h is
productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the visionary's
right to decide before the result what was "likely to produce evil,"
Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the French Republic which
might have developed itself peacefully, while Paine was striving for
an international Congress in Europe in the interest of peace. Paine
had faith in the people, and believed that, if allowed to choose
representatives, they would select their best and wisest men; and that
while reforming government the people would remain orderly, as they had
generally remained in America during the transition from British rule
to selfgovernment. Burke maintained that if the existing political order
were broken up there would be no longer a people, but "a number of
vague, loose individuals, and nothing more." "Alas!" he exclaims,
"they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can
form themselves into a mass, which has a true personality." For the sake
of peace Paine wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of
summer; he used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some
modus vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis
XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every tendency
of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate with the
French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's death and the
war that followed between England and France in February, 1793. Burke
became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by a prosecution originally
proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding religious liberty, Burke
was opposing the removal of penal statutes from Unitarians, on the
ground that but for those statutes Paine might some day set up a church
in England. When Burke was retiring on a large royal pension, Paine
was in prison, through the devices of Burke's confederate, the American
Minister in Paris. So the two men, as Burke said, "hunted in pairs."

So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted in
Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own ideas, the
reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the earliest complete
statement of republican principles. They were pronounced to be the
fundamental principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison,
and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above all others represented the
republican idea which Paine first allied with American Independence.
Tho