- ,

:.-y

THE

Political anft

WORKS

OF

THOMAS PAINE

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R, CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.

1819.

CONTENTS.

VOL. II.

Rights of Man, Part II.

Letter addressed to the Addressers.

Dissertation on the First Principles of Government.

Agrarian Justice opposed to Agrarian Law.

Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance.

Letter to George Washington.

Letters to the Citizens of the United States.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS AND ESSAYS.

Petition to the Boaud of Excise.

Case of the Officers of Excise.

To Dr. Goldsmith.

Introduction to the First Number of the Pennsylvania Magazine.

The Utility of Magazines evinced.

A Mathematical Question proposed.

A Description of a New Electrical Machine with Remarks.

Useful and Entertaining Hints.

New Anecdotes of Alexander the Great.

Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive.

Cupid and Hymen.

To a Friend in Philadelphia.

To Sir George Staunton, Bart.

To the Authors of the Republican-.

To the Abbe Syeyes.

Address and Declaration.

To Mr. Jordan

Preface to General Lee's Memoirs.

To Mr. Secretary Dundas, Letter the First.

To Lord Onslow, Letter First and Second.

To the Sheriff of the County of Sussex.

To Sir Archibald Macdouald, Attorney General, Letter the First.

To Mr. Secretary Dundas, Letter the Second.

To the People of France-

To the Attorney General on the Prosecution against the Stcond

Part of Rights of Man, Letter the Second. On the Propriety of bringing Louis XVI. to Trial. Speech on the Respite of Louis.

CONTENTS.

Reasons for preserving the Life of Louis Capet. S;i, , ch on the Constitution. To the People of France and the French Armies. To the Council of Five Hundred. To Forgetfulness. To Thomas Clio Rickman. Of the Construction of Iron Bridges. Address from Bordentown.

To the English People on the Invasion of England. To a Friend .

To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana. To a Friend.

To the Citizens of Pennsylvania, on the Proposal for calling a Con- vention.

To a Gentleman at New Y'ork.

Anecdote of Lord Malmsbury when Minister at Paris. The cause of the Yellow Fever, and the means of preventing it. On Louisiana, and Emissaries.

A Challenge to the Federalists to declare their Principles. Liberty of the Press.

The Emissary Cullen, otherwise Carpenter. Communication on Cullen. Federalists beginning to Reform. To a Friend to Peace.

Notifications respecting the Imposter Cullen. Remarks on the Political and Military Affairs of Europe. Of the English Navy. Remarks on Governor Lewis's Speech. Of Gun-boats. Of the comparative powers and ex pence of Ships of War, Gun-boats,

and Fortifications.

Remarks on a String of Resolutions offered by Mr. Hale. On the Emissary Cullen. To Morgan Lewis, Letter 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Anecdote of James Monroe and Rufus King. On the Question, Will there be War? Royal Pedigree. Rfply to Cheetham. Extract of a Letter to Dr. Michell. C.'hretham and his Tory Paper.

to Cheetham. The Emissary Cheetham. Memorial to Congress. To Congress. To the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

LETTER

ADDRESSED TO

THE ADDRESSERS

ON THE

Hate Proclamation.

BY THOMAS PAINE.

Uontion:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET,

1S19.

A

LETTER,

COULD I have commanded circumstances with a wish, 1 know not of any that would have more generally promoted the progress of knowledge, than the late Proclamation, and the numerous rotten Borough and Corporation Addresses thereon. They have not only served as advertisements, but they have excited a spirit of enquiry into principles of Government, and a desire to read the RIGHTS OF MAN, in places where that spirit and that work were before un- known.

The people of England, wearied and stunned with parties, and alternately deceived by each, had almost resigned the prerogative of thinking. Even curiosity had expired, and a universal languor had -spread itself over the land. The opposition was visibly no other than a contest for power, whilst the mass of the Nation stood torpidly by as the prize.

In this hopeless state of things, the First Part of RIGHTS OF MAN made its appearance. It had to combat with a strange mixture of prejudice and indifference ; it stood exposed to every species of newspaper abuse ; and besides this, it had to remove the obstructions which Mr. Burke's rude and outrageous attack on the French Revolution had artfully raised.

But how easily does even the most illiterate reader dis- tinguish the spontaneous sensation of the heart, from the laboured productions of the brain! Truth, whenever it can fully appear, is a thing so naturally familiar to the mind, that an acquaintance commences at first sight. No artificial light, yet discovered, can display all the properties of day- light; so neither can the best invented fiction fill the mind with every conviction which truth begets.

A 2

4 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

To overthrow Mr. Burke's fallacious work was scarcely the operation of a day. Even the phalanx of Placemen and Pensioners, who had given the tone to the multitude, by clamouring forth his political fame, became suddenly silent; and the final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

It seldom happens, that the mind rests satisfied with the simple detection of error or imposition. — Once put into mo- tion, that motion soon becomes accelerated. Where it had intended to stop, it discovers new reasons to proceed, and renews and continues the pursuit far beyond the limits it first prescribed to itself. — Thus it has happened to the people of England. From a detection of Mr. Burke's inco- herent rhapsodies, and distorted facts, they began an en- quiry into first principles of Government, whilst himself, like an object left far behind, became invisible and forgotten.

Much as the First Part of RIGHTS OF MAN impressed at its first appearance, the progressive mind soon discovered that it did not go far enough. It detected errors ; it ex- posed absurdities; it shook the fabric of political supersti- tion; it generated new ideas; but it did not produce a regular system of principles in the room of those which it displaced. And, if I may guess at the mind of the Govern- ment-party, they beheld it as an unexpected gale that would soon blow over, and they forbore, like sailors in threatening weather, to whistle, lest they should increase the wind. Every thing, on their part, was profound silence.

When the Second Part of " RIGHTS OF MAN, combining Principle and Practice" was preparing to appear, they affected for a while, to act with the same policy as before; but finding their silence had no more influence in stilling the progress of the work, than it would have in stopping the progress of time, they changed their plan, and affected to treat it with clamorous contempt. The Speech-making Placenen and Pensioners, and Place-expectants, in both Houses of Parliament, the Outs as well as the Ins, repre- sented it as a silly, insignificant performance; as a work incapable of producing any effect; as something, which they were sure the good sense of the people would either despise or indignantly spurn; but such was the overstrained awkwardness with which they harangued and encouraged each other, that m the very act of declaring their confidence, they betrayed their fears.

As most of the rotten Borough Addressers are obscured in holes and corners throughout the country, and to whom a

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 5

newspaper arrives as rarely as an almanack, they most pro- bably have not bad tbe opportunity of knowing how this part of the farce (the original prelude to all the Addresses) has been acted. For their information, I will suspend awhile the more serious purpose of my Letter, and entertain them with two or three Speeches in the last Session of Par- liament, which will serve them for politics till Parliament meets again.

You must know, Gentlemen, that the Second Part of RIGHTS OF MAN (the book against which you have been presenting Addresses, though, it is most probable, that many of you did riot know it) was to have come out precisely at the time that Parliament last met. It happened not to be published till a lew days after. But as it was very well known that the book would shortly appear, the Parliamen- tary Orators entered into a very cordial coalition to cry the book down, and they began their attack by crying up the blessings of the Constitution.

Had it been youT fate to have been there, you could not but have been moved at the heart-arid-pocket-felt congratula- tions that passed between all the parties on this subject of blessings; for the Outs enjoy places, and pensions, and sine- cures, as well as the Ins, and are as devoutly attached to the firm of the house.

One of the most conspicuous of this motley groupe is the Clerk of the Court of King's Bench, who calls himself Lord Stormont. He is also called Justice-General of Scotland, and Keeper of Scoon (an opposition man) and he draws from the public for these nominal offices, not less, as I am informed, than six thousand pounds a year, and he is, most probably, at the trouble of counting the money, and signing a receipt, to shew, perhaps, that he is qualified to be Clerk, as well as Justice. He spoke as follows:^

" THAT we shall all be unanimous, in expressing our attachment to the Constitution of these realms, / am con- fident. It is a subject upon which there can be no di- vided opinion in this House. I do not pretend to be deep read in the knowledge of the Constitution, but / take upon me to say, that from the extent of my knowledge (for I have so many thousands a year for nothing) it appears to me, that from the period of the Revolution, for it was by no means

See his Speech in the Morning Chronicle of Feb. 1.

6 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

created then, it has been, both in theory and practice, the wisest system that ever was formed. I never was (he means he never was till now) a dealer in political cant. My life has not been occupied in that way, but the speculations of late years seem to have taken a turn, for which I cannot account. When I came into public life, the political pamphlets of the time, however they might be charged with the heat and violence of parties, were agreed in extolling the radical beauties of the Constitution itself. I remember (he means he has forgotten) a most captivating eulogium on its charms by Lord Bolingbroke, where he recommends his readers to contemplate it in all its aspects, with the assu- rance that it would be found more estimable the more it was seen. I do not recollect his precise words, but I wish that men who write upon these subjects would take this for their model, instead of the political pamphlets, which, 1 am told, are now in circulation, (such, I suppose, as Rights of Alan] — pamphlets which I have not read, and whose pur- port I know only by report, (he means, perhaps, by the noise they make.) This, however, I am sure, that pamphlets tending to unsettle the public reverence for the Constitution, will have very little influence. They can do very little harm — for (by the bye, he is no dealer in political cant] the English are a sober, thinking people, and are more intelligent, more solid, more steady in their opinions, than any people I ever had the fortune to see. (This is pretty well laid on, though, for a new beginner). But if there should ever come a time when the propagation of those doctrines should agitate the public mind, I am sure, for every one of your Lordships, that no attack will be made on the Constitution, from which it is truly said that we derive all our prosperity, without raising every one of your Lordships to its support. It will then be found that there is no difference among us, but that we are all determined to stand or fall together, in defence of the inestimable system" — of places and pen- sions.

