The French constitution,--"a fabric of government which time could not
destroy and the latest posterity would admire." This was the boast of
the National Assembly, echoed by the English clubs. Even Mr. Fox, as
late as April, 1791, misled by his own magniloquence, spoke of it as
"the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been
erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country."
Paine heartily concurred with him. Such a constitution as this, he
said, is needed in England. There is no hope of it from Parliament.
Indeed, Parliament, if it desired reforms, could not make them; it has
not the legal right. A national convention, fresh from the people, is
indispensable. Then, _reculant pour mieux sauter_, Paine goes back to
the origin of man,--a journey often undertaken by the political
philosophers of that day. He describes his natural rights,--defines
society as a compact,--declares that no generation has a right to bind
its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish
people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)--hence, no family has
a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great
an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,--a place
supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew
bolder as he advanced: "If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept
up anywhere? and if a necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with?"
This is a pretty good specimen of one of Paine's dialectical methods.
Here is another: The French constitution says, that the right of war
and of peace is in the nation. "Where else should it reside, but in
those who are to pay the expense? In England, the right is said to
reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling."
Dropping the crown, he turned upon the aristocracy and the Church, and
tore them. He begged Lafayette's pardon for addressing him as Marquis.
Titles are but nicknames. Nobility and no ability are synonymous. "In
all the vocabulary of Adam, you will find no such thing as a duke or a