All references to Paine’s writings not contained in this collection are either to The Collected Works of Thomas Paine, ed, P. S. Foner, (Secaucus, NJ, 1948), 2 Volumes, and are cited by the volume number (I or II), followed by the page; or to Moncure Conway, Works of Thomas Paine, 4 volumes, (New York, 1894–6), given as Conway, followed by the volume number and page.
Aldridge—A. Owen Aldridge, Thomas Paine’s American Ideology (Cranbury, NJ, 1984).
Bailyn—Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass. 1967).
Doyle—W. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989).
Erskine May—Thomas Erskine May, A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and usages of Parliament (London, 1844).
Goodwin—A. Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution (London, 1979).
Greene and Pole—J. P. Greene and J. R. Pole, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1991).
Hawke—David Freeman Hawke, Paine (New York, 1974).
Jones—Colin Jones, The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (London, 1988).
Langford (1)—Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783, The New Oxford History of England (Oxford, 1989).
Langford (2)—Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman (Oxford, 1991).
Namier and Brooke—The History of Parliament: House of Commons 1754–1790, ed. Sir L. Namier and J. Brooke, Volume 1 (London, 1964).
Reflections—Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Page references are given to four current editions of the Reflections using the following abbreviations:
M. ed. L. G. Mitchell (World’s Classics, Oxford, 1993);
Wks. ed. L. G. Mitchell (Oxford University Press, 1991) being volume VIII of The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, General Editor, Paul Langford.
O’B ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien (Harmondsworth, 1968).
P. ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis, 1987).
Sinclair—Sir John Sinclair, The History of the Public Revenue (London, 1785).
Thomson: James Thomson, Liberty, A Poem (1736), iv. 636–7. Thomson was also the author of the words to Rule Britannia (1740).
laying a Country desolate … Sword: after Ezek. 30: 6–8.
felo de se: one who deliberately puts an end to his own existence, or commits any unlawful or malicious act, the consequence of which is his own death.
Charles the First: (1600–49), king of England, tried and executed by Parliament during the English Civil War.
as in Turkey: for colonial opposition thought, Turkey was the epitome of despotism … long before the Revolution the colonists were habituated to conceive of ‘the difference between free and enslaved countries’ as ‘the difference between England and Turkey.’ (Boston Gazette or Country Journal, 19 May 1755). Bailyn, 64.
from whom the children of Israel… custom: iSam.8: 4–22.
Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly … kings: Judg. 8: 22–3; 1 Sam. 8: 4–7.
Render unto Caesar … Caesar’s: Matt. 22: 21; Mark 12: 17; Luke 20: 25 (adapted).
Rule thou … son’s son: Judg. 8: 22.
I will not … RULE OVER YOU: Judg. 8: 23
Behold thou … other nations: 1 Sam. 8: 5.
But the thing … reign over them: 1 Sam. 8: 6–9.
And Samuel told … THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN THAT DAY: 1 Sam. 8: 10–18.
Nevertheless the People …fight our battles: 1 Sam. 8: 19.
I will call unto the Lord … TO ASK A KING: 1 Sam. 12: 17–19
an ass for a lion: the allusion is to the fable (from Aesop) in which the ass puts on a lion’s skin but is betrayed by his braying. See also Joseph Addison, Spectator (1709) No. 13, pa. 4, and Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random ch. 54.
that your children … ours for ever: Ezek. 38: 25. Compare Bill of Rights (1 William and Mary, s.2, c.2, viii) ‘The lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever …’ The passage is cited in Burke’s Reflections (M. 20; Wks. 70; O’B. 103–4; P. 17–18), and is taken up by Paine in Rights of Man; see below.
Mahomet like: Paine’s reference is obscure. It implies that Muhammad wrote the Koran solely in order to set up his own right to rule. This is, for Paine, an uncharacteristically intolerant view of another religion—although it was common for tolerance to extend only to forms of Christianty.
William the Conqueror: William I (1027–87), king of England from 1066; natural son of Robert II of Normandy, invaded England in 1066 following the succession of Harold (1022–66), Earl of Wessex, and defeated him at the battle of Hastings. Paine’s description follows Voltaire’s General History of the States of Europe (1754), 163.
Saul was by lot: there is no remit for this claim in 1 Sam. 10:23–4.
York and Lancaster: the Wars of the Roses (1455–85).
Henry … and Edward … recalled to succeed him: Henry VI (1421–71), king of England (1429–71). imprisoned in the Tower of London 1465–70, restored in 1470, but imprisoned again by Edward IV in 1471 and murdered there. Edward IV (1442–83), proclaimed himself king of England in 1461. imprisoned by the Archbishop of York (1469) but released. In 1470 he was forced to flee to Holland, but he returned to oust Henry VI in 1471.
Henry the Seventh: Henry VII (1457–1509), crowned king of England after the defeat and death of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. Head of the house of Lancaster from 1471, he married Elizabeth of York on obtaining the English crown, so bringing the dynastic conflict to an end.
that he may … fight our battles: 1 Sam. 8: 20
Sir William Meredith: Sir William Meredith (d. 1790), third baronet, M.P. Wigan 1754–61, Liverpool 1761–80. Of Meredith’s various pamphlets and parliamentary speeches it is likely that what caught Paine’s attention was Meredith’s comment in A Letter to the Earl of Chatham on the Quebec Bill (1774), 35–6: ‘If then, my lord, the Quebec Bill is founded in that first principle of all law, the concurrence and approbation of the people, and if its end is that for which all government ought to be established, the happiness of the governed …’ It is this principle which Paine takes as definitional of republican government. Paine refers to the Quebec Act in his Dialogue between Wolfe and Gage (II, 49).
eight hundred thousand sterling: as established in the civil list, see Sir John Sinclair, A History of the Public Revenue (1785–90), iii. 71–2.
Mr Pelham … last my time: Henry Pelham (1695?–1754), Prime Minister 1743–54. The attributed quotation is most likely apocryphal (see Aldridge, 60).
nineteenth of April: the first armed clash between American militia and British troops at Lexington on 19 April 1775.
Hanover’s last war: the Seven Years War, 1756–63, involved a colonial conflict between Britain, France, and Spain, conducted in North America (especially Canada), the West Indies, West Africa, and India, and a war over Silesia in which Prussia and Britain united for the protection of Hanover against France, Austria, Saxony, and Sweden.
asserted in Parliament … each other: in the debates on the repeal of the Stamp Act it was asserted that the colonies were independent of each other but each subordinate to the Parliament or the Crown Parliamentary History 1765, XVI, cols. 199–201.
free port: Paine uses the term for a situation where merchants would be free to import from or export to where they pleased. Under the various Navigation Acts passed between 1651 and 1673 colonial merchants were required to export only to England and only in English ships. For the few items they were allowed to export to other countries directly they had to pay duty at colonial ports.
Boston, that seat of wretchedness … fury of both armies: Boston was occupied by British troops from April 1775, and from 10 May colonial forces were encamped around Boston. The Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June 1775 left the situation largely unchanged, but high casualties persuaded the British forces against further direct assaults on colonial posts. The inhabitants of Boston were, as a result, occupied by a foreign force and would have been potential casualties should colonial forces attempt to seize the town.
Milton … pierced so deep: John Milton, Paradise Lost iv. 98–9. The words are Satan’s!
Witness Denmark and Sweden: Paine’s source is Voltaire’s History of Charles XII and the reference to the petitioning movements concerns the reigns of Charles XII of Sweden and Frederick IV of Denmark. The citation of Sweden and Denmark as cases of corrupted republics was a commonplace in republican writing, see Bailyn, 64–5.
stamp-act: the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a series of duties on the Colonies on playing cards, dice, newspapers, and a wide range of legal and business documents. The act provoked an imperial crisis by raising the cry amongst the colonies of ‘no taxation, without representation’. The act was repealed by the Rockingham Administration in 1766 after widespread colonial opposition and non-compliance.
North: Frederick North (1732–92), second Earl of Guilford, known as Lord North, Prime Minister 1770–82, and thus regarded by many of his contemporaries as responsible for the outbreak of the American war.
a Bunker-hill price for law, as for land: ‘a Bunker-hill price’ means a very high price for little gain. It derives from the Battle of Bunker Hill, 17 June 1775, which was a bloody, inconclusive battle fought near Boston, in which American troops were dislodged from their position overlooking the occupied town. Very high casualties were inflicted on the British, which ensured that other emplacements were not attacked, and the British eventually evacuated Boston (17 March 1776). The battle was actually fought on the nearby Breed’s Hill, above Charlestown.
to sit—————and to choose: the space was left in each of the first three editions. Paine possibly intended to indicate the duration of Congress.
join Lucifer in his revolt: note the contrast between this claim and that in the quotation from Milton in the note to p. 27.
Magna Charts: the ‘Great Charter’ imposed by rebellious barons on King John of England in 1215, designed to prohibit arbitrary royal acts by declaring a body of denned law and custom which the king must respect.
Dragonetti on Virtue and Rewards: Jacinto Dragonetti, A Treatise on Virtues and Rewards, dual Italian and English text (London, 1769). The first sentence comes from p. 155, the second adapts an earlier sentence on p. 153–5: ‘Next to the virtue of sovereigns, his might deserve attention, who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the fewest wants of contribution.’
Massanello: Masaniello, a corruption of Tommaso Aniello, a fisherman’s son who led a revolt in Naples in July 1647 and ruled for nine days. The grievances concerned excessive taxation and the seizure of property. Masaniello was betrayed and shot.
stirred up the Indians and Negroes: American Indians played a relatively small but complex role in the Revolution, and they were most active after the publication of Common Sense. In June 1776 Cherokee Indians attacked Carolina rebels, but no other tribes joined them, and in 1777 a combined force of loyalists and Indians took part in the St Leger offensive in the North. However, Indians sensed that the new republic might be less restrained in appropriating their lands than the colonial government had been. Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, in November 1775, called upon slaves in Virginia to rebel against their revolutionary masters and promised them their freedom if they joined the British forces.
Britain would never suffer an American man of war: that is, the British government would not tolerate an independent American navy.
Britain is oppressed … four millions interest: ‘the Debt climbed to dizzy heights during the Seven Years War and the American War, from less than 80 million in 1757 to more than 240 million in 1783. In the same period the sum required annually to sevice the Debt rose from £2,735,925 to £9,406,406.’ Langford (1), 640–1.
The first and second editions: this paragraph and the figures which follow were added in the third edition.
Entic’s naval history: John Entick, A New Naval History, or the Compleat View of the British Marine, in which the ROYAL NAVY and the MERCHANT’S SERVICE are traced through all their PERIODS and different BRANCHES (London, 1757), lvi.
Mr Burchett: Josiah Burchett (1666?–1746), secretary of the admiralty, 1698–1742.
Captain Death: Captain William Death led the privateer Terrible (fitted out at Execution Dock, and including Lieutenant Devil and Mr Ghost the ship’s surgeon!) in an engagement with two French privateers in December 1757 off the West Indies, and fought a furious engagement resulting in the loss of all but twenty-six of the crew of two hundred. A public subscription was immediately raised for Death’s widow. Smollett, Continuation of the Complete History of England (London, 1760), ii. 182–3.
Shipbuilding is America’s greatest pride: because of the lower cost of timber, colonial ship-builders were used extensively by British merchants. The industry produced about £240,000 sterling worth of shipping each year; the largest producer, Massachusetts, produced an annual average of 7,664 tons a year between 1769 and 1771.
Tories: the partisan labels of British politics from the exclusion crisis (1679–83) and from the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14) were appropriated by the colonists to describe themselves and their opponents. The labels were inapt since, unlike in England, both sides of the controversy accepted the right to resist arbitrary government. The ‘Tories’, however, refused to countenance the idea of concerted, organized opposition to British authority.
non-age: nonage, the condition of being under age, a period of legal infancy or minority.
Continental Charter: i.e. a form of association between the various states governing their common affairs.
Associators petition … House of Assembly of Pennsylvania: the militia (known formally as the Military Association, and its members as the Associators) in Pennsylvania in 1775 petitioned the Assembly for the right to elect their officers, for the right to vote, irrespective of other qualifications, and on the equal participation of the wealthier classes of the community. See Pennsylvanian Magazine or American Monthly Museum (edited by Paine), 1775, supplement, pp. 611–15, for the Rules and Regulations for the Better Government of the Military Association in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Assembly, through an inequitable distribution of seats, gave control to the commercial farming counties around Philadelphia (dominated by Quakers), and under-represented the back county to the West.
Mr Cornwall: Charles Wolfram Cornwall (1735–89), Lord of the Treasury, 1774–80. Cornwall’s response is recorded in Parliamentary History, XVIII, col. 646, 1775.
Burgh’s Political Disquisitions: James Burgh, Political Disquisitions (1764), vol. 1, bk. II, chs. 2–7.
King’s Speech: the king’s speech on the Opening of the Second Session of the Fourteenth Parliament, October 26, 1775 (Parliamentary History, XVIII, cols. 695–7).
Sir j——n D——e: Sir John Dalrymple, The Address of the People of England to the Inhabitants of America (London, 1775).
the Marquis of Rockingham’s: Charles Watson-Wentworth, and Marquis of Rockingham (1730–82), led the government at the time of the repeal of the Stamp Act, 1765–6.
‘But,’ says this writer … ‘to do any thing’: Dalrymple, Address, 31.
last war: a reference to the colonial war against France and Spain which formed part of the Seven Years War.
the value of the back lands … limits of Canada: the Quebec Act (1774) added the Old Northwestern Territory, where many of the original colonies had land claims, to the province of Quebec.
artful and hypocritical letter … in New York papers: possibly ‘Extract of a letter from a Gentleman in London to his friend in this city, dated July 26 1775’, The New York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, 16 October 1775, no. 1253. Also printed in New York Gazetteer or Weekly Advertiser, 12 October 1775.
they are reckoning … Host: ‘He that reckons without his host, must reckon again’, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs.
footing we were on in sixty-three: that is, prior to the Stamp Act and other attempts to tax the colonies (e.g. the Sugar Act, 1764). The first Continental Congress (summer 1774) sought the repeal of all legislation referring to America passed after 1763.