After Stormont, on the opposition side, sat down, up rose another noble Lord! on the ministerial side, Grenville. This man ought to be as strong in the back as a mule, or the sire of a mule, or it would crack with the weight of places and offices. He rose, however, without feeling any incumbrance, full master of his weight! and thus said this noble Lord to father noble Lord!

" The patriotic and manly manner in which the noble Lord has declared his sentiments on the subject of the Con-

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 7

stitution, demands my cordial approbation. The noble Vis- count has proved, that however we may differ on particular measures, amidst all the jars and dissonance of parties, we are unanimous in principle. There is a perfect and entire consent (between us) in the love and maintenance of the Constitution as happily subsisting. It must undoubtedly give your Lordships concern, to find, that the time is come! (heigh ho!) when there is propriety in these expressions of regard TO (o! o! o!) THE CONSTITUTION. And that there are men (con-found — their — po-li-tics) who disseminate doc- trines hostile to the genuine spirit of our well-balanced system (it is certainly well-balanced when both sides hold places and pensions at once). I agree with the noble Viscount that they have not (I hope) much success. 1 am convinced that there is no danger to be apprehended from their attempt* : but it is truly important and consolatory (to us placemen, I suppose) to know, that if there should ever arise a serious alarm, there is but owe spirit, owe se7ise, (and that sense I presume is not common sense) and one determination in this House;" — which undoubtedly is to hold all their places and pensions as long as they can.

Both these speeches (excepting the parts enclosed in parentheses, which are added for the purpose oi illustration) are copied verbatim from the Morning Chronicle of the 1st of February last; and when the situation of the speakers is considered, the one in the opposition, and the other in the ministry, and both of them living at the public expence, by sinecure, or nominal places and offices, it required a very unblushing front to be able to deliver them. Can those men seriously suppose any Nation to be so completely blind as not to see through them? Can Stormont imagine that the political cant, with which he has larded his ha- rangue, will conceal the craft? Does he not know that there never was a cover large enough to hide itself* Or can Grenville believe, that his credit with the public increases with his avarice for places?

But, if these orators will accept a service from me, in return for the allusions they have made to the Rights of Man, I will make a speech for either of them to deliver on the excellence of the Constitution, that shall be as much to the purpose as what they have spoken, or as Bolingbroke'1 s captivating encomium. Here it is.

" THAT we shall all be unanimous in expressing our attachment to the Constitution, I am confident. It is, my Lords, incomprehensibly good: but the great wonder of

8 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

all is the wisdom ; for it is, my Lords, the wisest system that ever was formed.

" With respect to us noble Lords, though the world does not know it, it is very well known to us, that we have more wisdom than we know what to do with ; and what is still better, my Lords, we have it all in stock. I defy your Lordships to prove, that a tittie of it has been used as yet ; and if we do but go on, my Lords, with the frugality we have hitherto done, we shall leave to our heirs and successors, when we go out of the world, the whole stock of wisdom, untouched, that we brought in ; and there is no doubt but they will follow our example. This, my Lords, is one of the blessed effects of the hereditary system ; for we can never be without wisdom so long as we keep it by us, and do not use it.

" But, my Lords, as all this wisdom is hereditary pro- perty, for the sole benefit of us and our heirs, and as it is necessary that the people should know where to get a supply for their own use, the excellence of our Constitu- tion has provided a King for this very purpose, and for no other. But, my Lords, I perceive a defect to which the Constitution is subject, and which I propose to remedy by bringing a bill into Parliament for that purpose.

" The Constitution, my Lords, out of delicacy, I pre- sume, has left it as a matter of choice to a King whether he will be wise or not. It has not, I mean, my Lords, insisted upon it as a Constitutional point, which, 1 conceive, it ought to have done ; for I pledge myself to your Lordships to prove, and that with true patriotic boldness, that he has no choice in tJie matter. The bill, my Lords, that I shall bring in, will be to declare, that the Constitution, according to the true intent and meaning thereof, does not invest the King with this choice; our ancestors were too wise to do that ; and, in order to prevent any doubts that might other- wise arise, I shall prepare, my Lords, an enacting clause, to fix the wisdom of Kings, by act of Parliament ; and then, my Lords, our Constitution will be the wonder of the world !

" Wisdom, my Lords, is the one thing needful ; but that there may be no mistake in this matter, and that we may proceed consistently with the true wisdom of the Constitution, 1 shall propose a certain criterion, whereby inexact quantity uf wisdom necessary for a King may be known. [Here should be a cry of Hear him! Hear him !]

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION.

" It is recorded, my Lords, in the Statutes at Large of the Jews, ' a book, my Lords, which I have not read, and whose purport I know only by report,' but perhaps the bench of Bishops can recollect something about it, that Saul gave the most convincing proofs of royal wisdom before he was made a King, for he was sent to seek his father's asses, and he could notjind them.

" Here, my Lords, we have, most happily for us, a case in point: this precedent ought to be established by act of Parliament; and every King, before he be crowned, should be sent to seek his father's asses, and if he cannot find them, he shall be declared wise enough to be King, according to the true meaning of our excellent Constitution. All, there- fore, my Lords, that will be necessary to be done, by the enacting clause that I shall bring in, will be to invest the King before-hand with the quantity of wisdom necessary for this purpose, lest he should happen not to possess it: and this, my Lords, we can do without making use of any of our own.

" We further read, my Lords, in the said Statutes at Large of the Jews, that Samuel, who certainly was as mad as any Man-of-Rights-Man iiow-a-days, (hear him! hear him!} was highly displeased, and even exasperated, at the proposal of the Jews to have a King, and he warned them against it with all that assurance and impudence of which he was master. I have been, my Lords, at the trouble of going all the way to Paternoster Row, to procure an extract from the printed copy. I was told that 1 should meet with it there, or in Amen Corner, for I was then going, my Lords, to rummage for it among the curiosities of the Antiquarian Society. I will read the extract to your Lordships, to shew how little Samuel knew of the matter.

" The extract, my Lords, is from 1 Samuel, chap. 8.

' And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the ' people, that asked of him a King.

4 And he said, this will be the manner of the King that

* shall reign over you : he will take your sons, and appoint 4 them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen ;

* and some shall run before his chariots.

' And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and ' captains over fifties, and will set them to ear his ground,

* and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of ' war and instruments of his chariots.

' And he will take your daughters to be confectiouaries,

* and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

10 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

* And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and ' your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to 4 his servants.

' And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your 1 vineyards, and give to his officers and his servants.

' And he will take your men-servants, and your maid- ' servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, * and put them to his work.

< And he will take the tenth of your sheep, and you shall ' be his servants.

c And ye shall cry out in that day, because of your King, 6 which ye shall have chosen you ; and the Lord will not 4 hear you on that day.'

" Now, my Lords, what can we think of this man Samuel? Is there a word of truth, or any thing like truth, in all that he has said? He pretended to be a prophet, or a wise man, but has not the event proved him to be a fool, or an incendiary? Look around, my Lords, and see if any thing has happened that he pretended to foretel? Has not the most profound peace reigned throughout the world ever since Kings were in fashion? Are not, for example, the present Kings of Europe the most peaceable of mankind, and the Empress of Russia the very milk of human kindness? It would not be worth having Kings, my Lords, if it w^ere not that they never go to war.

" If we look at home, my Lords, do we not see the game things here as are seen every where else? Are our young men taken to be horsemen, or foot soldiers, any more than in Germany or in Prussia, or in Hanover or in Hesse? Are not our sailors as safe at land as at sea? Are they ever dragged from their homes, like oxen to the slaughter-house, to serve on board ships of war? When they return from the perils of a long voyage with the merchandize of distant countries, does not every man sit down under his own vine and his own fig-tree, in perfect security? Is the tenth of our seed taken by tax-gatherers, or is any part of it given to the King's servants? In short, itt not every thing as free from taxes as the light of Heaven ?

" Ah! my Lords, do we not see the blessed effect of having Kings in every thing we look at? Is not the G. R. or the broad R. stamped upon every thing? Even the shoes, the gloves, and the hats that we wear, are enriched with the impression, and all our candles blaze a burnt-offering.

" Besides'these blessings, my Lords, that cover us from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, do we not see

ON THE LATH PROCLAMATION.

11

a race of youths growing np to be Kings, who are the very paragons of virtue? There is not one of them, my Lords, but might be trusted with untold gold, as safely as the other. Are they not ' more sober, more intelligent, more solid, more steady,' and withal, more learned, more wise, more every thing, than any youths we ' sver had the fortune to see?' Ah! my Lords, they are a hopeful family !

