Conservative intellectual Edmund Burke responded with a counter-revolutionary attack entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which strongly appealed to the landed class and sold 30,000 copies.

It sold as many as one million copies and was "eagerly read by reformers, Protestant dissenters, democrats, London craftsman, and the skilled factory-hands of the new industrial north".

The book's acumen derives from the Age of Enlightenment and has been linked to the Second Treatise of Government, by John Locke (even though Paine himself claimed to have never read this work).

[7] The fuller development of this position seems to have been worked out one night in France after an evening spent with Thomas Jefferson, and possibly Lafayette, discussing a pamphlet by the Philadelphia conservative James Wilson on the proposed federal constitution.

[3][8] Rights of Man concludes in proposing practical reformations of English government such as a written constitution composed by a national assembly, in the American mould; the elimination of aristocratic titles, because democracy is incompatible with primogeniture, which leads to the despotism of the family; a national budget without allotted military and war expenses; lower taxes for the poor, and subsidised education for them; and a progressive income tax weighted against wealthy estates to prevent the re-emergence of a hereditary aristocracy.

In Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) Edmund Burke says that true social stability arises if the nation's poor majority are governed by a minority of wealthy aristocrats, and that lawful inheritance of power (wealth, religious, governing) ensured the propriety of political power being the exclusive domain of the nation's élite social class—the nobility.

Edmund Burke's counter-revolutionary Reflections on the French Revolution delineates the legitimacy of aristocratic government to the 1688 Parliamentary resolution declaring William and Mary of Orange—and their heirs—to be the true rulers of England.

He dedicated Rights of Man to George Washington and to the Marquis de Lafayette, acknowledging the importance of the American and the French revolutions.

In the closing chapters of Rights of Man, Paine addresses the condition of the poor and outlines a detailed social welfare proposal predicated upon the redirection of government expenditures.

Unlike such writers as James Burgh who sought to limit assistance to the better behaved segments of the poor,[10] Paine declares welfare is not charity, but an irrevocable right.

[11] Paine critiques the societal conditions promulgated by the Poor Laws saying, "When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong with the system of government".

[11] In accordance with his belief that charity as a natural right, Paine presumes only republican or democratic regimes can effectively carry out successful welfare programs.

Though Paine does not directly condone or promote up-rise against the British monarchy, and utilizes rather subdued rhetoric in comparison to his other controversial works, revolutionary currents run beneath the surface of the text.

[14] Paine questions, "Is it, then, better that the lives of one hundred and forty thousand aged persons be rendered comfortable, or that a million a year of public money be expended on any one individual, and him often of the most worthless or insignificant character?

[11] Paine insists a proactive social welfare system that educates the country's youth, will act as a preventive measure, and engender greater knowledge amongst the population.

[11] To combat this problem, Paine proposes a remission of taxes to poor families; £4 a year for every child under the age of 14, granting the parents of the children send them to school.

[13] Paine states, "By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be relieved, but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and the number of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities, by the aid of education, will be greater".

[13] Paine notes that though individuals in the approach of age class retain their mental faculties, the decline of their physical health limits their ability to work, which consequently affects their earnings.

Of the 300 or more pamphlets which the revolution controversy spawned, Rights of Man was the first to seriously damage Burke's case and to restore credit to the French both in Britain and America.

[19] Paine's acquaintance Mary Wollstonecraft, whom he met via their common publisher, wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men as one of the first responses to Burke's attack on Richard Price.