The Rubicon is passed: to have taken the decisive step; a reference to Julius Caesar’s crossing of this stream in northern Italy, thereby beginning a war with Pompey.
ANCIENT TESTIMONY … PEOPLE IN GENERAL: published Philadelphia, 1776, ‘signed in and on behalf of a meeting of the representatives of our religious society, in Pennysylvania and New Jersey; held at Philadelphia, the 20th day of the first month, 1776’.
Barclay: Robert Barclay, AN APOLOGY for the true CHRISTIAN Divinity As the same is held forth, and preached by the people, called in scorn, QUAKERS (London, 1678). The introductory letter to Charles II from which the quotation is taken is unpaginated. The same quotation is given in M. de Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (London, 1733) Letter III, 22–3.
When a man’s ways … at peace with him: Prov. 16: 7
Oliver Cromwell: (1599–1658), army officer and parliamentarian active in the outbreak of the English Civil War (1642–60) and in the prosecution of Charles I (1600–49), in 1648; installed as Protector and head of the executive power, 1653.
dispersal of the Jews, though foretold by our saviour; Matt. 23: 37–9, 24: 15–20; Luke 13: 34–5, 19: 41–4.
Britain … has declared in all cases whatsoever: see the Debate on the Resolutions of the Committee of the Whole House … relating to the late Riots and Tumults in America, February 24, 1766, Parliamentary History, XVI, col. 165, and 6. Geo. 3. c. 12 (The Declaratory Act, 1766): ‘Parliament has full power and authority to make laws and statutes to bind the people of the colonies, in all cases whatsoever.’
Howe: Sir William Howe (1729–1814), fifth Viscount Howe, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in North America, 1775–8. Howe adopted a strategy of skirmishing to avoid incurring similar losses to those at Bunker Hill, where a full-scale battle was fought. He manœuvred the rebels out of Long Island, Manhattan and much of New Jersey, but the strategy foundered when his detachments were surprised at Trenton (26 December 1776) and Princeton (3 January 1777) –only days after the publication of Paine’s first Crisis Letter (19 December 1776). The spirit of the Jerseys refers to the mobilization of the militia and the opening conflict with British troops in April 1775.
trembled like an ague: a fever with hot and cold fits; a shivering fit.
a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats: French menaces of an invasion of England in 1759 included the preparation of flat-bottomed boats in different ports on the coast of France. See Smollett, Continuation, iii. 109–19.
Joan of Arc: the ‘Maid of Orleans’ (1402–31) who claimed divine inspiration and led the French army against the English, raising the seige of Orleans and inflicting heavy losses on the British. She subsequently crowned Charles king of France at Reims. She was captured by the British in 1430 and was burnt at the stake for heresy. See David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, iii. 148–63.
Howe arrived upon the Delaware: Howe pursued Washington’s troops after defeats at White Plains (28 October) and at Forts Washington and Lee (16–18 November) to the Delaware, which Washington crossed on 11 December 1776.
twentieth of November: Paine’s memory is faulty; Fort Lee fell on 18 November 1776.
Major-general Green: Nathaniel Green (1742–86), Major-General in the Continental Army from 1776. Paine was Green’s aide-de-camp at Fort Lee.
General Washington: George Washington (1732–99), Commander-in-Chief of Continental Army, President 1789–97.
Voltaire has remarked, that King William … action: Voltaire praises William the Conqueror’s ‘dexterity and valour’ in defending himself against those who disputed his right in Normandy in General History and State of Europe from the time of Charlemain to Charles V (London, 1754), p. 162.
Gage: Thomas Gage (1720–87), Commander-in-Chief of the British Army whose troops suffered heavy casualties at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. His army was blockaded in Boston and he was recalled (October 1775).
a peace … all understanding: Phil. 4: 7.
ravage the defenceless Jerseys: see note to p. 63.
Hessians: mercenary troops from the German state of Hesse. In January 1776 the British Government entered into treaties with several German states to provide nearly 200,000 mercenary troops.
‘The times that tried men’s souls’: The opening line of the first Crisis, see p. 63.
the cypress shade of disappointment: cypress trees are commonly found in graveyards, hence their negative connotations.
While I was writing this note: see Common Sense p. 36.
the states of Holland: see Rights of Man: Part One p. 196.
I have avoided all places of profit or office: this is an odd claim. Paine was certainly employed as Secretary to the Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress, prior to the Silas Deane affair; he also held the post of clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly. Moreover, he was also paid by Robert Morris’s Secret Service Fund to write in defence of the interests of the Continental Congress in the last years of the revolution (see Hawke, ch. 9).
April 19, 1783: The pamphlet was dated to mark the eighth anniversary of the battle of Lexington and Concord.
by confounding his terms: a reference to The Substance of a Speech delivered by James Wilson, Esq. Explanatory of the general Principles of the proposed Fcederal Constitution (Philadelphia, 1787).
being an answer to Mr Burke’s attack on the French Revolution: Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that event. In a Letter Intended to have been sent to a Gentleman in Paris (London … 1791).
George Washington: (1732–99), Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolution, President of the United States, 1789–97. Paine later accused Washington of having colluded with Governeur Morris (American Minister in France), in denying that Paine was an American citizen when he was imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace in 1793–4. He attacked his conduct in his Letter to George Washington (1796).
From the part Mr Burke took: although Burke was in favour of retaining the connection with the colonies, he was a vigorous critic of attempts to force the Americans to accept British rule.
violent speech last winter: Burke’s Speech on the Army Estimates, 9 February 1793, in which Burke first publicly attacked proceedings in France, Parliamentary History, XXVIII, cols, 352–63.
written him, but a short time before: Paine and Burke met when Paine returned to Europe from America in 1787. They corresponded and Paine was a guest at Burke’s home at Beaconsfield (see Burke, Correspondence, ed. Copeland, Vol. V, 3 September 1788). The letter Paine refers to is the most extensive letter extant (Burke’s Correspondence, vi. 67–72 (17 January 1790). It is of particular interest since it provides some details of events which Burke subsequently describes in his Reflections.
experience and an acquaintance with the French Nation: in February 1778 the French had signed a Treaty of Amity with the Americans, promising not to make peace with Britain until American Independence had been recognized and confering full diplomatic status on the American Commissioners. The French also aided the American war effort financially and with supplies. Paine visited France as part of an attempt to raise more money between February and August 1781.
When I came to France in the Spring of 1787: Paine visited France from Britain on a number of occasions between 1787 and 1792, before taking up residence there in the autumn of 1792. The visits were at first related to his attempts to find funding to build a bridge he had designed, but after 1789 he went largely to stay in touch with political developments, in which he became increasingly involved.
Archbishop of Thoulouse: Etienne-Charles Loménie de Brienné, 1727–94, a careerist cleric, friend of the philosophes, and Archbishop of Toulouse from 1763, he was the main opponent of Calonne at the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and became the king’s principal minister after Calonne’s fall. He introduced a series of reform measures (the May Edicts) which the nobility opposed and he resigned in August 1788.
the private Secretary of that Minister: his secretary was the Abbé Andre Morellet, a philosophe in his own right, who had extensive contact with British political circles. Paine discussed his conversation with Morellet in a letter to Burke dated 7 August 1788. See Hawke, 177 and 430.
I put this letter into the hands of Mr Burke: given Paine’s contacts with Thomas Jefferson, then American Minister in France, and with the circle of the Marquis de Lafayette, a key player in the early phase of the French Revolution, Paine was valued as a source of information from Paris and he corresponded on several occasions with Burke.
there was a time … any revolution in France: this seems an odd claim given some of Burke’s earlier comments on France, see Correspondence, vi. 10, n. 2.
Dr Price: Dr Richard Price (1723–91), Welsh philosopher and Dissenting minister whose A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain (1789), provided the foil for Burke’s Reflections.
Revolution Society, and the Society for Constitutional Information: the London Revolution Society was established in 1788 for the commemoration of the centenary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but it enlarged its role after 1789 by initiating a correspondence with the National Assembly of France; its support came primarily from members of the Dissenting community and their Whig sympathizers. The Society for Constitutional Information was founded in April 1780 by a number of parliamentarians and other members of the political elite to promote the dissemination of literature advancing political knowledge and reform. It suffered a decline in the mid-1780s, but revived after 1789 and it went on to play a major part in the dissemination of Paine’s Rights of Man in cheap editions. Several of its leading members were prosecuted for treason in 1794 and, although they were acquitted, the Society collapsed.
the Revolution … 1688: in which James II (1633–1701) was forced from the throne because of his Catholicism and William of Orange (1650–1703) was invited to accept the crown. The exact character of the Revolution is a central area of disagreement between Price, Burke, and Paine.
‘The Political Devine … ourselves’: Price’s Discourse p. 34; Burke, Reflections M. 8; Wks. 66; O’B. 99; P. 14, adapted.
‘that the people of England … Fortunes’: Reflections M. 16; Wks. 66; O’B. 99; P. 14, adapted.
a declaration made by parliament … for EVER: Bill of Rights I William and Mary, s.2, c.2, viii. Reflections, M. 20; Wks. 70; O’B. 103–4; P. 17–18.
another act of parliament … to the end of time: 12–13 William III c. 6 (1701), ‘For the further securing of his Majesty’s Person, and the Succession of the Crown in the Protestant Line; and extinguishing the Hopes of the pretended Prince of Wales’, 1701. Reflections, M. 24; Wks. 74; O’B. 108; P. 21.
‘that if the people … for ever’: Reflections M. 20; Wks. 70; O’B. 104; P. 18.
usurpers: Burke does not use the term to describe the revolutionists, but he does argue that [Sovereigns] have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than ever any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary tyrant.’ Reflections M. 38–9; Wks. 89: O’B. 126; P. 34.
no parent or master … age of twenty-one years: a reference to the Habeas Corpus Amendment Act of 1679 (31 Charles II c. 2) which allowed a writ to be issued against anyone, whether an officer of the crown or private individual, who detained an individual in their custody, to require that they produce the person before a judge.
In England, it is said … without their consent: ‘That the levying money for or to the use of the crown by pretence of prerogative without grant of parliament for a longer time or in other manner the same is or shall be granted is illegal.’ Bill of Rights, 1689, 1 William and Mary, s.2, c.2; cf. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, II, ch. xi, 139 and 142. This doctrine also formed a central plank in colonial opposition the British government’s attempts to tax them, symbolized in the cry of ‘No taxation without representation’.
shortened his journey to Rome: that is, to Catholicism. Paine relies on the common linking of Catholicism with absolutism and the doctrine of the divine right of kings.
Marquis de la Fayette: Marie Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilber Motier, marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), a wealthy French aristocrat who volunteered as a soldier for the American forces in July 1777 and won considerable respect and a substantial command as a result of his bravery and capacity. His exploits won him renown in France and he played a major role in the early reform movement. He was a member of the Estates-General in 1789 and was appointed commander of the new Parisian National Guard. In this capacity he played a major part in the events of 5–6 October which Burke denounces (M. 71–80; Wks. 120–9; O’B. 162–75; P. 61–70).
taking of the Bastille: following the dismissal of Jacques Necker (1732–1804), the principal minister to the king on 12 July 1789, Paris experienced popular revolt. On 14 July the crowd, together with the Gardes-françaises, stormed the Bastille, a symbol of the arbitrary powers of arrest of the ancien régime. The following day regular troops were withdrawn from Paris and Lafayette was elected as commander of the National Guard, and on r6 July Necker was recalled.
Call to mind … she wills it: for Lafayette’s proposals for a declaration of rights see The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (ed. J. P. Boyd and W. H. Gaines), xv. 230–33, also 255. Lafayette’s speech is reported in Journal d’Adrien Duquesnoy (Paris, 1894), 189: ‘Pour que les peuples aiment la liberte, il suffit qu’ils la connaissent, pour qu’ils soient libres, il suffit qu’il veulent l’être.’
May this great monument … oppressed: ‘May this Immense temple of freedom Ever Stand as a Lesson to oppressors, an Example to the oppressed, a Sanctuary to the Rights of Mankind.’ Address to the Continental Congress (Trenton, 11 December 1784), Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution, Selected Letters and Papers 1776–1790, ed. S. J. Idzerda and R. Crout (Ithaca, NY, 1983) v. 281.
Doctor Franklin: Dr Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, served as joint commissioner to France (1776), and later (September 1778–85) as Minister plenipotentiary. He returned to America and played a major part in the Constitutional Convention.
Count Vergennes … French Gazette: Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (1717–87), foreign minister from 1774 until his death in February 1787. Gazette de France, founded 1631, was the major national domestic newspaper; it was officially financed and was censored by the government.
‘We have seen … tyrant’: Reflections M. 38–9; Wks. 89; O’B. 126; P. 34.
Louis the XVIth: Louis XVI, king of France 1774–92, enjoyed national success in the American revolution, but was unable to solve the regime’s financial problems. Scholarly opinion concurs with Paine’s expressed view that he was well-intentioned but badly advised.
augean stable: in Greek myth one of the twelve labours of Hercules was to clean in one day the stables of Augeas, King of Elis, who owned enormous herds of cattle. The stables had never been cleaned before; Hercules achieved his task by diverting the river Alpheus through the yard.
distinction between men and principles: Paine’s phrasing mimics the contrast between men and measures which Burke draws on but rejects in his Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770).
