek for the rights of men in the ages when a few marks were the only penalty imposed for the life of a man, and death for death when the property of the rich was touched?A Vindication of the Rights of Men
The first reply to Burke, eclipsed by Paine's and read for a century as a woman's outburst; the modern scholarship has read it as the theory that the Rights of Woman applies.