" The blessed prospect of succession, which the Nation has at this moment before its eyes, is a most undeniable proof of the excellence of our Constitution, and of the blessed hereditary system; for nothing, my Lords, but a Constitution founded on the truest and purest wisdom, could admit such heaven-born arid heaven-taught characters into

the Government. Permit me now, my Lords, to recal

your attention to the libellous chapter I have just read about Kings. I mention this, my Lords, because it is my inten- tion to move for a bill to be brought into the Parliament to expunge that chapter from the Bible; and that the Lord Chancellor, with the assistance of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Clarence, be requested to write a chapter in the room of it; and that Mr. Burke do see that it be truly canonical, and faithfully inserted."—

FINIS.

If the Clerk of the Court of King's Bench should choose to be the orator of this luminous encomium on the Consti- tution, I hope he will get it well by heart before he attempts to deliver it, and not have to apologize to Parliament, as he did in the case of Bolingbroke's encomium, for forgetting his lesson, and with this admonition I leave him.

Having thus informed the Addressers of what passed at the meeting of Parliament, I return to take up the subject at the part where I broke off, in order to introduce the pre- ceding speeches.

I was then stating, that the first policy of the Government party was silence, and the next, clamorous contempt; but as people generally choose to read and judge for themselves, the work still went on, and the affectation of contempt, like the silence that preceded it, passed for nothing.

Thus foiled in their second scheme, their evil genius, like a will-with-a-wisp, led them to a third; when all at once, as if it had been unfolded to them by a fortune-teller, or Mr. Dundas had discovered it by second sight, this once harm- less, insignificant book, without undergoing the alteration of a single letter, became a most wicked and dangerous Libel. The whole Cabinet, like a ship's crew, became alarmed; all

12 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

hands were piped upon deck, as if a conspiracy of elements was forming around them, and out came the Proclamation and the Prosecution, and Addresses supplied the place of prayers.

Ye silly swains, thought I to myself, why do you torment yourselves thus? The RIGHTS OF MAN is a book'calmly and rationally written ; why then are you so disturbed ? Did you see how little, or how suspicious such conduct makes you appear, even cunning alone, had you no other faculty, would hush you into prudence. The plans, principles, arid arguments, contained in that work, are placed before the eyes of the Nation, and of the world, in a fair, open, and manly manner, and nothing more is necessary than to re- fute them. Do this, and the whole is done; but if ye can- not, so neither can ye suppress the reading, nor convict the Author, for that Law, in the opinion of all good men, would convict itself, that should condemn what cannot be refuted.

Having now shewn the Addressers the several stages of the business, prior to their being called upon, like Caesar in the Tyber, crying to Cassius, " Help, Cassius, or I sink /" I next come to remark on the policy of the Government in promoting Addresses; on the consequences naturally result- ing therefrom, and on the conduct of the persons concerned.

With respect to the policy, it evidently carries writh it every mark and feature of disguised fear. And it will hereafter be placed in the history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by an individual, un- connected with any sect or party, and not seeking to make any, and almost a stranger in the land, that should com- pletely frighten a whole Government, and that in the midst of its most triumphant security. Such a circumstance can- riot fail to prove, that either the pamphlet has irresistible powers, or the Government very extraordinary defects, or both. The Nation exhibits no signs of fear at the RIGHTS OF MAN ; why then should the Government, unless the interest of the two are really opposite to each other, and the secret is beginning to be known? That there are two distinct classes of men in the Nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes, is evident at first sight; and when taxation is carried to excess, it cannot fail to disunite those two, and something of this kind is now beginning to appear.

It is also curious to observe, amidst all the fume and bustle about Proclamations and Addresses, kept up by a few noisy and interested men, how little the mass of the Nation seem to

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 13

care about either. They appear to me, by the indifference they shew, not to believe a word that the Proclamation con- tains ; and as to the Addresses, they travel to London with the silence of a funeral, and having announced their arrival in the Gazette, are deposited with the ashes of their prede- cessors, and Mr. Dundas writes their hie jacet.

One of the best effects which the/ Proclamation, and its echo the Addresses have had, has been that of exciting and spreading curiosity ; and it requires only a single reflection to discover, that the object of all curiosity is knowledge. When the mass of the Nation saw that Placemen, Pensioners, and Borough-mongers, were the persons that stood forward to promote Addresses, it could not fail to create suspicions that the public good was not their object ; that the character of the books, or wrritings, to which such persons obscurely al- luded, not daring to mention them, was directly contrary to what they described them to be, and that it was necessary that every man, for his own satisfaction, should exercise his proper right, and read and judge for himself.

But how will the persons who have been induced to read the RIGHTS OF MAN, by the clamour that has been raised against it, be surprised to find, that instead of a wicked, in- flammatory work; instead of a licentious and profligate per- formance, it abounds with principles of Government that are incontrovertible — with arguments which every reader will feel are unanswerable — with plans for the increase of com- merce and manufactures — for the extinction of war — for the .education of the children of the poor — for the comfortable support of the aged and decayed persons of both sexes — for the relief of the army and navy; and, in short, for the promo- tion of every thing that can benefit the moral, civil, and po- litical condition of Man.

Why, then, some calm observer will ask, why is the work prosecuted, if these be the goodly matters it contains? 1 will tell thee, friend, — it contains, also, a plan for the re- duction of Taxes, for lessening the immense expences of Go- vernment, for abolishing Sinecure Places and Pensions ; and it proposes applying the redundant taxes that shall be saved by these reforms, to the purposes mentioned in the former paragraph, instead of applying them to the support of idle and profligate Placemen and Pensioners.

Is it, then, any wonder that Placemen and Pensioners, and the whole train of Court expectants, should become the promoters of Addresses, Proclamations, and Prosecutions? Or is it any wonder that Corporations and rotten Boroughs,

14 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

which are attacked and exposed, both in the First and Se^ cond Part of RIGHTS OF MAN, as unjust monopolies and pub- lic nuisances, should join in the cavalcade? Yet these are the sources from which Addresses have sprung-. Had not such persons come forward to oppose the RIGHTS OF MAN, I should have doubted the efficacy of my own writings ; but those opposers have now proved to me, that the blow was well directed, and they have done it justice by confessing the smart.

The principal deception in this business of Addresses has been, that the promoters of them have not come forward in their proper characters They have assumed to pass them- selves upon the Public as a part of the Public, bearing a share of the burthen of Taxes, and acting for the public; good ; whereas, they are in general that part of it that adds to the public burthen, by living on the produce of the pub- lic taxes. They are to the public, what the locusts are to the tree : the burthen would be less, and the prosperity would be greater, if they were shaken off.

" I do not come here," said ONSLOW, at the Surrey Coun- ty meeting," as Lord Lieutenant and Custus Rotulorum of " the county, but I come here as a plain country gentle- man." The fact is, that he came there as what he was, and as no other, and, consequently, he came as one of the beings I have been describing. If it be the character of a gentle- man to be fed by the public, as a pauper is by the parish, Onslow has a fair claim to the title ; and the same de- scription will suit the Duke of Richmond, who led the Ad- dress at the Sussex meeting. — He also may set up for a gen- tleman.

As to the meeting in the next adjoining county, (Kent) it was a scene of disgrace. About two houndred persons met, when a small part of them drew privately away from the rest, and voted an Address ; the consequence of which was, that they got together by the ears, and produced a riot, in the very act of producing an Address to prevent Riots.

That the Proclamation and the Addresses have failed of their intended effect, may be collected from the silence which the Government party itself observes. The number of Addresses has been weekly retailed in the Gazette; but the number of Addressers has been concealed. Several of the Addresses have been voted by not more than ten or twelve persons ; and a considerable number of them by not more than thirty. The whole number of Addresses present- ed at the time of writing this letter, is three hundred and

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 15

twenty, (rotten Boroughs and Corporations included,) and even admitting, on an average, one hundred Addressers to each Address, the whole number of Addressers would be but thirty-two thousand, and nearly three months have been taken up in procuring this number. That the success of the Proclamation has been less than the success of the Work it was intended to discourage, is a matter within my own knowledge; for a greater number of the cheap edition of the First and Second Part of RIGHTS OF MAN has been sold in the space of only one month, than the whole number of Addressers (admitting them to be thirty-two thousand) have amounted to in three months.

It is a dangerous attempt in any Government to say to a Nation, " thou shalt not read" This is now done in Spain, and was formerly done under the old Government of France ; but it served to procure the downfai of the latter, and is sub- verting that of the former ; and it will have the same ten- dency in all countries; because thought, by some means or other, is got abroad in the world, arid cannot be restrained, though reading may.

If RIGHTS OF MAN were a book that deserved the vile de- scription which the promoters of the Addressers have given of it, why did not these men prove their charge, and satisfy the people, by producing it, and reading it publicly ? This most certainly ought to have been done, and would also have been done, had they believed it would have answered their purpose. But the fact is, that the book contains truths, which those time-servers dreaded to hear, and dreaded that the people should know ; and it is now following up the Addresses in every part of the Nation, and convicting them of falsehoods.

Among the unwarrantable proceedings to which the Pro- clamation has given rise, the meetings of the Justices in geveral of the towns and counties ought to be noticed. Those men have assumed to re-act the farce of General Warrants, and to suppress, by their own authority, what- ever publications they please. This is an attempt at power, -equalled only by the conduct of the minor despots of the most despotic Governments in Europe, and yet these Jus- tices affect to call England a free Country. But even this, perhaps, like the scheme for garrisoning the country, by building military barracks, is necessary to awaken the coun- try to a sense of its Rights, and, as such, it will have a good effect.

