opponents. Paine, who thought all revolutions alike, and all good,
could not understand why Burke, who had upheld the Americans, should
exert his whole strength against the French, unless he were "a traitor
to human nature." Burke did Paine equal injustice. He thought him
unworthy of any refutation but the pillory. In public, he never
mentioned his name. But his opinion, and, perhaps, a little soreness of
feeling, may be seen in this extract from a letter to Sir William
Smith:--

"He [Paine] is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has
not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learned the
instrumental part of literature, without having ever made a previous
preparation of study for the use of it. Paine has nothing more than
what a man, whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences
and his total want of honor makes indifferent to political
consequences, can very easily write."

The radicals thought otherwise. They drank Mr. Burke's health with
"thanks to him for the discussion he had provoked." And the student of
history, who may read Paine's opening sketch of the French Revolution,
written to refute Burke's narrative of the same events, will not deny
Paine's complete success. He will even meet with sentences that Burke
might have composed. For instance: Paine ridicules, as Quixotic, the
fine passage in the "Reflections on the Decay of Chivalry"; and adds,
"Mr. Burke's mind is above the homely sorrows of the vulgar. He can
only feel for a king or for a queen. The countless victims of tyranny
have no place in his sympathies. He is not affected by the reality of
distress touching upon his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it.
He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird."