On June 8th Paine appeared in court and was much disappointed by the postponement of his trial to December. Lord Onslow having summoned a meeting at Epsom of the gentry in Surrey, to respond to the proclamation, receives due notice. Paine sends for presentation to the gentlemen one hundred copies of his "Rights of Man," one thousand of his "Letter to Dundas." The bearer is Home Tooke, who opens his speech of presentation by remarking on the impropriety that the meeting 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) were widely circulated.*
* To this noble pensioner and sinecurist he says: "What
honour or happiness you can derive from being the principal
pauper of the neighborhood, 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 was written a respectful letter to the Sheriff of Sussex, or other presiding officer, requesting that it be read at a meeting to be held in Lewes. This interesting letter has already been quoted in connection with Paine's early residence at Lewes. In these letters the author reinforces his accused book, reminds the assemblies of their illegal conduct in influencing the verdict in a pending matter, taunts them with their meanness in seeking to refute by brute force what forty pamphlets had failed to refute by argument.
The meeting 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 estimates the sales of "The Rights of Man" up to that year at 200,000 copies.** In the opinion of the famous publisher of such literature, Richard Carlile, the kings 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 much to say that, if 'Rights of Man' had obtained two or three years' free circulation in England and Scotland, it would have produced a similar effect to that which 'Common Sense' did in the United States." However, the reign 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 same society Paine had given the
right 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 most of them were mere stealings 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 man pointed out as Paine. Since April 16th his "Rights of Man," sympathetically translated by M. Lanthenas, had been in every French home. Paine's portrait, just painted in England by Romney and engraved by Sharpe, was in every cottage, 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 new world, 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.