sufficient to reform
those evils, and to benefit the condition of every man in a nation, not
included within the purlieus of a court. This I hope to make appear in
the progress of this work.

It is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune. In taking
up this subject I seek no recompense--I fear no consequence. Fortified
with that proud integrity, that disdains to triumph or to yield, I will
advocate the Rights of Man.

It is to my advantage that I have served an apprenticeship to life. I
know the value of moral instruction, and I have seen the danger of the
contrary.

At an early period--little more than sixteen years of age, raw and
adventurous, and heated with the false heroism of a master*[27] who
had served in a man-of-war--I began the carver of my own fortune,
and entered on board the Terrible Privateer, Captain Death. From
this adventure I was happily prevented by the affectionate and moral
remonstrance of a good father, who, from his own habits of life, being
of the Quaker profession, must begin to look upon me as lost. But the
impression, much as it effected at the time, began to wear away, and I
entered afterwards in the King of Prussia Privateer, Captain Mendez,
and went with her to sea. Yet, from such a beginning, and with all the
inconvenience of early life against me, I am proud to say, that with
a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a disinterestedness that
compelled 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.*[28]

Knowing my own heart and feeling myself as I now do, superior to all the
skirmish of party, the inveteracy of interested or mistaken opponents,
I answer not to falsehood or abuse, but proceed to the defects of the
English Government.

I begin with charters and corporations.

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It
operates by a contrary effect--that of taking rights away. Rights are
inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those
rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of
a few. If charters were constructed so as to express in direct terms,
"that every inhabitant, who is not a member of a corporation, shall
not exercise the right of voting,