Volume I Part 28 (2/2)
The Infores, octavo, is a curiosity It recites that ”Tho a wicked, reatly disaffected to our said Sovereign Lord the now King, and to the happy constitution and govern them into hatred and contempt, on the sixteenth day of February, in the thirty-second year of the reign of our said present Sovereign Lord the King, with force and arms at London aforesaid, to wit, in the parish of St Mary le Bone, in the Ward of Cheap, he, the said Thomas, wickedly, maliciously and seditiously, did write and publish, and caused to be written and published, a certain false, scandalous,the said late happy Revolution, and the said settleovernhts of Man, Part the Second, Co principle and practice' In one part thereof, according to the tenor and effect following, that is to say, 'All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny An heritable crown'
(dodos nificant explanation than that overnment is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds' 'The tih at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick, forGeorge the First) at the expence of a e, nor her interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted theovernment could be trusted to such hands, itindeed; and materials fit for all the purposes land' In conte and his laws, to the evil exaainst the peace of our said Lord the King, his crown and dignity
Whereupon the said Attorney General of our said Lord the King, who for our said Lord the King in this behalf, prose-cuteth for our said Lord the King, prayeth the consideration of the court here in the preainst him, the said Thomas Paine, in this behalf, toand concerning the premises aforesaid
”To this information the defendant hath appeared, and pleaded Not Guilty, and thereupon issue is joined”
The specifications and quotations in the Information are reiterated twice, in one case (Paine's note on William and Mary centenary), three tiland at the celebration of the centenary of the Revolution of 1688 The characters of William and Mary have always appeared toto destroy his uncle, the other her father, to get possession of power the of the event, I felt hurt at seeing it ascribe the whole reputation of it to a man who had undertaken it as a job; and who besides what he otherwise got, charged six hundred thousand pounds for the expense of the little fleet that brought hie the First acted the saht the Duchy of Breland, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds over and above his pay as King; and, having thus purchased it at the expense of England, added it to his Hanoverian dominions for his own private profit In fact every nation that does not govern itself is governed as a job England has been the prey of jobs ever since the Revolution”
It is marvellous that such an author, martial with ”force and arms,”
could still walk freely about London But the ht had always a tendency to rust in England; it had to be refurbished To the royal proclas corporations and rotten boroughs responded with loyal addresses In the debate on that proclaned Paine, and he addressed an open letter to the Secretary (June 6th) which ell received Mr Adam had said that:
”He had well considered the subject of constitutional publications, and was by no h reco a doctrine or system different from the form of our constitution were fit objects of prosecution; that if he did, he ton for his Oceana, Sir Thomas More for his Utopia, and Hume for his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth But the publication of Mr
Paine reviled as most sacred in the Constitution, destroyed every principle of subordination, and established nothing in their room”
The real difficulty was that Paine _had_ put so in the room of hereditary monarchy--not a Utopia, but the representative systeovernland and Aovernlish pension list alone
”Here is a foranized than any other government in the world, and that for less than one hundred thousand pounds, and yet every ress receives as a compensation for his time and attendance on public business, one pound seven shi+llings per day, which is at the rate of nearly five hundred pounds a year This is a govern to fear It needs no procla It needs no political superstition to support it It was by encouraging discussion and rendering the press free upon all subjects of governovernment beca their present blessings under it You hear of no riots, tumults and disorders in that country; because there exists no cause to produce thes are never the effect of freedom, but of restraint, oppression, and excessive taxation”
On June 8th Paine appeared in court and was much disappointed by the postpone suentry in Surrey, to respond to the proclamation, receives due notice Paine sends for presentation to the gentlehts of Man,” one thousand of his ”Letter to Dundas” The bearer is Ho on the i should be presided over by Lord Onslow, a bed-chamber lord (sinecure) at 1,000, with a pension of 3,000 Tooke, being cut short, his speech was continued by Paine, whose two letters to Onslow (June 17th and 21st) idely circulated
To this noble pensioner and sinecurist he says: ”What honour or happiness you can derive frohborhood, and occasioning a greater expence than the poor, the aged, and the infirm for ten miles round, I leave you to enjoy At the same time I can see that it is no wonder you should be strenuous in suppressing a book which strikes at the root of these abuses”
On June 20th ritten a respectful letter to the Sheriff of Sussex, or other presiding officer, requesting that it be read at aletter has already been quoted in connection with Paine's early residence at Lewes In these letters the author reinforces his accused book, re the verdict in a pendingto refute by brute force what forty pa at Lewes, his old town, to respond to the proclamation occurred on the fourth of July That anniversary of his first cause was celebrated by Paine also Notified by his publisher that upwards of a thousand pounds stood to his credit, he directed it to be all sent as a present to the Society for Constitutional Information
A careful tract of 1793 estihts of Man” up to that year at 200,000 copies In the opinion of the fas proclamation seriously impeded the sale ”One part of the community is afraid to sell, and another to purchase, under such conditions It is not too hts of Man' had obtained two or three years' free circulation in England and Scotland, it would have produced a similar effect to that which 'Con of terror had not yet begun in France, nor the consequent reign of panic in England
The Argus, July 6, 1792 See ”Biographia Addenda,” No
Til, London, 1792 To the saht to publish his ”Letter to Dundas,” ”Common Sense,” and ”Letter to Raynal” in new editions
”Impartial Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Paine,” London, 1793 There were numbers of small ”Lives” of Paine printed in these years, but s from ”Oldys”
CHAPTER XXIII THE DEPUTY FOR CALAIS IN THE CONVENTION
The prosecution of Paine in England had its counterpart in a shrine across the channel The _Moniteur_, June 17, 1792, announces the burning of Paine's works at ”Excester,” and the expulsion from Manchester of a hts of Man,”
sympathetically translated by M Lanthenas, had been in every French holand by Roe, framed in immortelles In this book the philosophy of visionary reformers took practical shape From the ashes of Rousseau's ”Contrat Social,” burnt in Paris, rose ”The Rights of Man,” no phoenix, but an eagle of the neorld, with eye not blinded by any royal sun
L'Esprit da Contrat Social; suivi de l'Esprit de Sens Commun do Thomas Paine Present a la Convention Par le Citoyen Boinvilliers, Instituteur et ci-devant Membre de plusieurs Soci&es Litteraires L'an second
It comes to tell how by union of France and Aton--the ”Contrat Social” was fralorious new earth, over it a new heaven unclouded by priestly power or superstitions By that book of Paine's (Part I), the idea of a national convention was made the purpose of the French leaders ere really inspired by an ”enthusiasislature sits paralyzed under royal vetoes, Paine's panacea is proposed
On the tenth of August, 1792, after the uards, one book, hurled from theof the mobbed palace, felled an American spectator--Robert Gil it home The book, now in the collection of Dr Thomas Addis Emmet, New York, was a copy of ”The Thirteen Constitutions,” translated by Franklin's order into French (1783) and distributed a the monarchs of Europe