The Rights of Humankind (Audio) Once wealth, religion, sex, and race Determined each one's rank and place. Inquisitors and tyrants fought Against all free and liberal thought.  Then some brave visionaries saw  That all are bound by natural law.  Courageous hearts and fearless minds  Won us the rights of humankind.    Thomas Paine said kings and queens and  Monarchs have no sovereignty,  Free citizens should rule themselves  As equals in democracy.  And there will dawn an age of reason  That triumphs over superstition  And rids the world of tyranny,  For human rights will set us free.    Some were slow to understand  That women have all Rights of Man,  And some were slow to see the wrong  Of sexes ranked as weak or strong.    Olympe de Gouges sought equal rights   But her quest was cut short by a guillotine's knife.  A hundred years of toil would pass  Before her goal was reached at last.    Young Cesare Beccaria  Rejected useless cruelty.  He made the nations recognize  That torture is barbarity.    Increasing human happiness  Should be our measure of success,  And execution be forsworn  For human rights start ere we're born.    Once wealth, religion, sex, and race  Determined each one's rank and place.  Inquisitors and tyrants fought  Against all free and liberal thought.    Then some brave visionaries saw  That all are bound by natural law.  Courageous hearts and fearless minds  Won us the rights of humankind. The Rights of Humankind celebrates the pioneers of the 18th century human rights revolution. Olympe de Gouges Olympe de Gouges' 1791 “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” boldly asserted that women should have exactly the same legal and political rights as men. Tragically, de Gouges' efforts to promote women's rights were cut short when she was sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. Thomas Paine Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense,” which argued that the legitimacy of governments comes from the consent of the governed, not from divine right, was a key document of the American Revolution. However, his later assertion in “Age of Reason” that national churches were human inventions that perpetuate the financial and political domination of the many by the few, led to his ostracism by his former revolutionary colleagues. Cesare Beccaria Twenty-six year old Cesare Beccaria's 1764 treatise “On Crimes and Punishments” led to the abolition of torture in criminal investigations in the western world and Europe's first statute abolishing capital punishment. Beccaria's focus on maximizing happiness as a political objective found its way into the language of the Declaration of Independence.