Charles I: (1600–49), king of England (1625–49), who ruled for eleven years without calling a Parliament and who provoked active unrest on attempting to Anglicize the Scottish Church. Discontent led to the onset of civil war which culminated in his defeat, and eventually his trial and execution. James II was his second son (see note to p. 90).
every place has its Bastille: Paine is probably referring to the enormously complex legal structure of the old regime, especially the proliferation of parlements, présidiaux, Royal bailliages and sénéchaussées, seigneural jurisdictions, courts of taxation, grandes maitrises, etc.
Louis XIV: (1638–1715), king of France 1643–1715, ruled as an absolute monarch from 1661.
a reign more mild: Reflections M. 38; Wks. 89; O’B. 126; P. 34.
‘Ten years ago … administered’: Reflections M. 8; Wks. 58; O’B. 90; P. 7.
he is writing History, and not Plays: the theatrical metaphor comes from Burke, Reflections M. 80–81; Wks. 131–2; O’B. 175–6; P. 71.
the age of chivalry … is gone: Reflections, M. 76; Wks. 127; O’B. 170; P. 66.
Quixot: from Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605). Burke was portrayed in a number of satirical popular prints as a modern Don Quixote—or Don Dismallo—pursuing Marie Antoinette and fighting imaginary dangers (see Wks. 16–17).
‘Othello’s occupation’s gone’: Othello III. iii. 362.
unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 1745: the abortive attempt by the ‘Pretender’, Charles, grandson of James II, to regain the throne by an invasion assisted by the French and begun in Scotland.
Newgate: the city jail of London, extended substantially by the ‘New’ Newgate in 1760. Reflections, M. 84; Wks. 135; O’B. 179; P. 74.
We have rebuilt … Queens of France: M. 84; Wks. 135; O’B. 179; P. 74.
Lord G——G——: Lord George Gordon (1751–93), an agitator associated with the anti-popery riots of June 1780 (the Gordon Riots), and prosecuted for his involvement. In 1788 he was imprisoned in Newgate after conviction for libel, where he remained until his death in 1793. He was regarded by some as mad.
two other places … pamphlet: first reference: M. 202; Wks. 248; O’B. 320; P. 177; second reference: M. 215; Wks. 259–60; O’B. 334; P. 187. (There is a further reference at M. 132; Wks. 181; O’B. 237; P. 116.)
bedlam: a mad-house, after Bethlem Hospital for the insane in London.
pities the plumage …dying bird: a reference to Burke’s exaggerated portrait of Marie Antoinette, Reflections, M. 71, 75–6; Wks. 121–2, 126; O’B. 164, 169; P. 62, 66.
the aristocratical hand … purloined him from himself: a reference to the common believe that Burke had become a pensioner of the court—that is, was in the pay of the crown and had abandoned the Whig interest.
Bastille … two days before and after: see note to p. 95.
Bunyan’s Doubting Castle and Giant Despair: John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (first published 1678), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 1960, i. 112–9. Giant Despair is the keeper of Doubting Castle in which Christian and his friends are trapped.
The National Assembly … Versailles: the Estates General were called to sit in May 1789 by the king at Versailles, the residence of the Court. On 17 June, the ‘Commons’ (the Third Estate) voted to adopt the title ‘National Assembly’ and agreed to vote by head rather than by estate. They were joined by the Nobility and Clergy over the next few weeks.
plot was forming … Count d’Artois: Charles Philippe, comte d’Artois (1757–1836), a notorious figure of hate in 1789 who was suspected of involvement in the pacte de famine, an alleged conspiracy to starve the populace. The attack on the Bastille, and other events of this period, were motivated by the belief that the army was to be used to cut the National Assembly off from Paris so as to be able to dissolve it and reestablish Royal authority. d’Artois and other leading nobles emigrated immediately after the fall of the Bastille, confirming many revolutionaries’ suspicions.
foreign troops in the pay of France: there were twenty-three foreign regiments in the French Army, including the Swiss Guards, who were permanently attached to the royal household. The build-up of troops around Versailles and Paris in June—July 1789 was rapid and drew disproportionately on the foreign, and presumably more loyal, troops.
ministry who were then in office: i.e., led by Necker (see note top. 95).
Count de Broglio: Victor Francois, due de Broglie (1718–1804) a career soldier, recalled by Louis to command troops around Versailles, then appointed War Minister after the dismissal of Necker, 12 July 1789. He resigned and emigrated after the fall of the Bastille.
an high-flying … mischief: see Burke, Correspondence, vi. 70, Paine’s letter to Burke of 17 January 1790. The description is attributed to Jefferson in Paine’s letter and appears in a letter to Paine from Jefferson, 11 July 1789, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. J. P. Boyd and W. H. Gaines, (Princeton, NJ, 1958), xv. 267–8.
the devoted victims: that is, victims consigned to be sacrificed.
Archbishop of Vienne: Jean-George Le Franc de Pompignan (1715–90), Archbishop of Vienne, President of the National Assembly. The frailty of the Archbishop was of concern because the Assembly agreed, on 13 July 1789, to maintain an all-night presence for forty-eight hours to prevent a lock-out by the king’s troops. Lafayette was nominated as acting president. See also note to p. 95
Prince de Lambesc … Lewis XV: Charles Eugene de Lorraine d’Elbeuf (1751–1825), prince de Lambesc. The place Louis XV was renamed the place de la revolution and subsequently the place de la Concorde.
Mayor of Paris … Defflesselles: Jacques de Flesselles (1721–9) the last prévôt des marchands or head of the municipal government, assassinated on 14 July 1789. Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–93) was the first formal mayor of Paris, appointed 15 July 1789.
Hospital of the Invalids: les Invalides, a military veterans’ hospital, which was used as an arsenal—-as was, to a still greater extent, the Bastille.
The exiles who have fled from France: immediately after the fall of the Bastille most of those principally involved in scheming against the Assembly fled from France, including d’Artois (see note to p. 103), Louis Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Conde, Louis François Joseph de Bourbon, prince de Conti, and the Queen’s friends the Polignac family.
Governor of the Bastille … Intendant of Paris: Bernard-Rene Jourdan de Launey (1740–89), succeeded his father as governor of the Bastille in 1776; Joseph Francois Foulon (1715–89), given a key role in organizing the military around Paris in July. He is alleged to have said that if the people of Paris were hungry they should eat straw. His son-in-law, Louis-Benigne-Francois de Bertier de Sauvigny (1737–89), was, as Intendant of Paris, responsible for food supplies to the army around Paris. Both were assassinated by incensed crowds when being led to trial at the Hôtel de Ville on 22 July 1789.
Temple-bar: the point marking the city boundary at Fleet Street, London, close to the law courts and chambers.
In England … populace: it was possible to be sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in England, although it was not a common occurrence. None the less, punishment was in general brutal and relatively indifferent to the enormity of the crime. In May 1790 the Commons debated altering the sentence of burning alive for women convicted of certain crimes (e.g. coining); see Parliamentary History, XXVIII, cols. 782–4.
Damien: Robert-Francois Damiens (1714–57), a fanatic who attempted to assassinate Louis XV in 1757. He was tortured and hanged, drawn, and quartered.
London in 1780: a reference to the anti-popery or Gordon Riots of June 1780.
Hotel de Ville: Hotel de Ville, the Paris Town Hall.
expedition to Versailles: Paine’s account which follows is similar to standard modern accounts; see Doyle, 121–2.
Declaration of the Rights of Man … fourth of August: the Declaration of the Rights of Man was decreed by the National Assembly on 26 August 1789; the decrees of 4 August involved the abolition of feudal privileges. Louis refused to ratify the decrees on 15 September 1789.
Garde du Corps: the king’s bodyguard.
‘History will record … melancholy repose: Reflections, M. 71; Wks. 121; O’B. 164; P. 62.
Metz: a town in northern France, close to the Belgian border.
President of the National Assembly: Jean Joseph Mounier (1756–1806), President of the Assembly during the October Days, who resigned in protest at the events and in May 1790 emigrated to Switzerland (Doyle, 123; Jones, 375).
trapanning the king to Metz: trepanning him—that is, luring him into counter-revolution.
Bailley: Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–93), appointed Mayor of Paris by the National Constitutive Assembly in July 1789. It is possible that Paine is confusing this occasion with the visit which Louis paid to Paris, when he was welcomed by Bailly, after the fall of the Bastille, on 17 July 1789.
M. Lally-Tollendal: Tromphime-Gerard, marquis de Lally-Tollendal (1751–1830), elected by the Parisian nobility to the Estates General, was a conservative who advocated a bi-cameral legislature. He left France for Switzerland in September 1789. Reflections, M. 73; Wks. 124; O’B. 166; P. 64.
Tous les eveques a la lanterne: Reflections, M. 73–4; Wks. 123–5; O’B. 166—8; P. 63—5. Curiously, the pamphlet Burke cites as a source does not seem to exist, and no edition of Burke has identified the source of the quotation.
tout à coup et tous ensemble: all at once and all together.
magic lanthorn: the name for an optical instrument for the projection of slides and pictures (invented 1636).
Revolution de Paris: Les Revolutions de Paris, a weekly paper, published between 12 July 1789 and 24 May 1794, one of the most independent of the early newspapers.
paltry and blurred … rights of man: Reflections, M. 86; Wks. 137; O’B. 182; P. 75.
genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam: Luke 3: 23–38.
Mosaic account: that is, the account given by Moses in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
And God said … created he them: Gen. 1: 26–7.
We fear God … nobility: Reflections, M. 86; Wks. 137; O’B. 182; P. 76.
to put in Peter: probably a reference to Peter’s proverbial status as one whom God loves but neglects–that is, one who is put upon. Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs.
as they now march … European courts: a reference to the secret influence which the Catholic church was believed to wield over Europe’s Catholic monarchs.
William the Conqueror: see Paine’s use of William in Common Sense (p. 16), and note to it.
The key of St Peter, and the key of the Treasury: that is, the key to the gates of heaven and to political power. Paine’s use of synecdoche is directed against the union of Church and state. See also Reflections, M. 88–105; Wks. 140–54; O’B. 185–204; P. 78–92, and Burke’s claim that the English have consecrated their state (M. 92; Wks. 143; O’B. 189–90; P. 81).
he has signified … comparison: Reflections, M. 164; Wks. 212; O’B. 275; P. 144.
Mr Burke said … parliament: Burke, Speech on the Army Estimates: 9 February 1790, Works (1808) v. 13; also Parliamentary History, XXVIII, col. 357.
The Act by which … in England: triennial parliaments were replaced by septennial parliaments in the Septennial Act of 1716 (passed in the wake of an attempt on the throne by the ‘Old Pretender’, James Stuart (1688–1766) in 1715).
the Bill which … Mr Pitt: William Pitt ‘the Younger’ (1759–1806), Prime Minister 1783–1801. Pitt introduced three bills for parliamentary reform, one on 7 May 1782; the second on 7 May 1783, and the third on 18 April 1785. All were defeated.
The constitution of France says: the pronouncements on the ‘Constitution of France’ which follow are references to the decrees and enactments made by the National Constituent Assembly (the title adopted by the National Assembly (the renamed Estates General, 17 June 1789) on 9 June 1789) on the recommendation of the Constitution Committee established 6 July 1789. These decrees and enactments were reviewed by the Revision Committee from 23 September 1790. Most came to be embodied in the 1791 Constitution, agreed by the National Constituent Assembly on 3 September 1791, accepted by the king ten days later (Jones 66–9). Paine’s criticisms of the English system of representation were common amongst reformers in Britain and had formed a central part of the case of the Society for Constitutional Information (see note to p. 91).
tax of sixty sous: debates of 22 and 29 October 1789, and decree on primary elections of 22 December 1789.
number of representatives … elected every two years: the markers for the new constitution were laid down in the Constitutional Act of 1 October 1789.
no game laws: 4–11 August, the abolition of feudal privileges.
all trade shall be free: 31 October–5 November 1790 abolition of internal customs barriers.
‘On the Wealth of Nations’: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, 1776).
no member of the National Assembly … pensioner: Decree of 7 November 1789.
Loaves and fishes: material rather than spiritual benefits. That is, Paine accuses him of sacrificing principle to venality. See Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs.
the Comedy of Errors … the pantomine of HUSH: Paine is accusing English politicians of complicity in corruption. The reference to Shakespeare’s play goes no further than its title.
reside in a metaphor … so are the lions: the metaphor is the crown, on display at the Tower of London. Lions, part of the king’s menagerie established by Henry II, were also on display in the Tower.
Aaron’s molten calf: Deut. 9. 16; Neh. 9: 18; Ps. 106: 19.
Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image: Dan. 3: 1
conquering at home: a familiar republican criticism of the British government.
the land that floweth with milk and honey: a very common biblical phrase: Lev. 20: 24; Num. 13: 27, 14: 8; Deut. 6: 3, 11.9, etc.
M. Beaumarchais: Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–99), author of The Marriage of Figaro (1784); acted as a French spy and an arms dealer for the Americans in the American Revolution, when Paine may first have met him.
a hard-dealing Dutchman: a dismissive reference to William of Orange, who became William III of England in 1688.
no titles: enactments of 19–20 June 1790.
blue ribbon … garter: the blue ribbon is the symbol of the Order of the Garter, the most coveted order of knighthood in the gift of the Crown.
when I was a child: 1 Cor. 13: 11.
rickets: a common childhood disease involving softening of the bones, now known to be caused by a deficiency of vitamin D.
gewgaws: a bauble or showy thing without value.
law of primogenitureship: the principle (in eighteenth-century France, the law) that property and title descends to the eldest son.
a corporation of aristocracy: Paine met Lafayette frequently in the early stages of the Revolution and may have heard the phrase then.
The French constitution … the clergy: legislation altering the place and power of the church came thick and fast in the early phase of the revolution, beginning with the absence of its feudal fee structure and rights, 4–11 August, 1789, and culminating in the creation of a Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 12 July 1789 (see Jones, 240–2.)
That the people of England … squire: Reflections, M. 103; Wks. 153; O’B. 202–3; P. 91.
