sake
of peace Paine wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of
summer; he used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some
modus vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis
XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every tendency
of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate with the
French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's death and the
war that followed between England and France in February, 1793. Burke
became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by a prosecution originally
proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding religious liberty, Burke
was opposing the removal of penal statutes from Unitarians, on the
ground that but for those statutes Paine might some day set up a church
in England. When Burke was retiring on a large royal pension, Paine
was in prison, through the devices of Burke's confederate, the American
Minister in Paris. So the two men, as Burke said, "hunted in pairs."

So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted in
Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own ideas, the
reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the earliest complete
statement of republican principles. They were pronounced to be the
fundamental principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison,
and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above all others represented the
republican idea which Paine first allied with American Independence.
Those who suppose that Paine did but reproduce the principles of
Rousseau and Locke will find by careful study of his well-weighed
language that such is not the case. Paine's political principles were
evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was potential in George Fox. The
belief that every human soul was the child of God, and capable of
direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or priestly
intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege
and rank. The universal Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or
human equality. But the fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of
protecting the individual spirit from oppression by the majority as well
as by privileged classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding
the individual right with the security of the Declaration of Rights,
not to be invaded by any government; and would reduce government to an
association limited in its operations to the defence of those rights
whic