bout a
week or ten days before the printer returned my copy, he came to
make him an offer of his work again, which was accepted. This would
consequently give him admission into the printing-office where the
sheets of this work were then lying; and as booksellers and printers are
free with each other, he would have the opportunity of seeing what was
going on.--Be the case, however, as it may, Mr. Pitt's plan, little and
diminutive as it is, would have made a very awkward appearance, had this
work appeared at the time the printer had engaged to finish it.

I have now stated the particulars which occasioned the delay, from the
proposal to purchase, to the refusal to print. If all the Gentlemen
are innocent, it is very unfortunate for them that such a variety of
suspicious circumstances should, without any design, arrange themselves
together.

Having now finished this part, I will conclude with stating another
circumstance.

About a fortnight or three weeks before the meeting of Parliament, a
small addition, amounting to about twelve shillings and sixpence a year,
was made to the pay of the soldiers, or rather their pay was docked
so much less. Some Gentlemen who knew, in part, that this work would
contain a plan of reforms respecting the oppressed condition of
soldiers, wished me to add a note to the work, signifying that the part
upon that subject had been in the printer's hands some weeks before that
addition of pay was proposed. I declined doing this, lest it should be
interpreted into an air of vanity, or an endeavour to excite suspicion
(for which perhaps there might be no grounds) that some of the
government gentlemen had, by some means or other, made out what this
work would contain: and had not the printing been interrupted so as
to occasion a delay beyond the time fixed for publication, nothing
contained in this appendix would have appeared.

Thomas Paine

THE AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR PART ONE AND PART TWO

[Footnote 1: The main and uniform maxim of the judges is, the greater the truth
the greater the libel.]

[Footnote 2: Since writing the above, two other places occur in Mr. Burke's
pamphlet in which the name of the Bastille is mentioned, but in the same
manner. In the one he introduces it in a sort of obscure question, and
asks: "Will any ministers who now serve such a king, with but a decent
appearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of those whom but the
other day, in