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XIII.

RIGHTS OF MAN.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

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