Another part of the conduct of such Justices has been that

16 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

of threatening to take away the licences from taverns and public-houses, where the inhabitants of the neighbourhood associated to read and discuss the principles of Government, and to inform each other thereon. This, again, is similar to what is doing in Spain and Russia ; and the reflection which it cannot fail to suggest is, that the principles and conduct of any Government must be bad, when that Government dreads and startles at discussion, and seeks security by a prevention of knowledge.

If the Government, or the Constitution, or by whatever name it be called, be that miracle of perfection which the Proclamation and the Addresses have trumpeted it forth to be, it ought to have defied discussion and investigation, instead of dreading it. Whereas, every attempt it makes, either by Proclamation, Prosecution, or Address, to suppress investi- gation, is a confession that it feels itself unable to bear it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry. All the numerous pamphlets, and all the newspaper false- hood and abuse, that have been published against the " RIGHTS OF MAN," have fallen before it like pointless ar- rows; and, in like manner, would any work have fallen before the Constitution, had the Constitution, as it is called, been founded on as good political principles as those on which the RIGHTS OF MAN is written.

It is a good Constitution for Courtiers, Placemen, Pensi- oners, Borough-holders, and the leaders of Parties, and these are the men that have been the active leaders of Addresses ; but it is a bad Constitution for at least ninety-nine parts of the Nation out of an hundred, and this truth is every day making its way.

It is bad, first, because it entails upon the Nation the unnecessary expence of supporting three forms and systems of Government at once, namely, the monarchical, the aris- tocratical, and the democratical.

Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a dis- cordant composition by any other means than perpetual corruption ; and therefore the corruption so loudly and so universally complained of, is no other than the natural con- sequence of such an unnatural compound of Governments ; and in this consists that excellence which the numerous herd of Placemen and Pensioners so loudly extol, and which, at the same time, occasions that enormous load of taxes under which the rest of the Nation groans.

Among the mass of National delusions calculated to amuse and impose upon the multitude, the standing one

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 17

has been, that of flattering them into taxes, by calling the Government, (or as they please to express it, the English Constitution) " the ejivy and the admiration of the world." Scarcely an address has been voted in which some of the speakers have not uttered this hackneyed, nonsensical falsehood.

Two Revolutions have taken place, those of America and France ; and both of them have rejected the unnatural compounded system of the English Government. America has declared against all hereditary Government, and esta- blished the representative system of Government only. France has entirely rejected the aristocratical part, and is now discovering the absurdities of the monarchical, and is approaching fast to the representative system. On what ground, then, do those men continue a declaration, respect- ing what they call the envy and admiration of other Nations , which the voluntary practice of such Nations, as have had the opportunity of establishing Government, contradicts and falsifies? Will such men never confine themselves to truth? Will they be for ever the deceivers of the people?

But I will go further, and shew, that, were Government now to begin in England, the people could not be brought to establish the same system they now submit to.

In speaking upon this subject, or on any other, on the pure ground of principle, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and hoary-headed error loses its effect. The rea- sonableness and propriety of things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage ; and in this point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary sanction of a thousand ages. Principles have no connection with time, nor characters with names.

To say that the Government of this country is composed of King, Lords, and Commons, is the mere phraseology of custom. It is composed of men ; and whoever the men be, to whom the Government of any country is entrusted, they ought to be the best, and wisest that can be found, and if they are not so, they are not fit for the station. A man derives no more excellence from the change of a name, or calling him King, or calling him Lord, than I should do by changing my name from Thomas to George, or from Paine to Guelph. I should not be a whit the more able to write a book because my name were altered ; neither would any man, now called a King or a Lord, have a whit the more sense than he no»w has, were he to call himself Thomas Paine*

B

18 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

As to the word " Commons," applied as it is in England, it is a term of degradation and reproach, and ought to be abolished. It is a term unknown in free countries.

But to the point. — Let us suppose that Government was now to begin in England, and that the plan of Government, offered to the Nation for its approbation or rejection, con- sisted of the following parts:

First — That some one individual should be taken from all the rest of the Nation, and to whom all the rest should swear obedience, and never be permitted to sit down in his presence, and that they should give to him one million sterling a year. — That the Nation should never after have power or authority to make laws but with his express con- sent, and that his sons, and his sons' sons, wrhether wise or foolish, good men or bad, fit or unfit, should have the same power, and also the same money annually paid to them for ever.

Secondly — That there should be two houses of Legislators to assist in making laws, one of which should, in the first instance, be entirely appointed by the aforesaid person, and that their sons, and their sons' sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or bad, fit or unfit, should for ever after be here- ditary Legislators.

Thirdly — That the other house should be chosen in the same manner as the house now called the House of Com- mons, is chosen, and should be subject to the controul of the two aforesaid hereditary Powers in all things.

It would be impossible to cram such a farrago of impo- sition and absurdity down the throat of this, or any other Nation, that was capable of reasoning upon its rights and its interest.

They would ask, in the first place, on what ground of right, or on what principle, such irrational and preposterous distinctions could, or ought to be made; and what preten- sions any man could have, or what services he could render, to entitle him to a mil] ion a year? They would go farther, and revolt at the idea of consigning their children, and their children's children, to the domination of persons here- after to be born, who might, for any thing they could fore- see, turn out to be knaves or fools ; and they would finally discover, that the project of hereditary Governors and Legislators, was a treasonable usurpation over the rights of posterity. Not only the calm dictates of reason, and the force of natural affection, but the integrity of manly pride would impel men to spurn such proposals.

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 19

From the grosser absurdities of such a scheme, they would extend their examination to the practical defects. — They would soon see that it would end in tyranny accom- plished by fraud; that in the operation of it, it would be two to one against them, because the two parts that were to be made hereditary, would form a common interest, and stick to each other; and that themselves, and their repre- sentatives, would become no better tban hewers of wood and drawers of water, for the other parts of the Government.—- Yet call one of those powers King, the other Lords, and the third the Commons, and it gives the model of what is called the English Government.

I have asserted, and have shewn, both in the First and Second Part of RIGHTS OF MAN, that there is not such a thing as an English Constitution, and that the people have yet a Constitution to form. A Constitution is a thing ante- cedent to a Government ; it is the act of the people creating a Government, and giving it powers, and defining the limits and exercise of the powers so given. But whenever did the people of England, acting in their original constituent cha- racter, by a delegation elected for that express purpose, declare and say " We the people of this land do constitute and appoint this to be our system and form of Government?" The Government has assumed to constitute itself, but it never was constituted by the people, in whom alone the right of constituting resides.

I will here recite the preamble to the Federal Constitution

of the United States of America. I have shewn in the

Second Part of RIGHTS OF MAN, the manner by which the

Constitution was formed and after wards ratified; and to which

I refer the reader. The preamble is in the following words:

" WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to

" form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure

" domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence,

" promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of

" liberty, to ourselves and our posterity, DO ORDAIN

" AND ESTABLISH this CONSTITUTION for the United

" States of America."

Then follow the several articles which appoint the man- ner in which the several component parts of the Government, legislative and executive, shall be elected, and the period of their duration, and the powers they shall have: also, the manner by which future additions, alterations, or amend- ments, shall be made to the Constitution. Consequently, every improvement that can be made in the science of Go-

20 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

vernment, follows in that country as a matter of order. It is only in Governments, founded on assumption, and false principles, that reasoning upon, and investigating systems and principles of Government, and • shewing their several excellencies and defects, are termed libellous and seditious. Those terms were made part of the charge brought against Locke, Hampden, and Sydney, and will continue to be brought against all good men, so long as bad Governments shall continue.

The Government of this country has been ostentatiously giving challenges for more than an hundred years past, upon what it, called its own excellence and perfection. Scarcely a King's Speech or a Parliamentary Speech has been uttered, in which this glove has not been thrown, till the world has been insulted with their challenges. But it now appears that all this was vapour and vain boasting, or that it was intended to conceal abuses and defects, and hush the people into taxes. I have taken the challenge up, and in behalf of the public have shewn, in a fair, open, and candid manner, both the radical and practical defects of the system ; when, lo! those champions of the Civil List have fled away, and sent the Attorney-General to deny the challenge, by turning the acceptance of it into an attack, and defending their Places and Pensions by a prosecution.

I will here drop part of the subject, and state a few particulars respecting the prosecution now pending, by which the Addressers will see that they have been used as tools to the prosecuting party and their dependants. The case is as follows:

The original edition of the First and Second Part of RIGHTS OF MAN, having been expensively printed (in the modern style of printing pamphlets, that they might be bound up with Mr. Burke's Reflections on the French Re- volution,) the high price precluded the generality of people from purchasing; and many applications were made to me from various parts of the country to print the work in a cheaper manner. The people of Sheffield requested leave t© print two thousand copies for themselves, with which request I immediately complied. The same request came to me from Rotherham, from Leicester, from Chester, from several towns in Scotland; arid Mr. James Mackintosh, Au- thor of Vindicice Gallicce, brought me a request from War- wickshire, for leave to print ten thousand copies in that county. I had already sent a cheap edition to Scotland ; and finding the applications increase, I concluded that the

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 21

best method of complying therewith, would be to print a very numerous edition, in London, under my own direction, by which means the work would be more perfect, and the price be reduced lower than it could be by printing small editions in the country of only a few thousands each.

