George H. Putxam: "Paine wrote on the necessity of a copyright law in 1782, a year before Noah Webster canvassed the legislatures of the New England states in behalf of such a law.... In 1792, as a member of the French Convention, Paine made a statement of the principles of international copyright of the author's right in literary work."
Nannie McCormick Coleman: "In 1783, while a member of Congress, Hamilton urgently sought to have a [Constitutional] Convention called. In the same year... Thomas Paine contributed addresses to the public to the same effect."
Paine proposed a constitutional government and a constitutional convention as early as 1776.
Referring to our Constitutional Convention Prof. Alexander Johnston of Princeton University says: "Thomas Paine had suggested it as long ago as his 'Common Sense' pamphlet: 'Let a continental conference to be held to frame a continental charter.'"
Not only was Paine the first to propose a constitutional government for the United States, the framers of the Constitution adopted to a large extent his political ideas. Referring to the principles advocated in his "Dissertation on Government" Dr. Conways says: "In the next year those principles were embodied in the Constitution; and in 1792, when a State pleaded its sovereign right to repudiate a contract the Supreme Court affirmed every contention of Paine's pamphlet, using his ideas and sometimes his very phrases."
Bankers' Magazine: "The Bank of North America, at Philadelphia, organized to assist the government during the War of Independence, is admitted to be the first bank in the United States, but it is not generally known that Thomas Paine was the man in whose brain the bank was born and who was the first subscriber to its stock."
Columbia Encyclopedia: "Paine was chosen by Napoleon to introduce a popular form of government into Britain after the Frenchman should have invaded and conquered the island."
William Milligan Sloane, LL. D.: "Thomas Paine exercised his power as a pamphleteer on the theme of England's approaching bankruptcy, while the public crowded one of the theatres [in Paris] to stare at stage pictures representing the invasion of England."
Paine prepared plans for this invasion which were adopted by the French Directory. Two hundred and fifty gun-boats were speedily built for the purpose. Then Napoleon abandoned the expedition against England for the one against Egypt.
Paine's approval of this proposed invasion of England was not inspired by a spirit of revenge because of his persecution by the English Government, but by a sincere love of its people, seeing in it the only means of delivering them from the intolerable tyranny of George III. and his Ministry. Napoleon at this time had not manifested that insatiable thirst for blood which at a later period made him the scourge of Europe.