Sternhold and Hopkins: Thomas Sternhold (d. 1549), versifier of the Psalms, whose metrical edition of nineteen of them appeared in 1547, followed by a second edition of thirty-seven published posthumously in 1549. A third edition with seven further Psalms appeared 1557, edited by John Hopkins (d. 1570). The collection, in the complete edition published in 1562, became known as Sternhold and Hopkins.
when the dissenters bill was before the English parliament: three applications to parliament for the relief of Dissenters from the constraints of the Test and Corporation acts were made shortly before Paine was writing, in March 1787, May 1789, and March 1790. The second application was rejected by a majority of only twenty, thus raising Dissenters’ hopes, but the third application was affected by the climate of opinion over events in France and by the radicalism which Dissenters had shown by their involvement in the election of 1790. As a result, this application met considerable opposition, including the cry of ‘the Church in danger’. One of the major opponents of the motion was Burke, who cited numerous documents to establish the extremism of the Dissenters, including extracts from Price’s Discourse on the Love of our Country. The motion was decisively rejected (Goodwin, ch. 3).
abolished tythes: decree of 4 August 1789.
the French constitution … UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE: in the Declaration of the Rights of Man (see pp. 161–4), decreed by the National Assembly 26 August 1789.
pope armed with fire and faggot … traffic: a reference to the claims of the Catholic Church to its right to punish (by fire and faggot, or burning) heretics in this world (hence assuming the power of a state), and to its practice of selling or granting indulgences in the next world (a lucrative commercial activity fiercely attacked in the Reformation).
dust and ashes: Gen. 18: 27; Job 30: 19, 42: 6.
tythe sheaf … cock of hay: although a tithe was formally a tenth of each crop produced, it could be commuted into money or taken in the form of other crops. (A cock of hay is a haycock, a temporary heap of hay.)
the inquisition in Spain: the ‘Inquisition’ was originally an inquiry related to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church over heresy. The Spanish Inquisition (1479–1814) was closely bound up with the power of the state and was directed initially against converts from Judaism and Islam, but spread to cover any case of suspected heresy. Suspected heretics were frequently tortured, and convicted heretics were usually burnt.
Smithfield: a ‘smooth-field’ originally outside the walls of the City of London, which was used for the execution, by burning, of Protestant martyrs in the reign of Queen Mary I, 1553–8.
that drove the people called Quakers: a religious sect, founded by George Fox (1624–91), whose refusal to take oaths or pay tithes and to comply with the rituals of deference to social superiors, such as removing one’s hat, led to their persecution after the restoration of the Crown in 1660. The most famous group of Quaker exiles were those led by William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania in 1682. Dissenters refers in this context to Protestants who separated themselves from the communion of the Established Church. These also suffered a variety of disabilities from the Test and Corporation Acts (1663, 1661).
episcopalian: properly, a member of any church ruled by bishops. Paines’ reference is to the fact that the Episcopalian Church of America is the descendant of the Anglican Church, but that is not connected to the state.
edict of Nantes: signed in 1598, bringing to an end the French wars of religion, but revoked in 1685 by Louis XIV, leading to widespread emigration by Protestants in France.
places Sovereignty in the nation: in clause III, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, 26 August 1789.
Parliament in England … erected by patents: the House of Commons is patented through Chancery and is formally constituted by patents; see Erskine May, 134.
a king is the fountain of honour: Reflections, M. 201; Wks. 247; O’B. 318; P. 175 (‘in France the king is no more the fountain of honour than he is the fountain of justice’).
Mr Burke … the privilege of speaking twice: in the English Parliament ‘no member may speak twice on the same issue except, i) to explain part of a speech which has been misunderstood; ii) in certain cases to reply at the end of a debate, and iii) in committee’ (Erskine May, 195). Burke was a stickler for procedure, so Paine’s comment should be taken as teasing.
does not ask the king … House of Commons: freedom of speech became part of the petition of the Commons to the king at the commencement of Parliament after 33 Henry VI, 154 (Erskine May, 78).
the family vault of all the Capulets: a reference to the scene of Romeo and Juliet’s deaths in Shakespeare’s play. Juliet is a Capulet.
there is not any description of men … as courtiers: cf. Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois (1748), iii. 5–7.
I wrote to him last winter from Paris: Burke, Correspondence, vi. 67–76 (10 January 1790).
He apologises (in page 241): Reflections, M. 164; Wks. 212; O’B. 274–5; P. 144.
‘It looks … in the world’: Reflections, M. 10; Wks. 60; O’B. 92; P. 9.
Louis XV … weakness and effeminacy: Louis XV (1710–74) was notorious for his insatiable sexual appetites, and his reign was notable for unsuccessful wars and the degradation of the court.
Montesquieu: Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, (1689–1755), author of Lettres persanes (1721) and L’Esprit des lois (1748). He also served as a magistrate in Bordeaux.
Voltaire: Francois-Marie Arouet, generally known as Voltaire (1694–1778), poet, historian, and philosopher.
Rousseau and the Abbé Raynal: Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), political philosopher and moralist; Abbé Guillaume Raynal (1713–96) historian, encyclopédiste—and the target of Paine’s Letter to the Abbé Raynal (1782).
Quesnay, Turgot, and the friends of those authors: Francois Quesnay (1694–1774), physician and political economist (founder of the physiocrats, a group of economists who held that land was the only source of wealth, not manufactures); Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–81), economist and administrator, who shared the physiocrats’ views. Cf. Burke’s comment on Turgot, Reflections, M. 112; Wks. 162; O’B. 213; P. 98.
The French officers and soldiers … went to America: the French began by providing arms, munitions, and clothing and allowing the Americans to use French ports. After the signing of the treaties of commerce and alliance in 1778, France took a more active part, mainly in the form of naval support, although a French expeditionary force (of 6,500 men) was sent to America in May 1780, and this played a decisive role in the victories of 1781.
Minister of France, Count Vergennes: Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (1717–87), Foreign Minister 1774–87. When America first broached the issue of aid to France in 1775–6, the French finance minister, Turgot (see note to p. 145) counselled against involvement. Vergennes was in favour, because he hoped thereby to weaken Britain’s position in Europe. Paine’s claim for the influence of Marie Antoinette, the French Queen, is doubtful, although it is true that she contributed to the success which Benjamin Franklin enjoyed in his period as American Minister to France (1776–1782).
M. Neckar was displaced: Jacques Necker (1732–1804), a reformist Finance Minister 1777–81 who published Compterendu au Roi (1781) which claimed that the financial situation in France was strong despite involvement in the American war, and which undermined later administrations’ claims that the state was bankrupt—notably, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (1734–1802), controller-general from 1783, and Loménie de Brienne, who ousted him in 1787.
Pitt frequently alluded: judging by the reports of Pitt’s speeches in Parliamentary History, the references to France were made in passing, rather than being of a substantive nature.
An Assembly under this name … 1617: in fact, 1626.
seven separate committees: see A. Goodwin, ‘The Assembly of French Notables and the Revolution Nobiliare’ English Historical Review, (1946), 332, 343. Paine rather overstates Lafayette’s role, and Lafayette’s attack on Calonne was made in the Assembly, p. 361.
Lettres de Cachet: a sealed detention order, signed by the king and counter-signed by a minister, against which there was no recourse in the courts.
two new taxes: proposed by Brienne in May 1787. The Assembly of Notables declared in response that they had no authority to authorize new taxes, upon which occasion Lafayette argued for the ‘convocation of a truly national assembly’ (Doyle, 74). This refusal led to the dismissal of the Assembly of Notables, 25 May 1787.
Thoulouse: Brienne, see note to p. 87. He was appointed as a Cardinal as a reward for his services on his resignation in 1788.
Duke de Choiseul: Étienne Francois de Stainville, due de Choiseul (1719–85), minister under Louis XV.
a bed of justice: lit de justice, called 6 August 1787. The lit de justice was a solemn session of the Paris Parlement in the presence of the king where the king formally registered an edict overriding parliamentary remonstrances.
and ordered the enregistering … illegal: 7 August 1787.
Trois: the Parlement was exiled to Troyes, 14 August 1787, at which point Brienne was appointed Principal Minister.
short time recalled to Paris: 28 September 1787.
gave his word … States-General should be convened: the king agreed to call the Estates General 19 November 1787.
Lamoignon: Chretien-Francois II de Lamoignon (1735–89), Garde de Sceaux 1787, was believed to have committed suicide after his fall.
cour pléniere: the cour pléniére, or Plenary Court, created 8 May 1788, was intended to be a more docile forum for registering royal edicts than the Parlement.
Duke de la Rochefoucault, Luxembourg, De Noailles, and many others … opposed the whole plan: the proposal for a cour plénière was part of a package of proposals known as the ‘May Edicts’ which Brienne tried to push through (8 May 1788) only to be forced to capitulate to resistance from the nobility (by 5 July 1788). Louis-Alexandre, due la Roche-Guyon et de la Rochefoucauld d’Enville (1743–92), Member of the Assembly of Notables 1787 and the Estates General 1789. Anne-Charles-Sigismond de Montmorency-Luxembourg, 1737–1805, Président de la chambre de la noblesse, 12 June 1789, emigrated 1791. Louis, vicomte de Noailles (1756–1804), was Lafayette’s brother-in-law.
subject of convening the States-General: in capitulating to resistance to his proposals, Brienne agreed to the convocation of the Estates General for 1 May 1789.
the last of which was in 1614: see Paine’s note to p. 155.
the mode of 1614: the Paris Parlement had decreed that this should be the mode in which the Estates General met on 25 September 1788. The decision proved very unpopular and the Parlement sought to regain credibility by endorsing the principle of double representation for the Third Estate on 5 December 1788. The principle was accepted by the king’s council, despite noble opposition, on 27 December 1788.
he summoned again the Assembly of the Notables: convoked 5 October 1788, and met 6 November 1788.
not a contested election: the representatives of the First Estate, the clergy, were elected in assemblies in constituencies (based on the jurisdictional boundaries of royal bailliages) whose membership comprised benefice-holders and indirect representation for chapters, religious communities and non-beneficed clergy. Those of the Second Estate (nobility) were elected by assemblies comprising fief-holders and male members of the nobility (purchased or inherited). The Third Estate (or Commons) was elected by a complex system of multi-stage elections, in which male taxpayers could participate. In practice this was close to manhood suffrage. (Jones, 63, also Doyle, 96–97).
L’Intrigue du Cabinet … i, 329: Louis Pierre Anquetil, L’Intrigue du Cabinet sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, terminé par la Fronde (Paris, 1780), i. 329.
the Tiers Etat … declared themselves: 17 June 1789.
Abbé Sieyes: Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Siéyès (1748–1836), author of Essai sur les privilèges and Qu’est-ce que le tiers état (1789). He was the representative of the Third Estate of Paris in the Estates General and urged the union of the three orders in his speech to the assembly on 16 June 1789. See Murray Forsyth, Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbé Sieyes (Leicester, 1987).
Barons opposed King John: baronial opposition to the rule of King John (1167–1216) compelled him in 1215 to sign the Magna Carta, whose aim was to secure the liberties of the English Church and of the baronial classes, and to restrict the power of the king.
A majority of the clergy: this refers to events of 24 June 1789, when the most of the clergy followed earlier (13–22 June) defectors who agreed to sit as one chamber with the Third Estate.
The king … held … Bed of Justice: Paine’s chronology is slightly faulty: on 20 June 1789, the king decided to hold a sceance royale (a ceremonial session of the Estates General in the presence of the king) on 23 June, and closed the meeting place of the National Assembly. The deputies used a nearby tennis court as a meeting place and swore not to disperse until a constitution had been passed. At the scéance royale the king ordered the three estates to meet separately and overruled their decrees, but on his leaving the deputies reaffirmed their unity and their decrees. Recognizing defeat, the king ordered the rest of the nobility and clergy to take their place in the National Assembly on 27 June 1789. Paine’s source may well have been Jefferson’s letter of 11 July 1789, which refers to the circumstances surrounding the scéance royale.
Count D’Artois … king would be endangered: ‘the alleged danger to the Royal family was probably magnified, if not invented, by Artois as the only way of persuading the more quixotic of his colleagues to comply with the royal order.’ Hampson, Prelude to Terror (Oxford, 1988), 48.
Government is a contrivance … wisdom: Reflections, M. 60; Wks. no; O’B. 151; P. 52.
Men have a right that their wants … wisdom: Reflections, M. 60; Wks. no; O’B. 151; P. 52. The sentence follows directly after the previous line quoted by Paine.
The rights of men are their advantages … demonstrations: Reflections, M. 62; Wks. 112; O’B. 153; P. 54.
shibboleths: Judg. 12: 5–6. Shibboleth was the Gileadite test-word for an Ephraimite, here used to indicate a catch-word of a group.
Robin Hood: legendary outlaw and protector of the poor and women. His adventures have been variously assigned to reigns from that of Richard I (i 189–99) to Edward II (1307–27).
laboured the Regency Bill and Hereditary Succession: in 1788, when George III suffered a temporary fit of insanity, Burke and the Foxite Whigs campaigned to secure the creation of a regency for George IV, who they believed would bring them into office. The king recovered before the attempt could succeed.
‘The King of England … he now wears’: Reflections, M. 15; Wks. 65–6; O’B. 98–9; P. 14.
Cherokee Chief, or a Hessian Hussar: both Cherokee Indians and Hessian troops were used by the British against the Americans in the American revolution.
House of Brunswick: the house of Brunswick takes the English throne in 1714 through George I (1660–1727), great-grandson to James I (through his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, James’s daughter), and Elector of Hanover from 1698.
the then Earl of Shelburne: Sir William Petty (1737–1805), first Marquis of Landsdowne and second Earl of Shelburne, Home Secretary under Rockingham 1782 and then First Lord of the Treasury. He conceded American independence, 1783, and his administration was overthrown by the Fox–North coalition. Parl. Register XI (1783), 25.