The cheap edition of the First Part, was begun about the middle of last April, and from that moment, and not before, I expected a prosecution, and the event has proved that 1 was not mistaken. I had then occasion to write to Mr. Thomas Walker, of Manchester, and after informing him of my intention of giving up the work for the purpose of gene- ral information, I informed him of what I apprehended would be the consequence; that while the work was at a price that precluded an extensive circulation, the Govern- ment-party, not able to controvert the plans, arguments, and principles it contained, had chosen to remain silent; but that I expected they would make an attempt to deprive the mass of the Nation, and especially the poor, of the right of reading, by the pretence of prosecuting either the Author, or the Publisher, or both. They chose to begin with the Publisher.

Nearly a month, however, passed, before I had any infor- mation given me of their intentions. I was then at Brom- ley, in Kent, upon which I came immediately to town, (May 14,) and went to Mr. Jordan, the publisher of the original edition. He had, that evening, been served with a summons, to appear at the Court of King's Bench on the Monday following, but for what purpose was not stated. Supposing it to be on account of the work, I appointed a meeting with him on the next morning, which was accord- ingly had, when I provided an attorney, and took the ex- pence of the defence on myself. But finding- afterwards that he absented himself from the attorney employed, and employed another, and that he had been closeted with the Solicitors of the Treasury, I left him to follow his own choice, arid he chose to plead Guilty. This he might do if he pleased ; and I make no objection against him for it. I believe that his idea by the word Guilty, was no other than declaring himself to be the Publisher, without any regard to the merits or demerits of the work ; for were it to be con- strued otherwise, it would amount to the absurdity of con- verting a Publisher into a Jury, and his confession into a verdict upon the work itself.' This would be the highest possible refinement upon packing of Juries.

On the 21st of May, they commenced their prosecution

22 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

against me, as the Author, by leaving a summons at my lodgings in town, to appear at the Court of King's Bench on the 8th of June following; and, on the same day, (May 2 1 ,) they issued also their Proclamation. Thus the Court of St. James's, and the Court of King's Bench, were playing into each other's hands at the same instant of time, and the farce of Addresses brought up the rear; and this mode of proceeding is called by the prostituted name of Law. Such a thundering rapidity, after a ministerial dormancy of al- most eighteen months, can be attributed to no other cause than their having gained infermation of the forwardness of the cheap edition, and the dread they felt at the progressive increase of political knowledge.

I was strongly advised by several gentlemen, as well those in the practice of the Law, as others, to prefer a bill of indictment against the Publisher of the Proclamation, as a publication tending to influence, or rather to dictate the verdict of a Jury on the issue of a matter then pending; but it appeared to me much better to avail myself of the oppor- tunity which such a precedent justified me in using, by meeting the Proclamation and the Addresses on their own ground, and publicly defending the Work which had been thus unwarrantably attacked and traduced. — And conscious as t now am, that the Work entitled RIGHTS OF MAN, so far from being, as has been maliciously or erroneously repre- sented, a false,, wicked, and seditious Libel, is a Work abounding with unanswerable truths, with principles of the purest morality and benevolence, and with arguments not to be controverted. Conscious, I say, of these things, and having no object in view but the happiness of mankind, I have now put the matter to the best proof in my power, by giving to the public a cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of that Work. Let every man read and judge for himself, not only of the merits and demerits of the Work, but of the matters therein contained, which relate to his own interest and happiness.

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy, and every species of hereditary government — tQ lessen the op- pression of taxes — to propose plans for the education of help- less infancy, and the comfortable support of the aged and distressed — to endeavour to conciliate Nations to each other -T— to extirpate the horrid practice of war — to promote uni- versal peace, civilization, and commerce — and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper raiik;— if these things be libellous, let me live the

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. Z6

life of a Libeller, and let the name of LIBELLER be en- graven on my tomb.

Of all the weak and ill-judged measures which fear, igno- rance, or arrogance, could suggest, the Proclamation, and the project for Addresses, are two of the worst. They served to advertise the Work which the promoters of those measures wished to keep unknown ; and in doing this, they offered violence to the judgment of the people, by calling on them to condemn what they forbad them to know, and they put the strength of their party to that hazardous issue that prudence would have avoided. — The County Meeting for Middlesex was attended by only one hundred and eighteen Addressers. They, no doubt, expected, that thousands would flock to their standard, and clamour against the RIGHTS OF MAN. But the case most probably is, that men, in all countries, are not so blind to their Rights and their Interest, as Governments believe.

Having thus shewn the extraordinary manner in which the Government-party commenced their attack, I proceed to offer a few observations on the prosecution, and on the mode of trial by Special Jury.

In the first place, I have written a book ; and if it cannot be refuted, it cannot be condemned. But I do not consider the prosecution as particularly levelled against me, but against the general right, or the right of every man, of in- vestigating systems and principles of Government, and shew- ing their several excellencies or defects. If the press be free only to flatter Government, as Mr. Burke has done, and to cry up and extol what certain Court-sycophants are pleased to call a " glorious Constitution," and not free to examine into its errors or abuses, or whether a Constitution really exist or not, such freedom is no other than that of Spain, Turkey, or Russia ; and a Jury, in this case, would not be a Jury to try, but an Inquisition to condemn.

I have asserted, and by fair and open argument maintain- ed, the Right of every Nation, at all times, to establish such a system and form of Government for itself, as best accords with its disposition, interest, and happiness; and to change, or alter it, as it sees occasion. Will any Jury deny to the Nation this right? If they do, they are Traitors, and their Verdict would be null and void. And if they admit the right, the means must be admitted also; for it would be the highest absurdity to say that the right existed, but the means did not. The question, then is, — What are the means by which the possession and exercise of this National Right

24 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

are to be secured ? the answer will be, that of maintaining-, inviolably, the rights of free investigation ; for investigation always serves to detect error, and to bring forth truth.

I have, as an individual, given my opinion upon what 1 believe to be not only the best, but the true system of Go- vernment, which is the representative system, and I have given reasons for that opinion.

First, Because, in the representative system, no Office of very extraordinary power, or extravagant pay, is attached to any individual; and, consequently, there is nothing to excite those National contentions and civil wars, with which coun- tries under monarchical Governments are frequently convul- sed, and of which the History of England exhibits such nu- merous instances.

Secondly, Because the representative system, is a system of Government always in maturity; whereas, monarchical Go- vernment fluctuates through all the stages, from non-age to dotage.

Thirdly, Because the representative system admits of none but men properly qualified, into the Government, or removes them, if they prove to be otherwise. Whereas, in the hereditary system, a Nation may be incumbered with a knave, or an idiot, for a whole life-time, and not be benefited by a successor.

Fourthly, Because there does not exist a right to establish hereditary Government, or, in other words, hereditary sue- cessors, because hereditary Government always means a Government yet to come, and the case always is, that those who are to live afterwards, have the same right to establish Government for themselves, as the people had who lived before them: and, therefore, all laws attempting to establish hereditary Government, are founded on assumption and political fiction.

If these positions be truths, and I challenge any man to prove the contrary; if they tend to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to free them from error, oppression, and po- litical superstition, which are the objects I have in view in publishing them, that Jury would commit an act of injustice to their country and to me, if not an act of perjury, that should call them false, wicked, and malicious.

Dragonetti, in his Treatise " On Virtue and Rewards," has a paragraph worthy of being recorded in every country in the world. — " The science," says he, "of the politician, consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages, who should

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 25

discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness with the least National ex- pence" But if Juries are to be made use of to prohibit inquiry, to suppress truth, and to stop the progress of know- ledge, this boasted palladium of liberty becomes the most successful instrument of tyranny.

Among the arts practised at the Bar, and from the Bench, to impose upon the understanding of a Jury, and obtain a Verdict where the consciences of men could not otherwise consent, one of the most successful has been that of calling truth a libel, and of insinuating, that the words "falsely, wickedly, and maliciously" though they are made the for- midable and high sounding part of the charge, are not mat- ters for consideration with a Jury. For what purpose, then, are they retained, unless it be for that of imposition and wilful defamation ?

I cannot conceive a greater violation of order, nor a more abominable insult upon morality, and upon human under- standing, than to see a man sitting in the judgment seat, affecting, by an antiquated foppery of dress, to impress the audience with awe ; then causing witnesses and J ury to be sworn to truth and justice, himself having officially sworn the same ; then causing to be read a prosecution against a man, charging him with having wickedly and maliciously written and published a certain false, wicked, and seditious book; and having gone through all this with a shew of solem- nity, as if he saw the eye of the Almighty darting through the roof of the building like a ray of light, turn, in an in- stant, the whole into a farce, and, in order to obtain a ver- dict that could not otherwise be obtained, tell the Jury that the charge of falsely, wickedly, and seditiously, meant no- thing ; that truth was out of the question ; and that whether the person accused, spoke truth or falsehood, or intended virtuously or wickedly, was the same thing ; and finally conclude the wretched inquisitorial scene, by stating some antiquated precedent, equally as abominable as that which is then acting, or giving some opinion of his own, and falsely calling the one and the other — Law. It was, most probably, to such a Judge as this, that the most solemn of all reproofs was given — " The Lord will smite thee, thou whitened wall "

I now proceed to offer some remarks on what is called a Special Jury. — As to what is called a Special Verdict, I shall make no other remark upon it, than that it is in reality not a verdict. It is an attempt on the part of the Jury to

26 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

delegate, or of the bench to obtain, the exercise of that right which is committed to the Jury only.

