ircle of savants and philosophers that had
surrounded Franklin. His main reason for proceeding at once to Paris was
that he might submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron
bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September.
He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher
(Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to
patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it
exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by
leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund
Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four
months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a
reform of that country after the American model, except that the Crown
would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided the throne should
not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more swiftly than he had
anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others,
as an adviser in the formation of a new constitution.

Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary
duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out a tremendous
war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine was, both in
France and in England, the inspirer of moderate counsels. Samuel Rogers
relates that in early life he dined at a friend's house in London
with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts given was the "memory of
Joshua,"--in allusion to the Hebrew leader's conquest of the kings of
Canaan, and execution of them. Paine observed that he would not treat
kings like Joshua. "I 'm of the Scotch parson's opinion," he said,
"when he prayed against Louis XIV.--`Lord, shake him over the mouth of
hell, but don't let him drop!'" Paine then gave as his toast, "The
Republic of the World,"--which Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted
as a sublime idea. This was Paine's faith and hope, and with it he
confronted the revolutionary storms which presently burst over France
and England.

Until Burke's arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech
(February 9, 1790), Paine had no