ned with pomp,
inflated by idolatries, and endowed with thirty millions of money; also,
that no citizen will be tempted to injure himself by placing another
citizen, his equal, for some years in an office without limited income
and circumscribed power.

In a word, whoever demands a king demands an aristocracy, and thirty
millions of taxes. See why Franklin described Royalism as _a crime like
poisoning_.

Royalty, its fanatical eclat, its superstitious idolatry, the delusive
assumption of its necessity, all these fictions have been invented only
to obtain from men excessive taxes and voluntary servitude. Royalty
and Popery have had the same aim, have sustained themselves by the same
artifices, and crumble under the same Light.

XII. TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, ON THE PROSECUTION AGAINST THE SECOND PART
OF RIGHTS OF MAN.(1)

Paris, 11th of November, 1st Year of the Republic. [1792.]

Mr. Attorney General:

Sir,--As there can be no personal resentment between two strangers, I
write this letter to you, as to a man against whom I have no animosity.

You have, as Attorney General, commenced a prosecution against me, as
the author of Rights of Man. Had not my duty, in consequence of my being
elected a member of the National Convention of France, called me from
England, I should have staid to have contested the injustice of
that prosecution; not upon my own account, for I cared not about the
prosecution, but to have defended the principles I had advanced in the
work.

1 Read to the Jury by the Attorney General, Sir Archibald
Macdonald, at the trial of Paine, December 18, 1792, which
resulted in his outlawry.--_Editor._

The duty I am now engaged in is of too much importance to permit me to
trouble myself about your prosecution: when I have leisure, I shall have
no objection to meet you on that ground; but, as I now stand, whether
you go on with the prosecution, or whether you do not, or whether you
obtain a verdict, or not, is a matter of the most perfect indifference
to me as an individual. If you obtain one, (which you are welcome to
if you can get it,) it cannot affect me either in person, property, or
reputation, otherwise than to increase the latter; and with respect to
yourself, it is as consistent that you obtain a verdict against the Man
in the Moon as against me; neither do I see how you can continue the
prosecution against me as you would have done against one _your own
people, who_ had a