Then letter from his father.—"Dear Son, &c." [Lost.]
The following letter from William Livingston (Trenton, 4 November, 1784) will show that Thomas Paine was not only honored with the esteem of the most famous persons, but that they were all convinced that he had been useful to the country.**
At this time Thomas Paine was living with Colonel Kirk-bride, Bordentown, where he remained till his departure for France. He had bought a house [in], and five acres of marshy land over against, Bordentown, near the Delaware, which overflowed it frequently. He sold the land in 1787.
Congress gave an order for three thousand dollars, which Thomas Paine received in the same month.
Early in 1787 he departed for France. He carried with him the model of a bridge of his own invention and construction, which he submitted, in a drawing, to the French Academy, by whom it was approved. From Paris he went to London on the 3 September 1787; and in the same month he went to Thetford, where he found his father was dead, from the small-pox; and where he settled an allowance on his mother of 9 shillings a week.
* This and the preceding letter supplied by the author.
* Not found. Referred to in this work, vol. i., p. 200.
A part of 1788 he passed in Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where his bridge was cast and erected, chiefly at the expense of the ingenious Mr. Walker. The experiment, however, cost Thomas Paine a considerable sum.
When Burke published his Reflexions on the French Revolution, Thomas Paine answered him in his First Part of the Rights of Man. In January, 1792, appeared the Second Part of the Rights of Man. The sale of the Rights of Man was prodigious, amounting in the course of one year to about a hundred thousand copies.
In 1792 he was prosecuted for his Rights of Man by the Attorney General, McDonald, and was defended by Mr. Erskine, and found guilty of libel. But he was now in France, and could not be brought up for judgment.
Each district of France sent electors to the principal seat of the Department, where the Deputies to the National Assembly were chosen. Two Departments appointed Thomas Paine their Deputy, those of Oise and of Pas de Calais, of which he accepted the latter. He received the following letter from the President of the National Assembly, Hérault de Séchelles: