Louis Adolphus Thiers: "A sixth committee was charged with the principal object for which the Convention had met, to prepare a new constitution. It was composed of nine celebrated members. Philosophy had its representatives in the persons of Sieyes, Condorcet, and the American Thomas Paine, recently elected a French citizen, and a member of the Convention. The Gironde was more particularly represented by Gensonne, Vergniaud, Petion, and Brissot; the Centre by Barrere, and the Montagne by Danton."
The names of these eminent men will live long in history; but dear was the price paid for their fame. Danton, Brissot, Gensonne and Vergniaud died on the scaffold; Condorcet died in a prison cell, a suicide; Petion escaped to a forest where his body was afterward found partly devoured by wolves; Barrere was banished, and Paine was imprisoned. Sieyes alone escaped unharmed.
Thomas Carlyle: "To make the Constitution; to defend the Republic till that be made. Speedily enough, accordingly, there has been a Committee of Constitution got together. Sieyes, old constituent, constitution builder by trade; Condorcet, fit for better things; Deputy Paine, foreign benefactor of the species with the black beaming eyes;... Hérault de Sechelles, ex-parlementier, one of the handsomest men in France,—these, with inferior guild-brethren, are girt cheerfully to the task." (Hérault was a supplementary member of the Committee).
John King (referring to Paine): "The chief modeler of their new Constitution."
The Constitution was almost entirely the work of Paine and Condorcet. It is known as the Paine-Condorcet Constitution.
Dr. David Saville Muzzey: "Paine labored to make this new republic of France an example for the monarchy-cursed countries of Europe. It was he who protested against the domination of the Assembly by the section of Paris which led to the Reign of Terror."
M. Taine: "Compared with the speeches and writings of the times, it [Paine's Letter to Danton] produces the strangest effect by its practical good sense."
Madame de Stael: "When the sentence of Louis XVI. came under discussion Paine alone advised what would have done honor to France if it had been adopted."
Henri Martin: "Thomas Paine, the famous representative of the idea of a universal Republic, had voted against both an appeal to the people and the penalty of death."
Thomas Wright, F. S. A.: "He urged with great earnestness that the execution of the sentence of death should be delayed."