from a
female literary correspondent, and in my answer to her, I expressed my
fears on that head.(1)

I now know from the information I obtain upon the spot, that the
impressions that then distressed me, for I was proud of America, were
but too well founded. She was turning her back on her own glory, and
making hasty strides in the retrograde path of oblivion. But a spark
from the altar of _Seventy-six_, unextinguished and unextinguishable
through the long night of error, is again lighting up, in every part of
the Union, the genuine name of rational liberty.

As the French revolution advanced, it fixed the attention of the world,
and drew from the pensioned pen (2) of Edmund Burke a furious attack.
This brought me once more on the public theatre of politics, and
occasioned the pamphlet _Rights of Man_. It had the greatest run of
any work ever published in the English language. The number of copies
circulated in England, Scotland, and Ireland, besides translations
into foreign languages, was between four and five hundred thousand. The
principles of that work were the same as those in _Common Sense_, and
the effects would have been the same in England as that had produced in
America, could the vote of the nation been quietly taken, or had equal
opportunities of consulting or acting existed. The only difference
between the two works was, that the one was adapted to the local
circumstances of England, and the other to those of America. As to
myself, I acted in both cases alike; I relinquished to the people of
England, as I had done to those of America, all profits from the work.
My reward existed in the ambition to do good, and the independent
happiness of my own mind.

1 Paine here quotes a passage from his letter to Mrs. Few,
already given in the Memorial to Monroe (XXI.). The entire
letter to Mrs. Few will be printed in the Appendix to Vol.
IV. of this work.--_Editor._

2 See editorial note p. 95 in this volume.--_Editor._

But a faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America; they had lost
sight of first principles. They were beginning to contemplate government
as a profitable monopoly, and the people as hereditary property. It
is, therefore, no wonder that the _Rights of Man_ was attacked by that
faction, and its author continually abused. But let them go on; give
them rope enough and they will put an end to their own insignificance.
There is too much common sense and independence in