on

XIV The Rights of Man

PART THE SECOND
COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

* French Translator's Preface
* Dedication to M. de la Fayette
* Preface
* Introduction
* Chapter I Of Society and Civilisation
* Chapter II Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments
* Chapter III Of the Old and New Systems of Government
* Chapter IV Of Constitutions
* Chapter V Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe,
Interspersed with Miscellaneous Observations

* Appendix
* Notes

XIII. RIGHTS OF MAN.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

WHEN Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he was
perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate friend,
Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette was the idol
of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once became, in Paris,
the centre of the same circle of savants and philosophers that had
surrounded Franklin. His main reason for proceeding at once to Paris was
that he might submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron
bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September.
He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher
(Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to
patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it
exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by
leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund
Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four
months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a
reform of that country after the American model, except that the Crown
would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided the throne should
not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more swiftly than he had
anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others,
as an adviser in the formation of a new constitution.

Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary
duel between Paine and Burke, which