‘His Majesty’s heirs … he wears’: Reflections, M. 15; Wks. 66; O’B. 98–9; P. 14.
‘No experience has taught us … hereditary right’: Reflections, M. 25; Wks. 75; O’B. 109; P. 22.
the English Nation … posterity for ever: a paraphrase of Reflections, M. 20; Wks. 70; O’B. 104; P. 18.
Fortunatus’s wishing-cap, or Harlequin’s wooden sword: Fortunatus is a hero of mediaeval legend who possessed, variously, a wishing cap, an inexhaustible purse, and so on. Harlequin originates from a stock character of the commedia dell’arte. He wears a spangled costume and is renowned for his cunning. He carries a light bat or lath which, in the English tradition, becomes a wand.
Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector: Paine uses the formal former titles of William of Orange and George I.
civil government is republican government: that is, conducted under the law and involving election and representation. Monarchy is here associated with hereditary succession and the right to arbitrary power.
when the people of England … abandonment of Hanover: in fact, George I spent as little time as possible in England, and as much as possible in Hanover.
the Dutchy of Mecklenburgh … Queen’s family governs: Charlotte-Sophia (1744-1818), of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (a German principality), queen of George III.
the animosity of the English Nation … ran high: George III (1738—1820), crowned 1760, was taught by Lord Bute (1713–92) fully to exercise Royal powers, but was forced in the years immediately following his accession to acknowledge the reality of party politics.
an immediate coalition of the champions themselves: a reference to the coalition between Charles James Fox and Lord North, the former a major critic of the latter’s policies in North America. The government was short-lived (April 1783–December 1783) and was succeeded by that of Pitt.
on the return of a new Parliament: the election of March 1784, at which Pitt consolidated his previously weak position.
he introduced himself to public notice … corruption: Pitt proposed buying out thirty-six boroughts with minute electorates, for which a fund of £1,000,000 was to be created. The seats would then be redistributed. The proposal was defeated 18 April 1785.
the Dutch business … the national debt: the ‘Dutch business’ refers to Pitt’s machinations over the restoration of the Stadholder in Holland, and the end of the republic; the ‘sinking’ of the national debt refers to the scheme which Pitt drew up, with assistance from Dr Richard Price, for the reduction of the national debt. A bill to establish a sinking fund was passed in May 1786, and a Consolidation Bill was passed in April 1787 to reform the funds which fed it.
Mr Fox had stated … to assume the government: Fox’s speech was on 10 December 1788; see Parliamentary Record, XXV (1789), 24; and Parliamentary History, XXVII, col. 713. For Pitt’s response see Parliamentary History, XXVII, cols. 713 and 735.
making the Great Seal into a king: the Great Seal is the chief seal used by the sovereign to authenticate state documents; it is kept by the Lord Chancellor (then Pitt). For Pitt’s reference to the seal see Parliamentary History, XXVII, cols. 846–51.
If France with a revenue … present debt of England: Paine had argued for the view that France was in an economically stronger position than Britain in Prospects on the Rubicon (1787).
Mr Burke in his review of the finances: Reflections, M. 130; Wks. 179; O’B. 235; P. 114.
Mr Neckar in France, and George Chalmers … Lord Hawkes-bury: Necker (see note to p. 147); George Chalmers (1742–1825), Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain during the present and four preceding reigns (London, 1782). Chalmers served as a government clerk after 1786 and went on to write a hostile biography of Paine under the pseudonym Francis Oldys. See also Paine’s Appendix to Rights of Man, Part Two. Charles Jenkinson first Earl of Liverpool and first Baron Hawkesbury (1727–1808), President of the Board of Trade 1786.
increasing paper till there is no money left: Paine expanded on this theme in his Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance (1796).
Administration of the Finances … Vol III: A Treatise on the Administration of the Finances of France in three volumes (translated from the French edition of 1784 by T. Mortimer, London, 1785), 59.
Mr Eden [now Auckland]: William Eden, first Baron Auckland (1744–1814), statesman and diplomat, privy councillor.
May 1777 … £600,000 private debts: on 16 April 1777, Parliament voted £620,000 for arrears plus £100,000 per annum to the king. Sinclair, A History of the Revenue, iii. 70; also Parliamentary History, XIX, 211–14 and 221–34.
Cast his eyes … once was France: Speech on the Army Estimates, Works (1808), v. 4–5 adapted ‘he did not find, on a review of all Europe, that, politically, we stood in the smallest degree of danger … that France had been our first object … [but] that France is, at this time, in a political light, to be considered as expunged out of the system of Europe.’
sale of the monastic and ecclesiastical landed estates: this followed the nationalization of Church property on 2 November 1789, beginning 19 December 1789.
the court of St James or Carlton-House: St James’s Palace, the London residence and court of the Hanoverians; Carlton House, the primary London residence of the Prince of Wales, later George IV (1762–1830), which was altered and enlarged at great expense by Henry Holland in 1788.
mixed government: government by the one, the few and the many (of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy), paradigmatically sketched by Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, VI, 3–10, and through Machiavelli, Harrington and Montesquieu, deeply influential on eighteenth-century British and American traditions of opposition thought. Paine’s rejection of the tradition is indicative of his radicalism.
Henry the Fourth … abolishing war in Europe: Henry IV (1553–1610), a skilled ruler, responsible for the Edict of Nantes, who is credited by Maximilien Sully (1559–1641), his finance minister, with a scheme for a federation of Europe.
Holland … an ill-constructed republic: the Dutch republic formally rested sovereignty in the Estates of the seven provinces of the republic. The Estates were, in theory, representatives of the people, but they were, in fact, appointed by aristocratic and patrician corporations. Each province was supposed to have a veto on legislation, but the smaller provinces were often dominated by Holland, the largest of the provinces (having over half the population of the United Provinces). Each province appointed its own Stadtholder, but by the eighteenth century the practice had developed of each appointing the same, with the post becoming a herediatary office.
if you make a campaign the ensuing spring: on 20 April 1792, France declared war on Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria, following their tolerance of émigré troops on their territory and the Pillnitz Declaration of 27 August 1791, threatening combined intervention in French affairs by Austria and Prussia. The other German states made common cause against France.
Appeal from the new to … refute them: E. Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in consequence of some late discussions in parliament relative to the Reflections on the French Revolution (1791). Works (1808) vi. 187–200.
This will most probably … zeal: Burke, Appeal …, Works (1808) vi. 200.
vicinage: the neighbourhood, or appropriate local body.
all those songs and toasts … suffocate reflection: the publication of songs and toasts was a major feature of late eighteenth-century popular politics. In the 1788 Westminster by-election (see Letter Addressed to the Addressers, note to p. 379), a printer published his bill to George Rose, Secretary to the Treasury, for the printing of songs and broadsheets indicating that he had provided the ministerial party with some 60,000 copies of various songs in the space of ten days. Cf. L. Werkmeister, The London Daily Press 1772–1792 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1963), appendix v.
Archimedes … world: Archimedes (£.287–212 BC), Plutarch, Marcellus xiv.7, attributed to him the saying—that if he could get to another world he could move this—on developing the theory of leverage in mechanics.
if this be monarchy … sins of the Jews: a reference to the Jews’ decision to appoint a king, i Sam. 8: 4–22, discussed in Common Sense, 12.
a counter-revolution: the Oxford English Dictionary dates the term from 1791, but in the sense of a conservative reaction to revolution (see above, 169). Paine’s usage implies a neutral sense to the term revolution (as in Locke’s willingness to use it for both executive usurpations and popular rebellions, Second Treatise 223, 225).
As Nature created him … ceases to act: this contrasts with Paine’s account in the opening of Common Sense.
The riots of 1780: the anti-popery or Gordon riots, see note to pp. 101 and 109.
a metaphysical man, like Mr Burke: Paine’s use of ‘metaphysical’ suggests someone who looks for too subtle or complex explanations, but Samuel Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, para. 51–2, also used the term to identify the ‘metaphysical poets’ as a race of writers whose ‘whole endeavour (was to shew their learning, who used far-fetched comparisons, and lacked feeling,’ and Paine may be adverting to this sense.
a banditti of ruffians: see Common Sense, 16.
curfeu-bell: curfew, the custom of ringing a bell every evening as a signal to extinguish fires and lights. It derives from the Norman, was instituted in 1068 by William the Conqueror and started at the hour of 8 p.m.
war is the Pharo table of governments: Faro (or in France, Pharaoh): a gambling game at cards where players bet on the order in which certain cards will appear.
Abbé Sieyes … I am already engaged: Siéyès took exception to Paine’s Letter to the Authors of The Republican (June 1791, reprinted in the Morning Post), and wrote to the Gazette nationale ou Le moniteur universal (No. 187, pp. 46–7) on 6 July 1791 asserting that there was more liberty under a monarchy than a republic: ‘Je la préfère, parce qu’il m’est démonstré qu’il y a plus de liberté pour le citoyen dans la monarchie que dans la république.’ Paine responded with Letter to the Abbé Siéyès 8 July 1791 (published 16 July, No. 197, p. 137). Siéyès replied in the same issue and denied that ‘I have the leisure to enter a controversy with republican polycrats.’ (p. 139, col. 2; but see p. 47, col. 1) Paine clearly believed that he had unfinished business, but it remained so.
a levelling system: loyalist writers sought to discredit Paine by associating him with ‘levelling’—that is, demands for equalisation of property, the extension of the franchise and radical republicanism. Only the last is appropriately attributed to the Levellers of the English Civil War, from whom the term derives.
If it be asked … succession: letter to the Moniteur, 16 July 1791, p. 138, col. 2.
as a pensioner: that is, in receipt of a salary from the crown and by implication suborned to that interest, a hireling from base motive.
the Houses of York and Lancaster: the Wars of the Roses (the main military conflict being 1455–85) a (partly dynastic) struggle for the English crown.
1715 and 1745: attempts to reassert the Stuart claims to the English and Scottish thrones by the son of James II by his second marriage, James (1688–1766, the Old Pretender, and by his son Charles (1719–88), the Young Pretender.
succession war for the crown of Spain: the War of Spanish Succession, 1701–13/14, involving fighting in Spain, Italy, southern Germany, the Netherlands and in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea.
disturbances in Holland: concerning the restoration of the Stadtholder in 1787 in which the British, French, and Prussian governments were variously involved.
Poland … made a voluntary essay … to reform: a Polish convention sitting at Balia, in 1769, with doubtful authority, agreed to commission French political theorists for advice, prompting Rousseau’s Considerations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne (1772).
Homer or Euclid: Homer (c. eighth-century BC), epic poet; Euclid (£.300 BC), Greek mathematician.
the democracy of the Athenians: established in essentials by Cleisthenes in 508 BC and lasted until 322 BC. One probable source for Paine was M. Rollin, Ancient History, book X, ch. 1, art. 2.
What is called a republic … the object: see Paine’s first, but essentially similar, formulations of these definitions in his Dissertations on Government (1786) ii. 372–3.
those who have said … countries of great extent: Montesquieu, L’Esprit des Lois, book, VIII, ch. 16 and 20; Rousseau, Du Control Social, book III, ch. 4.
It is better to have monarchy … corrective: See Reflections … 234M. 126; Wks. 175, O’B. 230; P. no, where Burke attributes to Bolingbroke, and endorses, the view that ‘you can better ingraft any description of republic on a monarchy than any thing of monarchy on the republican forms’. However, in his speech on the Quebec Government Bill, 21 April 1791, he ‘laid it down as a maxim, that monarchy was the basis of all good government, and the nearer to monarchy any government approached, the more perfect it was … He was by no means anxious for a monarchy with a dash of republicanism to correct it.’ Burke, Speeches (1816) iv. 21.
than to any other individual member of Congress: Paine either follows an English custom of referring to the President as the President of Congress (see P. S. Foner, i. 374), or makes a mistake in claiming that the President is a member of Congress (see H. Collins’ note 21 to the Penguin edition of Rights of Man).
Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania’s constitution (it was the eighth state to provide itself with one, and the first to do so after the Declaration of Independence), was the first to use a specially elected, rather than an already sitting, legislature to write a constitution. The legal assembly had proved unwilling to act, and the election of 1 May 1776 failed significantly to affect the balance of forces in it. Those in favour of independence abandoned the assembly, rendering it inquorate, and the Philadelphia Committee of Inspection called a convention of its county committees in an attempt to bypass the assembly. This convention met in Philadelphia and scheduled an election for 8 July 1776. The election produced a legislature acting as a Constitutional Convention. Their deliberations produced a constitution, adopted alongside the Declaration of Rights on 28 September 1776. It specified a uni-cameral legislature, with a broad suffrage, annual elections, and the requirement that laws had to be passed by two consecutive sessions of the legislature (see Donald S. Lutz, ‘State constitution-making through 1781’, in Greene and Pole).
Congress, at its first two meetings: the first Continental Congress was called for by Rhode Island in May and Massachusetts in June 1774. The Congress met in Philadelphia 5 September 1774; the second met from 10 May 1775, also in Philadelphia. Congress worked intermittently on drafting its Articles of Confederation from the summer of 1775 until agreement was reached in November 1777 to submit the 13 Articles of Confederation to the states. Ratification, however, was not completed until February 1781. Even before the Articles came into effect problems arose concerning the right of Congress to charge duty, indicating the need for a review of the Articles.
the state of Virginia: James Maddison (1751–1836), who retired from Congress after the war and served on the Virginia legislature, persuaded Virginia to invite other states to appoint commissioners to discuss ‘such commercial regulations [as] may be necessary to their common interest and their permanent harmony’. Eight states responded favourably, but only five appeared at the Annapolis meeting in September 1786.
That though they … had voted for it: Massachusetts, 6 February 1788.
accepts none as President of the United States: Foner claims that Washington was persuaded to accept a salary of $25,000 p.a. (I, 381).
