mpany them to America,
but, rightly suspecting plans for his capture by an English cruiser,
returned to Paris.) In the same year the pamphlet was printed in
English, by W. Adlard in Paris, and in London for "T. Williams, No.
8 Little Turnstile, Holborn." Paine's preface to the London edition
contained some sentences which the publishers, as will be seen,
suppressed under asterisks, and two sentences were omitted from the
pamphlet which I have supplied from the French. The English title adds a
brief resume of Paine's scheme to the caption--"Agrarian Justice opposed
to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly." The work was written in the
winter of 1795-6, when Paine was still an invalid in Monroe's house,
though not published until 1797.

The prefatory Letter to the Legislature and the Directory, now for the
first time printed in English, is of much historical interest, and shows
the title of the pamphlet related to the rise of Socialism in France.
The leader of that move-ment, Francois Noel Babeuf, a frantic and
pathetic figure of the time, had just been executed. He had named
himself "Gracchus," and called his journal "Tribune du Peuple," in
homage to the Roman Tribune, Caius Gracchus, the original socialist and
agrarian, whose fate (suicide of himself and his servant) Babeuf and his
disciple Darthe invoked in prison, whence they were carried bleeding to
the guillotine. This, however, was on account of the conspiracy they had
formed, with the remains of the Robespierrian party and some disguised
royalists, to overthrow the government. The socialistic propaganda of
Babeuf, however, prevailed over all other elements of the conspiracy:
the reactionary features of the Constitution, especially the property
qualification of suffrage of whose effects Paine had warned the
Convention in the speech printed in this volume, (chapter xxv.) and the
poverty which survived a revolution that promised its abolition, had
excited wide discontent. The "Babouvists" numbered as many as 17,000 in
Paris. Babeuf and Lepelletier were appointed by the secret council of
this fraternity (which took the name of "Equals") a "Directory of Public
Safety." May 11, 1796, was fixed for seizing on the government, and
Babeuf had prepared his Proclamation of the socialistic millennium. But
the plot was discovered, May 10th, the leaders arrested, and, after
a year's delay, two of them executed,--the best-hearted men in the
movement, Babeuf and Darthe. Paine too