infidelity."--"Say, rather, 'the Apostle of Freedom, whose heart is a
perpetual bleeding fountain of philanthropy.'" The friends of the
government carried Paine in effigy, with a pair of stays under his
arms, and burned the figure in the streets. The friends of humanity
added a new verse to the national hymn, and sung,--

"God save great Thomas Paine,
His Rights of Man proclaim
From pole to pole!"

This pamphlet, which excited Englishmen of seventy years ago to such a
pitch of angry and scornful contention, may be read safely now. Time
has taken the sting from it. It is written in that popular style which
was Paine's extraordinary gift. He practised the maxim of
Aristotle,--although probably he had never heard of it,--"Think like
the wise, and speak like the common people." Fox said of the "Rights of
Man," "It seems as clear and as simple as the first rule in
arithmetic." Therein lay its strength. Paine knew exactly what he
wanted to say, and exactly how to say it. His positions may be
wrong,--no doubt frequently are wrong,--but so clearly, keenly, and
above all so boldly stated, and backed by such shrewd arguments and
such apposite illustrations, that it is difficult not to yield to his
common-sense view of the question he is discussing. His plain and
perspicuous style is often elegant. He may sometimes be coarse and
rude, but it is in the thought rather than in the expression. It is
true, that, in the heat of conflict, he is apt to lose his temper and
break out into the bitter violence of his French associates; but even
the scientific and reverend Priestley "called names,"--apostate,
renegade, scoundrel. This rough energy added to his popularity with the
middle and the lower classes, and made him doubly distasteful to his