Dr Johnson … a controuling power: Samuel Johnson, Taxation no Tyranny (1775) in Political Writings, ed. D. J. Greene (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1977), 423: ‘There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal …’
Magna Charta … like an almanack of the same date: 1215.
The history of the Edwards and the Henries … Stuarts: this is one of the claims which is cited in the indictment of Paine for seditious libel. Although it sounds a wild generalization, the not notably republican Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy (Oxford, 1992) describes Edward I (1239–1307), as ‘autocratic, short-tempered, intolerant of criticism, cruel, and violent’; Edward II (1307–27), by 1322, as ‘vindictive to the point of cruelty’; Henry I (1068–1135), as ‘cruel, lustful, avaricious, and a stern judge; for Henry III (1216–72), it notes that ‘his naive, foolish and deceitful actions … created disrespect and contempt’; Henry V (1413–1422), is described as ‘a dour, stern man, intolerant of oposition and ruthless in the pursuit of his ends … [although] famed for his sense of justice’; and Henry VI (1422–61, 1470–71), as ‘pious, well-intentioned, and compassionate, but lacking shrewdness, foresight, and calculation’. This paragraph and the subsequent two were omitted from the Symonds edition of 1792, with the following statement by Paine: ‘Here follow, on page 52 of the original edition, four paragraphs. As those paragraphs are put into information, and will publicly appear with the pleadings thereon, when the prosecution shall be brought to an issue, they are not verbally recited here, except for the first of them, which is added in the annexed note for the purpose of shewing the spirit of the prosecuting party, and the sort of matter which has been selected for prosecution.’ After the note, Paine adds: ‘Query. Does the prosecuting party mean to deny that instances of tyranny were acted by the Edwards and Henries? Does he mean to deny that the Stuarts endeavoured to pass the limits which the nation had prescribed? Does he mean to prove it libellous in any person to say what they did?’
Bill of Rights … right of petitioning: 1 William and Mary, s.2, c.2 (1689). The Bill of Rights insists on ‘the right of the subjects to petition the king’, but it is not the only clause in defence of the subject.
the convention parliament: in 1689 an assembly was convened, in essence a parliament but calling itself a convention, which declared the throne vacant following the flight of James II to France, and which offered it to Mary (the heir, as the eldest daughter of James II, by his first marriage) and her husband William of Orange (the son of the marriage of Mary, sister to Charles II and James II, and William II of Orange), as joint sovereigns.
the corruption introduced … by the agency of Walpole: Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), who mastered the Commons during the last years of the reign of George I (1714–27) and the first fifteen years of the reign of George II (1721–60). Walpole’s dominance of the Commons was engineered through the judicious use of court appointments and parliamentary corruption.
bore and quoz: the sense of ‘bore’ as tedious dates from the mid-eighteenth century; quoz was a mid to late eighteenth-century term for an absurd person or thing.
St James’s and St Stephen’s: St James’s Palace was used for official receptions by George III; St Stephen’s is a chapel in the Palace of Westminster, used by the Commons for its meeting place after 1547.
city of Paris paid a duty: 29 April 1790, decree on the free trade in grain. Internal custom barriers were not abolished throughout France until 31 October to 5 November 1791.
America … speech on the Canada constitution bill: that is, the Quebec Government Bill (1791). For Burke’s speech sec Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 365–6.
wild beasts in the Tower: the king’s menagerie was housed in the Tower of London from the reign of Henry III until the end of the eighteenth century.
Oh John Bull: from the eighteenth century John Bull was the central and much caricatured image of the Englishman. See Miles Taylor, ‘John Bull and the Iconography of Public Opinion in England c.1712–1929’, Past and Present, 134 (1992), 93–128.
Livre Rouge … court calendar: the infamous ‘red book’ published in France revealing the sums paid by the crown to those attendant on the court; The Court and City Register; or Gentleman’s Complete Annual Calendar, which included all the names of office-holders in the Royal Household, Government and Armed Services in Britain. It was a pocket-size volume bound in red leather.
three or four very silly ministerial newspapers: See, for example, The Times, 20 February 1792, pp. 2 and 3. The delays in publication would have allowed Paine to take account of newspaper responses to Pitt’s speech on finance on 17 February 1792.
In America it is generally composed of two houses: Pennsylvania, which Paine served as Clerk to the Assembly, was one exception, see note to p. 239.
debate on engaging in the Russian-Turkish War: a war concerning Russia’s attempt to retain the port of Ochakov on the Black Sea in Bessarabia. Pitt’s involvement in this complex strategic situation was debated in the House of Commons on 12 and 15 April 1791, the government holding its majorities by 253 to 173, and 254 to 162, Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 217 and 249. In the House of Lords, sixty-seven voted against the motion.
Mr Fox’s bill, respecting the rights of juries: Fox’s Libel Bill (32 George III, c. 60), which transferred the decision in cases of libel from the judge to the jury. The bill was passed after a year’s delay in the House of Lords in May 1792. Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 551–602, 727–41, 1293–99, 1361–71, and 1404–31.
to extend the duration … they now sit: 2 George I, c. 38 (1716) The Septennial Act.
A general convention … into consideration: Paine developed this suggestion in Letter Addressed to the Addressers (1792) and it was adopted by several of the more radically inclined members of the reform societies, leading to their prosecution in the Treason Trials of 1794.
Government, says Swift … heads: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Oxford, Blackwells, 1965), ‘Voyage to Lilliput’, ch. 6, 59: ‘Since Government is necessary to Mankind, they believe that the common Size of human Understandings, is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the Management of public Affairs a Mystery to be comprehended only by a few Persons of sublime Genius, of which there seldom was three born in an Age.’ See also ‘Voyage to Brobdingnag’, ch. 7, 135–6.
Duke of Richmond: Charles Lennox (1735–1806), 3rd duke of Richmond and Lennox; Knight of the Garter and Privy Councillor from 1782. Paine’s animus (see also p. 300) might derive from Richmond’s apostasy—having argued for universal suffrage and annual parliaments in 1783, he strenuously opposed all reform after becoming a member of Pitt’s cabinet. Richmond had patents (descended from an illegitimate son of Charles II) to the proceeds of customs duties on coal—hence Paine’s comments here and below, pp. 281 and 347.
Holland, by marriage … Prussia: the re-establishment of the Stadtholder in 1787 was secured with the assistance of the Prussians, the Stadtholder being married to the sister of the king of Prussia.
figuratively taken: Locke, Second Treatise of Government ch. XIII, § 151, II. 12–21.
the civic oath, in France: the oath to the constitution, sworn at many of the Fêtes de la Federation after July 1790, and formally imposed on the clergy in November 1790.
Ultima Ratio Regum: the last argument of kings.
I have been an advocate to commerce … its effects: see especially Paine’s Letter to the Abbé Raynal (1782): ‘Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind … the condition of the world being materially changed by the influence of science and commerce, it is put into fitness not only to admit of, but to desire, an extension of civilisation.’ (Works, ed. Conway, ii. p. 104.)
Mr Pitt … balance of trade: Speeches of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt in the House of Commons (London, 1806), i. 350–61 (12 February 1787), Speech on the treaty with France.
the European Courts are plotting to counteract it: see note to dedication.
Three times has it … four years of peace: Paine is referring to mobilization of the navy following Pitt’s involvement in diplomatic controversies which threatened war: namely, the fall of the Dutch republic in 1787, the Nootka Sound Affair in 1790, and the Ochakov crisis of 1790–11. (See notes to pp. 227, 253 and 368.)
whig and tory, or high or low: for Whig and Tory see note to p. 40; high and low refers to different sections of the Church of England: High Churchmen upholding the authority of the Church, its sacerdotal claims and asserting the efficacy of the sacraments; Low Churchmen giving a low place to the claims of the priesthood and being closer to nonconformism than to the Catholic Church, with which High Churchmen and Tories had affinity.
the Terrible … Capt. Mendez: see note to p. 39, and A. Barry, ‘Thomas Paine, Privateersman’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 101 (1977), 451–61.
secretary in the foreign department: Paine was Secretary to the Congressional Committee for Foreign Affairs (1777–9). He resigned after revealing secret documents in his attempt to demonstrate that Silas Deane (1737–89), one of the American Commissioners to France, had been involved in corruption.
pecuniary offers … Gerard and Mirralles: Conrad-Alexandre Gerard, first French Minister to America (1778–9), and Don Juan Mirralles, the Spanish Minister. Paine did, however, accept a gift from Gerard’s successor, Anne-César, chevalier de la Luzerne, in reward for Paine’s Letter to the Abbé Raynal (1782).
affair of Arnold and Andre: Benedict Arnold (1741–1801), a General in the Continental Army, who secretly negotiated through Major John André (for the British) to surrender West Point to Clinton in return for a royal military commission and financial remuneration. When discovered, Arnold fled to the loyalists. André was captured and hanged as a spy by the Americans. Paine’s comment suggests fear of reprisals against American spies. Paine discusses the case in a postscript to his Crisis Extraordinary, 4 October 1780.
Col. Lawrens … son of Lawrens in the Tower: Colonel John Laurens (d. 1782), a member of Washington’s staff in 1778, and a negotiator with the French after the arrival of French ships in 1778. Henry Laurens (1724–92), President of the first Continental Congress. Laurens was captured en route to Holland to negotiate an alliance in 1779 and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for fifteen months.
charters and corporations: these were instruments by which kings had granted rights and powers to individuals, or towns since before the conquest. The corporations, by the eighteenth century, had become synonymous with maladministration; see Langford (2) ch. 4.
‘Our representation … shew the contrary’: Reflections M. 56; Wks. 107; O’B. 146; P. 49.
‘the great ground … to the landed interest’: Burke, Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Works (London, 1808), vi. 188—a reflection interspersed between quotations from Paine.
In 1788, the amount of the land tax: Sir John Sinclair, The History of the Public Revenue (London, 1785), 2nd edition in three parts, each separately paginated. The land tax figures are given in iii. 154.
the land tax in 1646: the date is given in error. Paine intends to refer to 1696. See Sinclair, iii. 7.
the taxes … between land and articles of consumption:
the tax on beer: Sinclair, iii. 125 (although Sinclair does not point to the inequity of the tax).
borough traffic … connections: through the ownership of estates, some of which gave preponderant influence in a borough, or which were identical with the borough, members of the nobility were able to control a substantial number of seats in the Commons. Even without preponderant influence through property ownership, many constituencies had small enough electorates to allow aristocratic influence. See Namier and Brooke, i, ‘Introduction’.
when the vallies laugh and sing … rejoices: possibly an allusion to Isaiah 44: 23, 49: 13.
‘the Corinthian capital of polished society’: Reflections, M. 139; Wks. 188; O’B. 245; P. 122.
Samson … temple of Dagon: Judg. 16: 22–31.
a candle-holder: names of various ‘offices’ in the royal household.
two thousand aged persons: that is, at £10 p.a.
not only refused offers … have accepted: Paine certainly turned down offers of money, but since he also turned the profits from his writings to the causes they supported he was often in financial difficulty (especially during the American War). At that time he accepted office under Congress and in the Pennsylvanian Assembly; he also received money from the French Ambassador and land from the Indiana Company, and he was paid by Robert Morris for writing for Congress. Moreover, after the Revolution he received several offers of money and land, and those he accepted left him comfortably off. But in no case can he be accused of having been bought.
‘it is the standing law … consequence’: Appeal, Works (London 1808), vi. 189.
executive: ‘But because the Laws, that are at once, and in a short time made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a perpetual Execution, or an attendance thereunto: Therefore ‘tis necessary that there should be a Power always in being, which should see to the Execution of the Laws that are made and remain in force. Locke, Second Treatise, ch. XII, § 144.
Sir John Sinclair’s History of the Revenue: iii. xviii–xix and 113.
Wat Tyler … Walworth … Richard … Barons … Runnymede: Wat Tyler (d. 1381) is not identical to John Tyler who killed a poll-tax collector. Richard II (1377–99) was 14 at the time of the revolt. Sir William Walworth (d. 1385) was knighted for his killing of Tyler. Runnymede was the site for the signing of the Magna Carta.
the amount of taxes … 1788: Sinclair, iii. 154.
The expence of collection … gross amount: Sinclair, iii. 162, calculates the average cost of collection to be 7.5 per cent of the gross.
national debt … nine millions: Sinclair, iii. 264, calculates the debt at £247,981,927, with an annual interest due of £9,469,117.
France…possessed national domains: a reference to the nationalization and sale of the lands held by the clergy by the National Assembly (from 19 December 1789), and those held as part of the Royal domain (19 December 1789, 9 March 1790). The rules governing sales changed on several occasions in the course of 1790.
popery, and wooden shoes: the wooden shoe, or sabot, of the French peasant was used as a symbol of the misery and poverty of the French.
The characters of William and Mary … father: William II I was the son of Mary, the sister of Charles II and James II; Mary II (1689–94), and Anne (1702–14) were the daughters of James II’s first marriage to Anne Hyde.
bought the Dutchy of Bremin: on the transaction concerning Bremen see Sinclair, ii. 75 and his source, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Bolingbroke’s Works (1773) iv. 131–2, ‘Some Reflections on the Present History of the Nation’.
