tical world ought to
be held improbable. It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything
may be looked for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war
is kept up, may provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it: and
an European Congress to patronise the progress of free Government, and
promote the civilisation of Nations with each other, is an event nearer
in probability, than once were the revolutions and alliance of France
and America.

END OF PART I.

RIGHTS OF MAN. PART SECOND, COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE.

By Thomas Paine.

FRENCH TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

(1792)

THE work of which we offer a translation to the public has created the
greatest sensation in England. Paine, that man of freedom, who seems
born to preach "Common Sense" to the whole world with the same success
as in America, explains in it to the people of England the theory of the
practice of the Rights of Man.

Owing to the prejudices that still govern that nation, the author has
been obliged to condescend to answer Mr. Burke. He has done so more
especially in an extended preface which is nothing but a piece of
very tedious controversy, in which he shows himself very sensitive to
criticisms that do not really affect him. To translate it seemed an
insult to the free French people, and similar reasons have led the
editors to suppress also a dedicatory epistle addressed by Paine to
Lafayette.

The French can no longer endure dedicatory epistles. A man should write
privately to those he esteems: when he publishes a book his thoughts
should be offered to the public alone. Paine, that uncorrupted friend
of freedom, believed too in the sincerity of Lafayette. So easy is it
to deceive men of single-minded purpose! Bred at a distance from courts,
that austere American does not seem any more on his guard against the
artful ways and speech of courtiers than some Frenchmen who resemble
him.

TO

M. DE LA FAYETTE

After an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years in difficult situations
in America, and various consultations in Europe, I feel a pleasure in
presenting to you this small treatise, in gratitude for your services
to my beloved America, and as a testimony of my esteem for the virtues,
public and private, which I know you to possess.

The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not
as to principles of g