With respect to Special Juries, I shall state such matters as I have been able to collect, for I do not find any uniform opinion concerning the mode of appointing them.

In the first place, this mode of trial is but of modern in vention, and the origin of it, as I am told, is as follows :

Formerly, when disputes arose between Merchants, and were brought before a Court, the case was, that the nature of their commerce, and the method of keeping Merchants' accounts, not being sufficiently understood by persons out of their own line, it became necessary to depart from the common mode of appointing Juries, and to select such per- sons for a Jury whose practical knowledge would enable them to decide upon the case. From this introduction, Special Juries became more general ; but some doubts hav- ing arisen as to their legality, an act was passed in the 3d of George II. to establish them as legal, and also to extend them to all cases, not only between individuals, but in cases where the Government itself should be the Prosecutor. This most probably gave rise to the suspicion so generally en- tertained of packing a Jury ; because, by this act, when the Crown, as it is called, is the Prosecutor, the Master of the Crown Office, who holds his office under the Crown, is the person who either wholly nominates, or has great power in nominating the Jury, and therefore it has greatly the ap- pearance of the prosecuting party selecting a Jury.

The process is as follows :

On motion being made in Court, by either the Plaintiff or Defendant, for a Special Jury, the Court grants it or not, at its own discretion.

If it be granted, the Solicitor of the party that applied for the Special Jury, gives notice to the Solicitor of the adverse party, and a day and hour are appointed for them to meet at the office of the Master of the Crown Office. The Master of the Crown Office sends to the Sheriff or his Deputy, who attends with the Sheriff's book of Free- holders. From this book, forty-eight names are taken, and a copy thereof given to each of the parties ; and on a future day notice is again given, and the Solicitors meet a second time, and each strikes out twelve names. The list being thus reduced from forty-eight to twenty-four, the first twelve that appear in Court, and answer to their names, is the Special Jury for that cause. The first operation, that

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 27

of taking the forty-eight names, is called nominating the Jury ; and the reducing them to twenty-four, is called striking the Jury.

Having thus stated the general process, I come to par- ticulars, and the first question will be, how are the forty- eight names, out of which the Jury is to be struck, ob- tained from the Sheriff's book ? for herein lies the principal ground of suspicion, with respect to what is understood by packing of Juries.

Either they must be taken by some rule agreed upon between the parties, or by some common rule known and established before-hand, or at the discretion of some person who, in such a case, ought to be perfectly disinterested in the issue, as well officially as otherwise.

In the case of Merchants, and in all cases between indi- viduals, the Master of the office, called the Crown Office, is officially an indifferent person, and as such may be a pro- per person to act between the parties and present them with a list of forty-eight names, out of which each party is to strike twelve. But the case assumes an entirely different character when the Government itself is the Prosecutor. The Master of the Crown Office is then an officer holding his office under the Prosecutor ; and it is therefore no won- der that the suspicion of packing Juries should, in such cases, have been so prevalent.

This will apply with additional force, when the prosecu- tion is commenced against the Author or Publisher of such Works as treat of reforms, and of the abolition of super- fluous places and offices, &c. because in such cases every person holding an office subject to that suspicion becomes interested as a party ; and the office, called the Crown Office, may, upon examination, be found to be of this de- scription.

I have heard it asserted, that the Master of the Crown Office is to open the Sheriff's book as it were per hazard, and take thereout forty-eight following names, to which the word Merchant or Esquire is affixed. The former of these are certainly proper, when the case is between Merchants, and it has reference to the origin of the custom, and to nothing else. As to the word Esquire, every man is an Esquire who pleases to call himself Esquire ; and the sensi- ble part of mankind are leaving it off. But the matter for inquiry is, whether there be any existing law to direct the mode by which the forty-eight names shall be taken, or >vhether the mode be merely that of custom which the

28 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

office has created ; or whether the selection of the forty- eight names be wholly at the discretion and choice of the Master of the Crown Office ? One or other of the two latter appears to be the case, because the act already mentioned, of the 3d of Geo. II. lays down no rule or mode, nor refers to any preceding law — but says only, that Special Juries shall hereafter be struck, " in such manner as Special Juries have been and are usually struck"

This 'act appears to me to have been what is generally understood by a " deep take in" It was fitted to the spur of the moment in which it was passed, 3d of Geo. II. when parties ran high, and it served to throw into the hands of Walpole, who was then Minister, the management of Juries in Crown prosecutions, by making the nomination of the forty-eight persons, from whom the Jury was to be struck, follow the precedent established by custom between indi- viduals, and by this means it slipped into practice with less suspicion. Now, the manner of obtaining Special Juries through the medium of an officer of the Government, such for instance as a Master of the Crown Office, may be im- partial in the case of Merchants, or other individuals, but it becomes highly improper, and suspicious, in cases where the Government itself is one of the parties. And it must upon the whole, appear a strange inconsistency, that a Govern- ment should keep one officer to commence prosecutions, and another officer to nominate the forty-eight persons from whom the Jury is to be struck, both of whom are officers of the Civil List, and yet continue to call this by the pompous name of the glorious Right of trial by Jury!

In the case of the King against Jordan, for publishing RIGHTS OF MAN, the Attorney-General moved for the ap- pointment of a Special Jury, and the master of the Crown Office nominated the forty-eight persons himself, and took them from such parts of the Sheriff's book as he pleased. The trial did not come on, occasioned by Jordan with- drawing his plea : but if it had, it might have afforded an opportunity of discussing the subject of Special Juries ; for though such discussion might have had no effect in the Court of King's Bench, it would, in the present disposition for inquiry, have had a considerable effect upon the Coun- try ; and in all National reforms, this is the proper point to begin at. Put a Country right, and it will soon put Go- vernment right. Among the improper things acted by the Government in the case of Special Juries, on their own motion, one has been that of treating the Jury with a

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 29

dinner, and afterwards giving each Juryman two guineas, if a verdict be found for the prosecution, and only one if otherwise ; and it has been long observed, that in London, and Westminster, there are persons who appear to make a trade of serving, by being so frequently seen upon Special Juries.

Thus much for Special Juries. As to what is called a Common Jury, upon any Government-prosecution against the Author or Publisher of RIGHTS OF MAN, during the time of the present Slierijjry, I have one question to offer, which is — whether I he present Sheriffs of London, having publicly prejudged the case, by the part they have taken in procuring an Address from the county of Middlesex, (Jiowever dimi- ?iutive and insignijicant the number of Addressers were, being only one hundred and eighteen) are eligible or proper persons to be entrusted with the power of returning a Jury to try the issue of any such prosecution ?

But the whole matter appears, at least to me, to be worthy of a more extensive consideration than what relates to any Jury, whether Special or Common ; for the case is, whether any part of a whole Nation, locally selected as a Jury of twelve men always is, be competent to judge and determine for the whole Nation, on any matter that relates to systems and principles of Government, and whether it be not applying the institution of Juries to purposes for which such institution was not intended ? For example :

I have asserted in the Work RIGHTS OF MAN, that as every man in the Nation pays taxes, so has every man a right to a share in Government, and consequently that the people of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Ha- lifax, &c. &c. have the same right as those of London. Shall then twelve men picked out between Temple-bar and Whitechapel, because the book happened to be first published there, decide upon the rights of the inhabitants of those towns, or of any other town or village in the Nation ?

Having thus spoken of the Juries, I come next to offer a few observations on the matter contained in the informa- tion, or prosecution.

The Work RIGHTS OF MAN, consists of Part the First, and Part the Second. The First Part, the prosecutor has thought it most proper to let alone ; and from the Second Part he has selected a few short paragraphs, making in the whole not quite two pages of the same printing as in the cheap edition. Those paragraphs relate chiefly to certain

30 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

facts, such as the Revolution of 1688, and the coming of George the First, commonly called of the House of Hano- ver, or the House of Brunswick, or some such House. The arguments, plans, and principles, contained in the Work, the prosecutor has not ventured to attack. They are beyond his reach.

The Act which the prosecutor appears to rest most upon for the support of the prosecution, is the Act intituled, " An Act, declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and settling the succession of the crown," passed in the first year of William and Mary, and more commonly known by the name of the « Bill of Rights."

I have called this Bill, " A Bill of Wrongs, and of In- sult" My reasons, and also my proofs, are as follow:

The method and principle which this Bill takes for de- claring rights and liberties, are in direct contradiction to rights and liberties : it is an assumed attempt to take them wholly away from posterity, — for the declaration in the said Bill is as follows:

" The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs, and posterity for ever ;" that is, to William and Mary his wife, their heirs and successors. This is a strange way of declaring rights and liberties ! But the Parliament who made this declaration in the name, and on the part of the people, had no authority from them for so doing — and with respect to posterity for ever, they had no right or authority whatever in the case. It was assumption and usurpation. I have reasoned very extensively against the principle of this Bill in the first part of Rights of Man ; the prosecutor has silently admitted that reasoning, and he now commences a prosecution on the authority of the Bill, after admitting the reasoning against it.