The peace establishment: i.e., under Charles II, for the years 1675–6; Sinclair, i. 181.
war with the Dutch: the first Dutch war, Parliament voted £5,483,845; the second Dutch war, 1665–7, Parliament voted £1,238,750. Sinclair, i. 183–4.
even the physicians bills … sent to the public: George Ill’s numerous doctors were rewarded with pensions—£1,000 p.a. for twenty-one years in the case of the Rev. Dr Francis Willis and £650 p.a. and for his son Dr John Willis—and the London physicians were paid £10 per visit to Kew and £30 per visit to Windsor. Sir George Baker’s fee amounted to £1,380. See Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad Business (2nd edn., London, 1991), 95.
three offices at ten thousand pounds each: Paine is being generous: by 1792, Pitt was paid £5,622 as First Lord of the Treasury, together with some small sums as New Year’s Gifts (on average £33 p.a.). As Chancellor and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer he received approximately £1,900. He also received a net income from his sinecure as Warden of the Cinque Ports of £.£3,053. Thus, even Pitt rarely netted £10,000 p.a. (J. Ehrman, The Younger Pitt (London, 1969), i. 595–6).
poor rates are a direct tax: poor rates were paid by householders with incomes of £40–50 p.a. or more—that is, probably by about a quarter to a third of the population. The amount paid fluctuated according to the needs of the parish.
Sinclair … £2,100,587: iii. 163–4.
Birmingham is said to contain: W. Hutton, An History of Birmingham, and edn. (Birmingham, 1783) gives a figure of 48,252; Paine’s source is obscure.
taking two millions … national amount: the inquiry into poor-rate expenditure conducted in 1786 calculated that about £2 million per annum was spent on average for 1783–5.
reduction of … the national debt: Paine appears to mean that four million would service a debt of one hundred and twenty million-—a similar ratio as obtained in 1762; Sinclair, ii. 88.
At fifty: Paine was 54 in 1791.
thrown off from the revolutions of that wheel: the wheel of fortune, a commonplace of medieval and renaissance literature.
six pounds … ten pounds per ann.: in 1777 it was calculated that a lowly manual labourer and his wife were likely to be earning about £22 p.a. Moreover, the purchasing power of this wage had declined gradually over the previous twenty years. Langford (i), 458.
tontine: a financial scheme by which the subscribers to a loan each receive an annuity for life, the value of which increases proportionately as their number is gradually reduced by death.
let George … Saib: the kings of Britain and France; Leopold II, Emperor of Austria (1747–92); Frederick II the Great of Prussia (1740–86); Catherine II the Great of Russia (1762–96); Charles Cornwallis (1738–1805), first Marquis, second Earl, second-in-command under Clinton in the American war, then Commander-in-Chief and Governor-General in India; Tipu Saib (d. 1799), Sultan of Mysore, a thorn in the flesh of British policy in India, and a victim of cultural stereotyping in the British imagination.
relieving parishes from this charge: the fact that a parish bore directly the costs of any poor person resident within its boundaries, together with the high cost of poor relief in some parishes, sometimes led parishes to police their territory and eject those likely to become a burden to the rates.
Public schools do not answer: schooling took place either in institutions established under charters and statutes which restricted their options, or in charity schools established in the first half of the eighteenth century. In both cases the numbers educated were limited.
Chelsea College pensioners: inmates of Chelsea Royal Hospital for old or disabled soldiers, founded 1682.
the tax on houses and windows: by acts of 1766 and 1779, cf. Sinclair, iii. 136.
commutation tax: established in the Commutation Act of 1784, which sharply reduced the tax on tea and increased the window tax as a way of reducing the incentives for the smuggling of tea. Sinclair, iii. 138–46.
tax on beer brewed for sale under Charles II: Sinclair, i. 186.
reports on the corn trade: average corn prices in the inland and maritime counties, and average prices for exportation, were printed regularly in the London Gazette.
Several laws are in existence … workmen’s wages: between the 1720s and 1790 almost forty acts had been passed forbidding ‘combinations’ or unions in particular trades, although these were not very effective.
the condition of the inferior revenue officers … twenty years ago: Paine acted for his fellow excisemen in 1772, writing his Case of the Offices of Excise in defence of their claims for higher wages.
news of the coalition: the Fox–North coalition, 1783; see note top. 179.
he ransacked Europe and India for adventures: Paine is referring to Pitt’s involvement in various alliances and strategic interventions designed to maintain Britain’s position in Europe, and to Cornwallis’s campaigns in India. (On Pitt’s European activities see Paine’s Prospects on the Rubicon (1787).)
Holland … Brunswick: William III; George I; Zell is probably a reference to Zeeland, a province of Holland on the border with Belgium.
Rebellion consists … by a government: cf. Locke, Second Treatise, ch. XIX, § 227: ‘when either the Legislative is changed, or the Legislators act contrary to the end for which they were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion.’
the horrid scene that … East-Indies: a reference to the brutality of British military conduct in India.
the Age of reason: also the title of Paine’s attack on Christianity, the first part of which was published in 1793.
the oppressed soldier … the tortured sailor: references to the very poor conditions faced by both soldiers and sailors, and to the forced methods of recruitment used. Both suffered from a traditional reluctance to allow a standing army of any size, lest it be used to consolidate the power of the king against the people and parliament.
sowered: obsolete form of soured.
The Algerine piracy may … cease: piracy by Algerian ships against those of Europe and North America was common. The attacks were seen as made possible by a failure of cooperation between those victim to them; Paine, and others, particularly blamed the British for this.
the former National Assembly: the Legislative Assembly, replacing the National Constituent Assembly, formally opened on 1 October 1791.
the present Bishop of Landaff: Dr Richard Watson (1737–1816), scientist and theologian, who was known for his latitudinarian views, but who answered Paine’s Age of Reason with An Apology for the Bible (1796).
On a certain occasion three years ago: probably during the Regency Crisis.
Mr Pitt’s Speech … 31: Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 786–7 (31 January 1792); see also 17 February 1792, cols. 816–38.
Address and Declaration of the Thatched House Tavern: Address and Declaration of the Meeting of the friends of Universal Peace and Liberty, held at the Thatched House Tavern, St James Street, August 20, 1791, signed by John Home Tooke, but written by Paine; Foner, ii. 534–7.
intended to be published before the meeting of Parliament: that is, before 31 January 1792. It appeared 16 February 1792.
printer’s hands: Thomas Chapman, who subsequently testified against Paine at his trial.
a ministerial bookseller: John Stockdale of Piccadilly printed Francis Oldys’s Life of Thomas Pain (London, 1792). Oldys was a pseudonym for George Chalmers, who was a clerk in Hawkesbury’s office—indeed, Paine refers to him in Rights of Man: Part One, p. 183.
late Proclamation … and Addresses: Royal Proclamation against Seditious Writings and Publications, 21 May 1792, Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 1476–7; London Gazette, nos. 13418–24. The Gazette had noted 220 Addresses to the king by the end of June 1792.
afraid to whistle, lest they should increase the wind: ‘The seamen will not endure to have one whistle on shipboard: believing that it rayses winds’, Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs.
the Outs as well as the Ins: those in opposition and those in political office.
Lord Stormont: David Murray (1727–96), Viscount Stormont, and from 1793, second Earl of Mansfield. Keeper of Scone was a formal title referring to an ancient Scots region. For Stormont’s speech see Morning Chronicle i February 1792, or Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 749–50.
captivating eulogium … by Lord Bolingbroke: Henry St John Bolingbroke, Dissertation on Parties (London, 1735), Letter XIII, 153–4.
Grenville: William Wyndham, Baron Grenville (1759–1834), created a peer 1790. In 1792 he was both President of the Board of Control and Foreign Secretary.
the Statutes at Large of the Jews: that is, the Old Testament and an allusion to Statutes at Large: From the Magna Carta to George III, 10 vols. (London, 1786).
Saul gave the most convincing proofs: I Sam. 9: 3 and 20.
exasperated, at the proposal of the Jews: i Sam. 8: 6 (see Common Sense pp. 11–19)
Paternoster-row: Paternoster Row, a street close to St Paul’s cathedral in London, allegedly where monks in procession to the cathedral said the Pater Noster (Lord’s Prayer); by the eighteenth century it was a centre of publishing and bookselling. Joseph Johnson, who set but did not publish Part One of the Rights of Man, had his premises on the Row.
Amen Corner: at the west end of Paternoster Row, purportedly where the monks finished the Pater Noster in their procession on Corpus Christi.
Antiquarian Society: from the 1730s to 1777, the Antiquarian Society met at the Mitre, Fleet Street.
1 Samuel, chap. 8: verses 10–18.
Are our young men … sailors: Paine’s irony is directed against the impressing methods used to man the army and navy.
every man may sit under his own vine … fig tree: 1 Kings 4. 25.
Is the tenth of our seed: a reference to the payment of tithes on the produce of the land to the Church.
Is not the G. R. or the broad R. stampt upon everything: the royal stamp was used to indicate that the ‘Stamp Tax’ had been paid on the articles in question. Stamp Tax was payable on gold, silver, hats, gloves, newspapers, etc.
the Lord Chancellor: Edward Thurlow (1731–1806) first Baron Thurlow, Lord Chancellor 1778–83 and 1783–92. Thurlow’s relationship with Pitt deteriorated after 1788, breaking out in public conflict in May 1792. On 16 May Pitt informed the king that he could not sit in the same council with Thurlow, and Thurlow was dismissed—but allowed to leave in June. Since the Regency Crisis, Thurlow had been closer to George, Prince of Wales, than to Pitt. Paine’s reference to York (Frederick Augustus, 1763–1827), and Clarence (William IV, 1765–1837), the two younger sons of George III, implies a cabal against the king.
Mr Dundas: Henry Dundas (1742—1811), Home Secretary, 1791—4, and thus principally responsible for domestic order.
Cæsar in the Tyber, crying to Cassius: Julius Caesar, I. ii. 113.
having announced their arrival in the Gazette: that is, the London Gazette, an official government journal.
hic jacet: literally, ‘here lies’. Paine uses it to mean their obituary.
Onslow, at the Surry County meeting: see Paine’s two letters to Cranley Onslow, 17 and 21 June, 1792 in Foner, ii. 457, 460. The Meeting was reported in The Times, 19 June 1792. In the first of his letters Paine accuses Onslow of trying to influence in advance the jury who were to try him for Rights of Man.
Duke of Richmond … at the Sussex meeting: see ‘To the Sheriff of the County of Sussex’, 30 June 1792, ii. 463.
got together by the ears: to fight together—Butler, Hudibras ‘When hard words, jealousies and fears, set folks together by the ears.’ What Paine says of Kent was also replicated elsewhere.
number of Addresses in the Gazette: Annual Register for 1792, 34/2, 37 noted 341 addresses by 1 September; Eugene Black, The Association (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 232 suggests that over 360 addresses were received before the end of the summer.
at the time of writing: Paine’s Letter was composed in the summer of 1792, most likely in late July, or August. Paine arrived in France in September and the Letter was published in England in October.
a greater number of the cheap edition … one month: the number of copies sold is the subject of much debate. A recent, moderate suggestion gives a figure of 10,000 copies of part two being sold per week in 1792, with 100,000 of each part being in circulation by 1793. See Gregory Claeys, Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (London, Unwin Hyman, 1989), 112.
done in Spain … Government of France: in pre-revolutionary France, and in Spain, the Chruch exercised extensive powers of censorship, as did the state. In France a book had to be awarded the ‘privilege’ of being printed by a board of censors. In practice, there was latitude, and when books were banned they generally enjoyed considerable success after their production was moved to Holland.
meetings of the justices … General Warrants: in 1763 John Wilkes and others involved in the publication of North Briton No. 45, which had directly criticized the king in connection with the Peace of Paris, were arrested and imprisoned under a ‘general warrant’, which permitted the arrest of anyone involved in the publication (i.e. there was no requirement to name the offender in the warrant). This produced a public outcry, and the courts eventually ruled such warrants illegal although they had been used against Jacobites earlier in the century).
garrisoning the country: in May 1792 the government ordered new barracks for cavalry to be built at or near Sheffield, Manchester, Nottingham, Coventry, and Norwich, with a view to policing the country more effectively.
France … absurdity of the monarchical: on 10 August 1792, the monarchy was overthrown in France and the creation of a National Convention was agreed (to which Paine was elected in September).
George … Guelph: i.e. George III, Guelph being the name of the ruling family of Hanover and Brunswick.
hewers of wood and drawers of water: Josh. 9: 21, 23.
The preamble is in the following words: cited correctly, apart from minor differences in punctuation, and the omission of ‘and’ prior to ‘secure’.
part of the charge … Locke, Hampden, and Sydney: John Locke (1632–1704), philosopher, active in the ‘exclusion crisis’ of 1679–81, when parliamentary Whigs sought to force on Charles II a bill excluding his Catholic brother James from the succession. Following their failure in 1681, some close to Locke were involved in the Rye House Plot to assassinate the king. On discovery, Locke became a fugitive. Algernon Sydney (1622–83) was arrested after the plot, and his manuscript for his Discourses Concerning Government was used by the prosecution to demonstrate his treason. He was executed on Tower Hill. Had Locke been detained with his Two Treatises of Civil Government he would undoubtedly have shared Sydney’s fate. John Hampden (1656?–96), who was also connected with the Rye House Plot, was in 1685 condemned to death for high treason following the Monmouth rebellion (an attempt to overthrow James), but was subsequently pardoned.
Attorney-General: Sir Archibald Macdonald (1747–1826), Attorney-General 1788–92.
James Mackintosh: (1765–1832). His Vindiciae Gallicae (London, 1791) was a philosophically sophisticated reply to Burke’s Reflections. Mackintosh renounced his former opinions in the later part of the decade.
Thomas Walker: (1747–1817). Manchester cotton merchant, founder member of the Manchester Constitutional Society (1790), tried for conspiracy in April 1794 and acquitted.
a price that precluded an extensive circulation: Johnson’s never-published first edition was to have sold for two shillings and sixpence; Jordan sold both the first edition of part one and that of part two for three shillings each.
Court of St James: that is, the Crown.
a false, wicked and seditious libel: ‘a certain false, scandalous, malicious and seditious libel’; State Trials (London, 1817), xxii. col. 360.
The County Meeting for Middlesex … 118 addressers: London Gazette, No. 13450, 633: but see the Morning Chronicle for 10 August 1792, which gives an account of a divided meeting at which seventy-five voted against the Address.
