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

So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted
in Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own
ideas, the reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the
earliest complete statement of republican principles. They were
pronounced to be the fundamental principles of the American Republic