It is also to be observed, that the declaration in this Bill, abject and irrational as it is, had no other intentional opera- tion than against the family of the Stuarts, and their abet- tors. The idea did not then exist, that in the space of an hundred years, posterity might discover a different and much better system of Government, and that every species of hereditary Government might fall, as Popes and Monks had fallen before. This, I say, was not then thought of, and therefore the application of the Bill, in the present case, is a new, erroneous, and illegal application, and is the same as creating a new bill, ex post facto.

It has ever been the craft of Courtiers, for the purpose of

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 31

keeping up an expensive and enormous Civil List, and a mummery of useless aud antiquated places, and offices at the public expence, to be continually hanging England upon some individual or other, called King, though the man might not have capacity to be a parish constable. The folly and absurdity of this is appearing more and more every day, and still those men continue to act as if no alteration in the public opinion had taken place. They hear each other's nonsense, and suppose the whole Nation talks the same Gibberish.

Let such men cry up the House of Orange, or the House of Brunswick, if they please. They would cry up any other house if it suited their purpose, and give as good reasons for it. But what is this house, or that house, or any house to a Nation ? " For a Nation to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it." Her freedom depends wholly upon herself, and not on any house, or on any individual. I ask not in what light this cargo of foreign Houses appears to others, but I will say in what light it appears to me. — It was like the trees of the forest saying unto the bramble, — Come thou and reign over us.

Thus much for both their Houses. I now come to speak of two other Houses, which are also put into the infor- mation, and those are, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Here, I suppose, the Attorney-General in- tends to prove me guilty of speaking either truth or false- hood ; for, according to the modern interpretation of Libels, it does not signify which, and the only improvement neces- sary to shew the complete absurdity of such doctrine, would be, to prosecute a man for uttering a most false and wicked truth.

I will quote the part I am going to give, from the Office Copy, wTith the Attorney General's inuendoes, enclosed in parentheses, as they stand in the information, and I hope that civil list officer will caution the Court not to laugh when he reads them, arid also take care not to laugh himself.

The information states, that Thomas Paine, being a wicked, malicious, seditious, and evil-disposed person, hath, with force and arms, and most wicked cunning, written and pub- lished a certain false, scandalous, malicious, and seditious libel; in one part thereof, to the tenor and effect following, that is to say —

" With respect to the two Houses, of which the English Parliament (meaning the Parliament of this Kingdom} is

32 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

composed, they appear to be effectually influenced into one, and, as a Legislature, to have no temper of its own. The Minister, (meaning the Minister employed by the King of this Realm, in the administration of the Government thereof) whoever he, at any time may be, touches IT, (mean- ing the two Houses of Parliament of this Kingdom^ as with an opium wand, and IT (meaning the two Houses of Parlia- me?it of this Kingdom) sleeps obedience." — As I am not malicious enough to disturb their repose, though it be time they should awake, I leave the two Houses, and the Attor- ney-General to the enjoyment of their dreams, and proceed to a new subject.

The Gentlemen to whom I shall next address myself, are those who have styled themselves " Friends of the Peo- ple" holding their meeting at the Freemasons' Tavern, London.

One of the principal Members of this society is Mr. Grey, who, I believe, is also one of the most independent Members in Parliament. I collect this opinion from what Mr. Burke formerly mentioned to me, rather than from any knowledge of my own. The occasion was as follows :

I was in England at the time the bubble broke forth about Nootka Sound ; and the day after the King's Message, as it is called, was sent to Parliament, I wrote a note to Mr. Burke, that upon the condition the French Revolution should not be a subject, (for he was then writing the book I have since answered) I would call on him the next day, and mention some matters I was acquainted with, respecting that affair; for it appeared to me extraordinary, that any body of men, calling themselves Representatives, should commit themselves so precipitately, or, " sleep obedience," as Parliament was then doing, and run a Nation into ex- pence, and perhaps a war, without so much as inquiring into the case, or the subject, of both which I had some knowledge.

When I saw Mr. Burke, and mentioned the circumstances to him, he particularly spoke of Mr. Grey, as the fittest Member to bring such matters forward ; for, said Mr. Burke, " / am not the proper person to do it, as I am in a treaty with Mr. Pitt about Mr. Hastings' trial." I hope the Attorney-General will allow, that Mr. Burke was then sleeping his obedience. — But to return to the Society —

I cannot bring myself to believe, that the general motive of this Society is any thing more than that by which every former Parliamentary opposition has been governed^ and

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 33

by which the present is sufficiently known. Failing in their pursuit of power and place within doors, they have now (and that not in a very mannerly manner) endeavoured to possess themselves of that ground out of doors, which, had it not been made by others, would not have been made by them. They appear to me to have watched, with more cunning then candour, the progress of a certain pub- lication, and when they saw it had excited a spirit of en- quiry, and was rapidly spreading, they stepped forward tr profit by the opportunity, and Mr. Fox then called it-r- Libel. In saying this, he libelled himself. Politicians c.. this cast, such, 1 mean, as those who trim between parties, and lie by for events, are to be found in every country, and it never yet happened that they did not do more harm than good. They embarrass business, fritter it to nothing, perplex the people, and the event to themselves generally is, that they go just far enough to make enemies of the few, without going far enough to make friends of the many.

Whoever will read the declaration of this Society, of the 25th April, and 5th of May, will find a studied reserve upon all the points that are real abuses. They speak not once of the extravagance of Government, of the abominable list of unnecessary and sinecure places and pensions, of the enormity of the Civil List, of the excess of taxes, nor of any one matter that substantially affects the Nation ; and from some conversation that has passed in that Society, it does not appear to me that it is any part of their plan, to carry this class of reform into practice. No Opposition Party ever did when it gained possession.

In making these free observations, I mean not to enter into a contention with this Society ; their incivility towards me, is what I should expect from place-hunting reformers. They are welcome, however, to the ground they have ad- vanced upon, and I wish that every individual among them may act in the same upright, uninfluenced, and public spi- rited manner that I have done. Whatever reforms may be obtained, and by whatever means, they will be for the benefit of others, and not of me. I have no other interest in the cause than the interest of my heart. The part I have acted has been wholly that of a volunteer, uncon- nected with party ; and when I quit, it shall be as honour- ably as I began.

I consider the Reform of Parliament, by an application to Parliament, as proposed by the Society, to be a worn-out, hackneyed subject, about which the Nation is tired, and

34 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

the parties are deceiving each other. It is not a subject that is cognizable before Parliament, because no Government has a right to alter itself, either in the whole or in part. The right, and the exercise of that right, appertains to the Nation only, and the proper means is by a National Con- vention, elected for the purpose, by all the people. By this, the will of the Nation, whether to reform or not, or what the reform shall be, or how far it shall extend, will be known, and it cannot be known by any other means. Partial ad- dresses, or separate associations, are not testimonies of the general will.

It is, however, certain that the opinions of men, with respect to systems and principles of Government, are changing fast in ail countries. The alteration in England, within the space of little more than a year, is far greater than could then have been believed, and it is daily and hourly increasing. It moves along the country with the silence of thought. The enormous experice of Government has provoked man to think, by making them feel; and theProclamation has served to in- crease jealousy and disgust. To prevent, therefore, those commotions w'hich too often, and too suddenly arise from suffocated discontents, it is best that the general WILL should have the full and free opportunity of being publicly ascertain- ed, and known. Wretched as the state of representation is in England, it is every day becoming worse, because the unrepresented parts of the Nation are increasing in population and property, and the represented parts are decreasing. It is, therefore, no ill-grounded estimation to say, that as not one person in seven is represented, at least fourteen millions of taxes out of the seventeen millions are paid by the unrepresented part ; for although copyholds and leaseholds are assessed to the land-tax, the holders are unrepresented. Should then a general demur take place as to the obligation of paying taxes, on the ground of not being represented, it is not the Representatives of rotten Boroughs, nor Special Juries, that can decide the question. This is one of the possible cases that ought to be foreseen, in order to prevent the inconveniencies that might arise to numerous individuals, by provoking it.

I confess I have no idea of petitioning for rights. What- ever the Rights of the People are, they have a right to them, and none have a right either to withhold them, or to grant them. Government ought to be established on such prin- ciples of justice as to exclude the occasion of all such

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 35

applications, for wherever they appear they arc virtually accusations.

I wish that Mr. Grey, since he has embarked in the busi- ness, would take the whole of it into consideration. He will then see that the right of reforming the state of the Repre- sentation does not reside in Parliament, and that the only motion he could consistently make, would be, that Parlia- ment should recommend the election of a Convention by all the people, because all pay taxes. But whether Parliament recommended it or not, the right of the Nation would nei- ther be lessened, nor increased thereby.

As to Petitions from the unrepresented part, they ought not to be looked for. As well might it be expected that Manchester, Sheffield, &c. should petition the rotten Bo- roughs, as that they should petition the Representatives of those Boroughs. Those two towns alone pay far more taxes than ail the rotten Boroughs put together, and it is scarcely to be expected they should pay their court either to the Boroughs, or the Borough-mongers.

