religion."

In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of Calais as their
representative in the National Assembly. So great was his popularity in
France, that he was selected about the same time by the people of no
less than four departments.

Upon taking his place in the assembly, he was appointed as one of a
committee to draft a constitution for France. Had the French people
taken the advice of Thomas Paine, there would have been no "reign of
terror." The streets of Paris would not have been filled with blood in
that reign of terror. There were killed in the City of Paris not less,
I think, than seventeen thousand people--and on one night, in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by assassination, over
sixty thousand souls--men, women, and children. The revolution would
have been the grandest success of the world. The truth is that Paine
was too conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution. They,
to a great extent, were carried away by hatred and a desire to destroy.
They had suffered so long, they had borne so much, that it was
impossible for them to be moderate in the hour of victory.

Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed by the
government, so degraded by the church, that they were not fit material
with which to construct a republic. Many of the leaders longed to
establish a beneficent and just government, but the people asked for
revenge. Paine was filled with a real love for mankind. His
philanthropy was boundless. He wished to destroy monarchy--not the
monarch. He voted for the destruction of tyranny, and against the death
of the tyrant. He wished to establish a government on a new basis--one
that would forget the past; one that would give privileges to none, and