benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing
the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of

Sir,

Your much obliged, and

Obedient humble Servant,

Thomas Paine

PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural
that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance
commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to
have had cause to continue in that opinion than to change it.

At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English
Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I
was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform
him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his
advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack
was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood in
France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised some of
the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's
Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more
necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which
Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous
abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an
imposition on the rest of the world.

I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr. Burke,
as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed other
expectations.

I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more
have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found
out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise in the
neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were
disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened
enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had
been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at that time
characterised the people of England; but experience and an acquaintance
with the French Nation have most effectually shown to the Americans the
falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe that a more cordial
and confidential intercourse exists between any two countries than
between America and France.

When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of
Thoulouse was then Min