It was not so much to demolish Burke as to give the English nation a constitution that Paine desired; for it seemed to the author of "Common Sense" that, America having renounced monarchy and set up a republican form of government, safely guarded by a written constitution, England must be anxious to do the same thing, and was only in need of a constitution.
The flamboyant rhetoric of the American Declaration of Independence--"We hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"-- was not the sort of language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted the falseness of the statement by keeping the negro in slavery), and the glittering generalities of the "Rights of Man" made no impression on the Whig leaders in Parliament.

Paine was back in the old regions of a social contract, and of a popular sovereignty antecedent to government.

It was all beside the mark, this talk of a popular right inherent in the nation, a right that gave the power to make constitutional changes not _through_ elected representatives in Parliament, but by a general convention.
Parliament in the sight of the Whigs was the sovereign assembly holding its authority from the people, and only by a majority in the House of Commons could the people express its will.

What made the "Rights of Man" popular with the English democrats of the "Constitutional Society" and the sympathisers with the French Revolution was not so much the old pre-historic popular "sovereignty" fiction--though it is true that there were many Englishmen, of whom Godwin was one, who could see no hope of Parliament reforming itself or of granting any measure of enfranchisement to the people, and therefore were willing to fall back on any theory for compelling Parliament to move towards a more liberal constitution--as the programme of practical reforms that was unfolded in its pages and the honest defence of the proceedings in Paris.

That Parliament had no right to bind posterity, as Burke maintained, and that if the revolution of 1688 was authoritative, why should a revolution in 1788 be less authoritative?
were matters of less interest than the clear statement of events in France, and the proposals for a democratic constitution in England and for social reform.