Dragonetti … national expence: Paine quotes exactly the same passage in Common Sense (pp. 33–4), where he refers to it as ‘extracts’—a more accurate description since the quotation is made up of two phrases separated by a page in the original.
The Lord will … wall: Acts 23: 3 ‘Then said Paul unto him [the judge who had ordered that he be struck on the mouth], God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.’
special juries: as established by 3 George II, c. 25 (1730), although the broad intention of the Act was to prevent the packing of juries (see Parliamentary History, VIII, col. 803), the sections of the Act on special juries (xv–xviii) seem to have had a different intent, concerning the rights of courts to strikejuries.
Esquire: those legally entitled to use this were mainly the younger sons of peers and knights and their eldest sons; those so created or by office, as judges, justices, officers, and barristers. By the early nineteenth century it was clearly a courtesy title for all those considered gentlemen.
a deep take in: that is, a hoax or swindle.
Temple-bar and Whitechapel: the west and east bounds of the City of London.
a bill of wrongs and of insult: Rights of Man: Part Two, p. 246.
House of Orange: a Dutch royal house, supporters of Charles II in his exile, and the house from which William III descended.
For a nation to be free: see Rights of Man: Part One, p. 96 where Paine quotes Lafayette’s remark in full.
Thus much for both their houses: by implication, a plague on both, Romeo and Juliet, III. i. 112.
the modern interpretation of Libels: probably a reference to the changes consequent on Fox’s Libel Bill (32 Geo. Ill, c. 60) which transferred the decision as to whether the content of a publication was libellous from the judge to the jury (which had previously been asked to assess only whether or not the person was guilty of publication). However, Paine’s comment implies the old dispensation, as if the Attorney-General need only prove to the jury that Paine was the author of the book, not that what he wrote was libellous. The Act was passed by the Lords on 21 May 1792, the same day that proceedings against Paine were launched.
the information states: the quotation is a compilation of a number of claims made in the indictment; see State Trials, cols. 358–62.
With respect to … sleeps obedience: Rights of Man: Part Two, P. 253.
Friends of the people: a political association comprising mainly parliamentarians and aristocrats sympathetic to moderate reform launched with the Declaration at the Freemasons Tavern on 26 April 1792 (published in Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 1303–9). Charles Grey (1764–1845), a young opposition MP, played a leading role. James Mackintosh was secretary of the society for a period.
the bubble broke forth about Nootka Sound: Nootka Sound, on the north-west coast of America, was a source of concern in January 1790 when news reached the government that the Spaniards had seized a British ship and were proclaiming Spanish possession of the territory. The events as seen from the British captain’s point of view were published in May 1790, leading to the mobilization of the British Fleet; war seemed inevitable. It was averted when Spain backed down in July 1790. See John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, i. 554–64.
the day after the King’s Message … I wrote to Mr Burke: the king sent a message to Parliament concerning Nootka Sound on 5 May 1790. No correspondence between Paine and Burke from this time is extant, but there is no reason to doubt Paine’s word.
Mr Grey: Charles Grey (1764–1845), second Earl, a leading aristocratic Whig in favour of moderate reform.
I am in treaty with Mr Pitt about Mr Hastings’! trial: Burke was the major force behind the impeachment proceedings against Warren Hastings (1732–1818), Governor General of India, for which he required the co-operation of Pitt.
Mr Fox then called it a Libel: Parliamentary History, XXIX, col. 1315 (30 April 1792).
declarations of this Society, of the 25th of April, and 5th of May: see Parliamentary History, XXIX, cols. 1303–9.
the general WILL: a rare reference by Paine to Rousseau’s formulation of popular sovereignty, Du control social (1762) bk. 2, chs. 1–4 (see also below, p. 376).
for although copyholds … the holders are unrepresented: as opposed to forty shilling free-holders in the counties. See Sir L. Namier and J. Brooke, (eds.), The History of Parliament: House of Commons 1754–7790, Vol. 1 (London, 1964) ‘Introduction’. On the Land Tax see Sinclair, History of the Public Revenue, iii. 106–15.
Petitions from the unrepresented part: one means of redress for grievances from areas without parliamentary representation was the petition. It was not notable for its success in the 1790s, and its failure (for example in the spring of 1793, when radical societies organized petitions in support of bill for the reform of Parliament introduced by Grey) encouraged radicals to take the route of conventionism, which led to their being tried for treason in 1794.
Court-Kalendar: that is, the register of those in receipt of Crown patronage.
an unknown number of masked Pensioners: In the Civil List, in the sixth class, the sum of £107,404–13s–4d is marked for unnamed pensions. Most other pensions are earmarked to particular offices. See Sinclair, History of the Public Revenue, iii, App. i, vi. Paine cites this figure below, p. 374.
the end of Lord North’s administration: 1770–82.
Mr Burke’s Reform Bill: a bill for reforming the Civil List and establishing parliamentary control of Crown estates 1780: Burke’s Establishment Act (22 George III. 82).
Burke became himself a Pensioner in disguise: Burke was formally granted a pension in August 1794, of £1,200 p.a., with a further grant in September 1795 to the value of an additional £2,500 p.a. There is no evidence to support Paine’s claim that Burke was in receipt of a pension before this date.
Sir John Sinclair’s History of the Revenue: iii, App. 1, vi–xi. The four separate charges Paine identifies are variously listed: 1. Bills in the Lord Chamberlain’s Department; 2. the Lord Chamberlain at the Exchequer; 3. salaries payable in the office of the Lord Chamberlain; 4. the Lord Chamberlain’s gate alms and Maundy money. The Master of Hawks is listed on p. ix.
£1,700 … to Dissenting Ministers: see Sinclair, iii, App. 1, xi.
Riches make themselves wings, and fly away: Prov. 23: 5. The chapter begins, ‘When thou sittest down to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite …’
disqualifications, arising from the commission of offences: the most famous recent case was in 1784, when following his success in the Westminister election, Charles James Fox, leader of the Whigs, was not returned to parliament because the high bailiff had granted a scrutiny on the grounds of accusations of corruption and false votes (see Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, i. 217–21). But it is acknowledged that corrupt practices were commonplace in fiercely contested elections.
the compact that was entered into … Fox and Lord Hood: Westminister returned two candidates, Fox and Samuel Hood (1724–1816) in 1784, with the second ministerial candidate, Sir Cecil Wray, being defeated. In 1788 Hood was offered a lordship at the Admiralty and convention required that Members accepting office had to stand for re-election in their constituency. This caused an equally vigourously fought by-election, won by the Foxite, Sir John Townshend (1757–1833). So expensive was the contest, that in 1790 an agreement between Pitt and Lord Lauderdale led to the seats being uncontested, with Fox and Hood being returned. See D. Ginter, ‘The Financing of the Whig Party Organisation’, American Historical Review (1966), 71(1), 421–40; and Namier and Brooke, vol. 1.
Henry IV … to multiply gold or silver: z Henry IV, c. 4: the Act was directed against alchemists ‘multiplying’ gold and silver (not mathematicians).
with respect to regular law, there is scarcely such a thing: Rights of Man: Part Two, p. 249.
mixed government, such as the late government of Holland: 16 May 1795, the Treaty of the Hague transformed the United Provinces into the Batavanian Republic, ending the mixed government established at the overthrow of the republic in 1787.
Euclid: Greek mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, £.300 BC, and who became synonymous with geometry.
Robespierre: Maximilien-Francois-Isidore [de] Robespierre (1758–94), a member of the Estates General, a Jacobin, and a member of the Paris Commune in the time of the Legislative Assembly (October 1791—September 1792). He was elected to the convention in 1792, urged the execution of the king and subsequently acted as a key agent in the revolutionary terror, which ended with his overthrow and execution in July 1794.
Capets, Guelphs, Robespierres and Marats: Louis Capet and George Guelph are Paine’s common names for Louis XVI and George III. Jean-Paul Marat (1744–93) was a democrat and ideologue, whose journal L’Ami dupeuple won him notoriety. A member of the Paris commune, and elected to the Convention by Paris, he was instrumental in the downfall of the Girondins and was assassinated by Charlotte Corday in July 1793 for his part.
fee-absolute: the holder of the fee-absolute is the absolute owner of the land, in contrast to fee-simple, which is an estate held on condition of homage and service to a superior lord.
First Part of Rights of Man: see pp. 173–4.
Act of Settlement and Bill of Rights: see note to pp. 90–1.
the Constituent Assembly of France: on 9 July 1789, the National Assembly (constituted from the Estates General) adopted the title of the National Constituent Assembly, which was disbanded in September 1791 to make way for the Legislative Assembly. Hereditary succession was accepted with the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in October 1790.
Aristotle, Socrates, Plato: Greek philosophers, Socrates (469–399 BC) was Plato’s (427–347 BC) teacher, who in turn taught Aristotle (384–322 BC).
great landed estates … plundered at the conquest: a common claim in radical circles and part of a view of the legacy of the conquest as a Norman yoke, on a previously free people.
Jacobins: members of the Société des Jacobins, which acted as a parliamentary pressure group, agreeing on the line which should be followed in the Assembly. From late 1792 the club was dominated by the left, and became intimately associated with the Terror. The term ‘jacobin’ was deployed by British loyalists as a slur on English radicals from early in 1793.
apple of discord: a golden apple, inscribed ‘to the most beautiful’, said to be thrown among the gods by Eris (the personification of strife) at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. The apple was awarded to Aphrodite by the judgement of Paris, who had promised he would have the most beautiful (mortal) wife. They carried off Helen, thus inaugurating the Trojan war.
hospital of incurables, as Chesterfield refers to it: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), who wrote in his character of Mr Pulteney that he was fixed in the House of Lords, that hospital of incurables. Miscellaneous Works, Letters to his Friend, Characters …, ed. J. Bradshaw (London, 1905), III, 1416.
the present Constitution of the French Republic: that is, the Constitution of Year III (1795), a liberal republic, designed to separate rather than concentrate powers, and including a property suffrage. The executive to be a Directory of five members, elected by the upper house from lists of names presented by the lower house.
Babeuf: François-Noel Babeuf, 1760–97. A radical critic of the Convention and the Directory, he organized a ‘Conspiracy of Equals’ and planned a coup d’état. Arrested in May 1796, he was executed the following May.
‘royalists’: in January 1797, André-Charles Brottier (1751–98) was arrested with Thomas-Laurent-Madelaine Duverne de Presle (1763–1844), for plotting against the Directory in the hope of establishing a constitutional monarchy.
the execrable reign of Terror: traditionally understood as the period from the purge of the Girondin faction through to the overthrow of Robespierre; that is, from c.5 September 1793 (when the Convention announced that terror was to be the order of the day), to 9 Thermidor II (27 July 1794, when Robespierre was executed).
present war: 20 April 1792 saw the opening of the Revolutionary Wars, with France declaring war on Austria. War was declared on Britain on 1 February 1793, and Britain reciprocated ten days later. France remained at war with Britain until the brief Peace of Amiens (1801–3).
Watson: Dr Richard Watson (1737–1816), a divine and scientist, who wrote An Apology for the Bible in a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Paine (1796).
inheritance … Instead … insolence … it would be: the deletions appear in the 1797 English edition, to which this Preface was added. There is no record of Paine’s original version.
Agrarian law … Monopoly: originally a Roman law for the division of conquered lands, which in the republican tradition came to mean a law which divided land in equal parts amongst the citizenry of a state. Agrarian Monopoly is Paine’s term for all property in land being held in the hands of a few.
Man, in a natural state … ten times the quantity of land: the argument is exactly that of Locke, Second Treatise, ch. 5, §37, lines 14–27, and §40.
condition ought not to be worse: Locke’s proviso of ‘good and enough for all’, ch. 5, §34, makes a similar point.
earth … the common property of the human race: see Locke, ch. 5, §26.
ground-rent: the rent paid to the owner of land which is let for building upon.
neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob nor Job … were owners of land: according to the Bible they were members of nomadic tribes.
contentions … about the use of a well: Gen. 26: 14–34.
emprunts: borrowing or loans.
My state of health: Paine nearly died from illness contracted in the Luxemburg and was unwell for more than a year after his release.
the English Minister Pitt … for the year 1796: December 1796 Parliamentary History, XXXII, col. 1256–64. Philip Foner dates this pamphlet to Jan—Feb 1796, which is in keeping with when Paine first wrote it. However, it seems clear that he revised it subsequently (taking Pitt’s speech into account) before it was published in 1797.
the wild project of setting up Bourbon Kings: that is: the son of Louis XVI, Louis XVII (Louis Charles, 1785–95, unproclaimed accession in 1793); and the brothers of Louis XVI: Louis XVII (Louis-Stanislav-Xavier, 1755–1824, accession 6 April 1814); and Charles X (Charles Philippe, comte d’Artois, 1757–1836, accession 16 September 1824).
Mr Pitt states the national capital … Belgia: Belgium was occupied by French forces in 1792–3 and 1794–5, and formally annexed to France in October 1795. It is not clear on which sources Paine is making his claims about the national incomes of other states.
the event of the last harvest … England: Britain suffered poor harvests and food rioting in 1795; France also suffered from virtual famine conditions in 1795, but dramatically improved production in 1796–8.
collaterally: that is, to the side, or indirectly.
escheats: in feudal law, where a fief reverted to a lord if a tenant died without heir; forfeited property more generally.
as odious as it is unjust … it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it: these two phrases were replaced by ***** in the English and American editions.
property, like vegetation, increases by off-sets: short, lateral off-shoots from the stem or root of a plant which could be used in propagation were known as off-sets.
what I have, which is not much, is in the United States: Paine’s only capital was a small farm in America, given him for his services to the American Revolution.
Hartley … in the English Parliament: Samuel Horsley, (1733–1806), Bishop of Rochester, Parliamentary History, XXXII, November 1795, cols. 258 and 267.