t which the instigators of the meeting no
doubt wish should be brought in, and to give countenance to the Jury in
so doing. I am, sir,

With much respect to the

Gentlemen who shall meet, Their and your obedient and humble Servant,

Thomas Paine.

TO ONSLOW CRANLEY,

COMMONLY CALLED LORD ONSLOW.

SECOND LETTER. SIR,

London, June 21st 1792.

WHEN I wrote you the letter which Mr. Home Tooke did me the favour to
present to you, as chairman of the meeting held at Epsom, Monday, June
18, it was not with much expectation that you would do me the justice of
permitting, or recommending it to be publicly read. I am well aware that
the signature of Thomas Paine has something in it dreadful to sinecure
Placemen and Pensioners; and when you, on seeing the letter opened,
informed the meeting that it was signed Thomas Paine, and added in a
note of exclamation, "the common enemy of us all." you spoke one of the
greatest truths you ever uttered, if you confine the expression to
men of the same description with yourself; men living in indolence and
luxury, on the spoil and labours of the public.

The letter has since appeared in the "Argus," and probably in other
papers.(1) It will justify itself; but if any thing on that account
hath been wanting, your conduct at the meeting would have supplied
the omission. You there sufficiently proved that I was not mistaken in
supposing that the meeting was called to give an indirect aid to the
prosecution commenced against a work, the reputation of which will long
outlive the memory of the Pensioner I am writing to.

When meetings, Sir, are called by the partisans of the Court, to
preclude the nation the right of investigating systems and principles
of government, and of exposing errors and defects, under the pretence
of prosecuting an individual--it furnishes an additional motive for
maintaining sacred that violated right.

The principles and arguments contained in the work in question, _Rights
OF Man_, have stood, and they now stand, and I believe ever will stand,
unrefuted. They are stated in a fair and open manner to the world, and
they have already received the public approbation of a greater number of
men, of the best of characters, of every denomination of religion, and
of every rank in life, (placemen and pensioners excepted,) than all the
juries that shall meet in England, for ten years to come, will amount
to; and I have, moreover, good reasons for believing that the app