necessity of looking up first principles, and Paine was emphatically
the man of principles. A universal republic was the hope of the
majority, with a convention sitting at the centre of the civilized
world, watching untiringly over the rights of man and the peace of the
human race. Meantime, they elected a committee to make a new
constitution for France. Paine was, of course, selected. His colleagues
were Sieyes, Condorcet, Gensonne, Vergniaud, Petion, Brissot, Barere,
and Danton. Of these nine, Paine and Sieyes alone survived the Reign of
Terror. When, in due time, this constitution was ready to be submitted
to the Convention, no one could be found to listen to the reading of
the report. The revolution had outstripped the committee. Their labors
proved as useless as the Treatise on Education composed by Mr. Shandy
for the use of his son Tristram;--when it was finished, the child had
outgrown every chapter.

Thenceforward, we catch only occasional glimpses of Paine. In the days
of his glory, he lived in the fashionable Rue de Richelieu, holding
levees twice a week, to receive a public eager to gaze upon so great a
man. His name appears at the _fete civique_ held by English and Irish
republicans at White's Hotel. There he sat beside Santerre, the famous
brewer, and proposed, as a sentiment, "The approaching National
Convention of Great Britain and Ireland." At this dinner, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, then an officer in the British service, gave, "May the 'Ca
ira,' the 'Carmagnole,' and the 'Marseillaise' be the music of every
army, and soldier and citizen join in the chorus,"--a toast which cost
him his commission, perhaps his life. We read, too, that Paine was
struck in a _cafe_ by some loyal, hot-headed English captain, who took
that means of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of
Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow
inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was