"With all the inconveniences of early life against me, I am proud to say, that, with a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a disinterestedness that compels respect, I have not only contributed to raise a new empire in the world, founded on a new system of government, but I have arrived at an eminence in political literature, the most difficult of all lines to succeed and excel in, which aristocracy, with all its aids, has not been able to reach or to rival." "I possess," he wrote in the Second Part of the "Rights of Man," "more of what is called consequence in the world than any one of Mr. Burke's catalogue of aristocrats." Paine sincerely believed himself to be an adept who had found in the rights of man the materia prima of politics, by which error and suffering might be transmuted into happiness and truth. A second Columbus, but greater than the Genoese! Christopher had discovered a new world, it is true, but Thomas had discovered the means of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was irritated with "his incredible amour-propre and his presumptuous self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries in the world without hesitation, in order to root out the errors of which they were the deposit, and so recommence by the 'Rights of Man' a new chain of ideas and principles." Thus Paine and his wild friends had reached the point of folly in the reformer's scale, and, like so many of their class since, made the fatal mistake of supposing that the old world knew nothing.
When Dumont fell in with Paine, he was returning from a flying visit to Paris, invigorated by the bracing air of French freedom. He had seen Pope Pius burned in effigy in the Palais Royal, and the poor King brought back a prisoner from Varennes,—a cheerful spectacle to the friend of humanity. He was on his way to be present at a dinner given in London on the 14th of July, to commemorate the taking of the Bastille; but the managers of the festivity thought it prudent that he should not attend. He wrote, soon after, the address read by Horne Tooke to the meeting of the 20th of August, at the Thatched House tavern. So enlightened were the doctrines set forth in this paper, that the innkeeper declined receiving Mr. Tooke and his friends on any subsequent occasion. On the 4th of November, he assisted at the customary celebration of the Fifth by the Revolution Society, and gave, for his toast, "The Revolution of the World."
Meanwhile, Paine had reloaded his piece, and was now ready for another shot at kings, lords, and commons. A thousand guineas were offered for the copyright and refused. He declined to treat as a merchantable commodity principles of such importance to mankind. His plan was, to publish Part the Second on the day of the opening of Parliament; but Chapman, the printer, became frightened, like his predecessor, at a treasonable paragraph, and refused to go on.
A fortnight passed before work was resumed, and the essay did not appear until the 16th of February, 1792. It combined, according to the author, "principles and practice." Part the First was now fully expounded, and enlarged by a scheme for diminishing the taxes and improving the condition of the poor, by making weekly allowances to young children, aged people, travelling workmen, and disbanded soldiers. This project of Paine, stated with the mathematical accuracy which was a characteristic of his mind, sprang from the same source as the thousand Utopianisms which form the ludicrous side of the terrible French Revolution.
Part the First was dedicated to Washington; Part the Second bore the name of Lafayette. It is evident, from the second dedication, that Paine had kept pace with the railway speed of the Revolution, and had far outstripped the Marquis, who was not born to lead, or even to understand the period he attempted to direct. The foremost men of 1792 had no time to wait;—"Mankind are always ripe enough to understand their true interest," said Paine; adding words which seemed to quiet Englishmen of fearful significance:—
"I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened countries of Europe."—"When France shall be surrounded with revolutions, she will be in peace and safety."—"From what we can learn, all Europe may form but one great republic, and man be free of the whole."—"It is only a certain service that any man can perform in the state, and the service of any individual in the routine of office can never exceed the value of ten thousand pounds a year."—"I presume that no man in his sober senses will compare the character of any of the kings of Europe with that of George Washington. Yet in France and in England the expenses of the Civil List only for the support of one man are eight times greater than the whole expense of the Federal government of America."—"The time is not very distant when England will laugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick, for men, at the expense of a million a year, who understand neither her laws, her language, or her interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England."
Here is treasonable matter enough, surely; and no wonder that Mr.
Chapman judged it prudent to stop his press.
Paine sent fifty copies to Washington; and wrote to him that sixteen thousand had been printed in England, and four editions in Ireland,—the second of ten thousand copies. Thirty thousand copies were distributed by the clubs, at their own expense, among the poor. Six months after the appearance of the Second Part, Paine sent the Society for Constitutional Information a thousand pounds, which he had received from the sale of the book. He then gave up the copyright to the public. The circulation of this tract was prodigious. The original edition had been printed in the same form as Burke's "Reflections," in order that the antidote might be bound up with the bane. The high price preventing many from purchasing, Paine got out a cheap edition which was retailed at sixpence all over England and Scotland. It is said that at least one hundred thousand copies were sold, besides the large number distributed gratuitously. An edition was published in the United States. It was translated into French by Dr. Lanthenas, a member of the National Convention, and into German by C. F. Krämer. Upon English readers of a certain class it retained a hold for many years. In 1820, Carlile, the bookseller, said, that in the preceding three years he had sold five thousand copies of the "Rights of Man." Perhaps Cobbett's resurrection of the bones of the prophet brought the book into fashion again at that time. It may yet be read in England; but in this country, where a citizen feels that his rights are anything he may choose to claim, it is certainly a superfluous publication, and seldom met with.
In England, in 1792, Burke and Paine revived the royalist and republican parties, which had lain dormant since 1688. A new body of men, the manufacturing, entered the political field on the republican side. The contest was embittered not only by the anger of antagonism, but by the feeling of class. A radical of Paine's school was considered by good society as a pestilent blackguard, unworthy of a gentleman's notice,—much as an Abolitionist is looked down upon nowadays by the American "Chivalry." But the strife was confined to meetings, resolutions, and pamphlets. Few riots took place; none of much importance. The gentlemen of England have never wanted the courage or the strength to take care of themselves.
The political clubs were the principal centres of agitation. There were two particularly active on the liberal side: the Revolution Society, originally founded to commemorate the Revolution of 1688, and the Society for Constitutional Information, established for the purpose of bringing about a reform in the representation. But the revolutionary changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club, the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower classes in manufacturing towns, precursors of the Chartists of 1846, belonged to this society. Their avowed objects were annual parliaments and universal suffrage; but many members were in favor of a national convention and a republic. The tone of all three societies became French; they used a jargon borrowed from the other side of the Channel. They sent deputations to the National Convention, expressing their wish to adopt the republican form in England, and their hope of success. The Corresponding Society even sent addresses of congratulation after the massacres of September. Joel Barlow, the American, a man of the Paine genus, without his talent or honesty of purpose, went as Commissioner of the Society for Constitutional Information to the Convention,— carrying with him an address which reads like a translation from the French, and a thousand pair of shoes, with the promise of a thousand pair a week for six weeks to come.