his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property
qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use
of the _reductio-ad-absurdum_ illustration so often attributed to Dr.
Franklin:--"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule
that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the
right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the
origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?"

The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's
lesson to the insurgents of Vendemiaire, in front of the Church of St.
Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the
Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for
France.

He was no longer an object of consideration to Frenchmen, whose faith
in principles and in constitutions was nearly worn out. Poor and
infirm, indebted to Monroe's hospitality for a lodging, he remained
eighteen months under the roof of the Embassy, looking for an
opportunity to get back to America. Monroe wished to send him as bearer
of dispatches before the dissolution of the Convention. But a member of
that body could not leave France without a passport from it. To apply
for it would have announced his departure, and have given the English
government a chance to settle the old account they had against him.
After Monroe had returned to the United States, Paine engaged his
passage, and went to Havre to embark: but the appearance of a British
frigate off the port changed his plans. The sentence of outlawry, a
good joke four years before, had now become an unpleasant reality. So
he travelled back to Paris, full of hate against England, and relieved
his mind by writing a pamphlet on the "Decline and Fall of the English
System of Finance," a performance characteristic of the man,--sound,