It ought also to be observed, that what is called Par- liament, is composed of two houses, that have always de- clared against the right of each other to interfere in any mat- ter that related to the circumstances of either, particularly that of election. A reform, therefore, in the representation, cannot, on the ground they have individually taken, become the subject of an act of Parliament, because such a mode would include the interference, against which the Commons, on their part, have protested ; but must, as well on the ground of formality, as on that of right, proceed from a National Convention.

Let Mr. Grey, or any other man, sit down and endeavour to put his thoughts together for the purpose of drawing up an application to Parliament for a Reform of Parliament, and he will soon convince himself of the folly of the attempt. He will find that he cannot get on; that he cannot make his thoughts join, so as to produce any effect ; for whatever formality of words he may use, they will unavoidably in- clude two ideas directly opposed to each other ; the one in setting forth the reasons, the other in praying for the relief; and the two, when placed together, would stand thus :

" The Representation in Parliament is so very corntj>t,

that we can no longer confide in it, — and, therefore, confiding in the justice and wisdom of Parliament, we pray"$c. <yc. The heavy manner in which every former proposed ap- plication to Parliament has dragged, sufficiently shews, that

36 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

though the Nation might not exactly see the awkwardness of the measure, it could not clearly see its way by that means. To this also may be added, another remark, which is, that the worse Parliament is, the less will be the inclina- tion to petition it. This indifference, viewed as it ought to be, is one of the strongest censures the public can express. It is as if they were to say, " Ye are not worth reform- ing."

Let any man examine the Court-Calendar of Placemen ;n both Houses, and the manner in which the Civil List operates, and he will be at no loss to account for this indif ference and want of confidence on one side, nor of the op- position to reforms on the other.

Besides the numerous list of paid persons exhibited in the Court Calendar, which so indecently stares the Nation in the face, there are an unknown number of marked Pen- sioners, which render Parliament still more suspected.

Who would have supposed that Mr. Burke, holding forth as he formerly did, against secret influence and corrupt majorities, should become a concealed Pensioner? I will now state the case, not for the little purpose of exposing Mr. Burke, but to shew the inconsistency of any application to a body of men, more than half of whom, as far as the Nation can at present know, may be in the same case with himself,

Towards the end of Lord North's administration, Mr. Burke brought a bill into Parliament, generally known by the name of Mr. Burke's Reform Bill ; in which, among other things, it is enacted, " That no pension exceeding the sum of three hundred pounds a-year shall be granted to any one person, and that the whole amount of the pensions granted in one year shall not exceed six hundred pounds; a list of which, together with the names of the persons to whom the same are granted, shall be laid before Parliament in twenty days after the beginning of each Session, until the whole pension list shall be reduced to ninety thousand pounds." A provisory clause is afterwards added, " That it shall be lawful for the First Commissioner of the Trea- sury to return into the exchequer any pension or annuity without a name, on his making oath that such pension or annuity is not directly or indirectly for the benefit, use, or behoof, of any Member of the House of Commons."

But soon after that Administration ended, and the party Mr. Burke acted with came into power, it appears, from the circumstances I am going to relate, that Mr. Burke became

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 37

himself a Pensioner in disguise in a similar manner, as if a pension had been granted in the name of John Notes, to be privately paid to and enjoyed by Tom Stiles. The name of Edmund Burke does riot appear in the original transaction ; but after the pension was obtained, Mr. Burke \varited to make the most of it at once, by selling or mortgaging it; and the gentleman, in whose name the pension stands, ap- plied to one of the public offices for that purpose. This unfortunately brought forth the name of Edmund Burke, as the real Pensioner of one thousand five hundred pounds per annum. When men trumpet forth what they call the blessings of the Constitution, it ought to be known what sort of blessings they allude to.

As to the Civil List, of a million a year, it is not to be supposed that any one man can eat, drink, or consume the whole upon himself. The case is, that above half this sum is annually apportioned among Courtiers, and Court Mem- bers, of both Houses, in places and offices, altogether insig- nificant and perfectly useless, as to every purpose of civil, rational, and manly Government. For instance :

Of what use in the science and system of Government is what is called a Lord Chamberlain, a Master and a Mis- tress of the Robes, a Master of the Horse, a Master of the Hawks, and an hundred other such things ? Laws derive no additional force, nor additional excellence, from such mum- mery.

In the disbursements of the Civil List for the year 1786 (which may be seen in Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue) are four separate charges for this mummery office of Chamberlain.

1st ,£38,778 17 0

2d 3,000 0 0

3d 24,06!) 19 0

4th 10,000 18 3

75,849 14 3 besides «£1,119 charged for alms.

From this sample, the rest may be guessed at. As to the Master of the Hawks, (there are no Hawks kept, and if there were, it is no reason the people should pay the expence of feeding them, many of whom are hard put to it to get bread for their children) his salary is £1,3721. 10s.

And besides a list of items of this kind, sufficient to fill a quire of paper, the Pension Lists alone are £107,404. 13s. 4d.

38 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

which is a greater sum than all the expences of the federal Government in America amount to.

Among the items, there are two I had no expectation of finding, and which, in this day of enquiry after Civil List influence, ought to be exposed, The one is an annual pay- ment of one thousand seven hundred pounds to the Dissent- ing Ministers in England, and eight hundred pounds to those of Ireland.

This is the fact; and the distribution, as I am informed, is as follows. The whole sum of X 1,700 is paid to one per- son, a Dissenting Minister in London, who divides it among eight others, and those eight among such others as they please. The Lay-body of the Dissenters, and many of their principal Ministers, have long considered it as dishonourable, and have endeavoured to prevent it, but still it continues to be secretly paid, and as the world has sometimes seen very fulsome Addresses from parts of that body, it may naturally be supposed that the receivers, like Bishops, and other Court Clergy, are not idle in promoting them. How the money is distributed in Ireland, I know not.

To recount all the secret history of the Civil List is not the intention of this publication. It is sufficient, in this place, to expose its general character, and the mass of influ- ence it keeps alive. It will necessarily become one of the objects of reform ; and, therefore, enough is said to shew that, under its operation, no application to Parliament can be expected to succeed, nor can consistently be made.

Such reforms will not be promoted by the Party that is in possession of those places, nor by the Opposition who are waiting for them ; and as to a mere reform in the state of the Representation, under the idea that another Parliament, dif- ferently elected to the present, but still a component third part of the same system, and subject to the controul of the other two parts, will abolish those abuses, is altogether de- lusion ; because it is not only impracticable on the ground of formality, but it is unwisely exposing another set of men to the same corruptions that have tainted the present.

Were all the objects that require a reform accomplishable by a mere reform in the state of the Representation, the persons who compose the present Parliament might, with rather more propriety, be asked to abolish all the abuses themselves, than be applied to as the mere instruments of doing it by a future Parliament. If the virtue be wanting to abolish the iibuse, it is also wanting to act as the means, and the Nation must, of necessity., proceed by somo other plan.

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 39

Having thus endeavoured to shew what the abject condi- tion of Parliament is, and the impropriety of going a second time over the same ground that has before miscarried, I come to the remaining part of the subject.

There ought to be, in the Constitution of every country, a mode of referring back, on any extraordinary occasion, to the sovereign and original constituent power, which is the Na- tion itself. The right of altering any part of a Government cannot, as already observed, reside in the Government, or that Government might make itself what it pleased.

It ought also to be taken for granted, that though a Na- tion may feel inconveniencies, either in the excess of taxation or in the mode of expenditure, or in any thing else, it may not at first be sufficiently assured in what part of its Govern- ment the defect lies, or where the evil originates. It may be supposed to be in one part, and on enquiry be found to be in another ; or partly in all. This obscurity is naturally inter- woven with what are called mixed Governments.

Be, however, the reform to be accomplished whatever it may, it can only follow in consequence of first obtaining a full knowledge of all the causes that have rendered such reform necessary, and every thing short of this is guess-work or frivolous cunning. In this case, it cannot be supposed that any application to Parliament can bring forward this knowledge. That body is itself the supposed cause, or one of the supposed causes, of the abuses in question ; and can- not be expected, and ought not to be asked, to give evidence against itself. The enquiry, therefore, which is, of necessity, the first step in the business, cannot be entrusted to Parlia- ment, but must be undertaken by a distinct body of men, separated from every suspicion of corruption or influence.

Instead, then, of referring to rotten Boroughs and absurd Corporations for addresses, or hawking them about the coun- try, to be signed by a few dependent tenants, the real and effectual mode would be to come at once to the point, and to ascertain the sense of the Nation, by electing a National Convention. By this method, as already observed, the gene- ral WILL, whether to reform or not, or what the reform shall be, or how far it shall extend, will be known, and it cannot be known by any other means. Such a body, em- powered and supported by the Nation, will have authority to demand information upon all matters necessary to be en- quired into; and no Minister, nor any other person, will dare to refuse it. It will then be seen whether seventeen millions of taxes are necessary, and for what purposes they

40 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

are expended. The concealed Pensioners will then be obliged to unmask ; and the source of influence and corrup- tion, if any such there be, will be laid open to the Nation, not for the purpose of revenge, but of redress.

By taking this Public and National ground, all objections against partial Addresses on one side, or private Associations on the other, will be done away. THE NATION WILL DE- CREE ITS OWN REFORMS; arid the clamour about Party and Faction, or Ins or Outs, will become ridiculous.

The plan and organization of a Convention is easy in practice.

In the first place, the number of inhabitants in every county can be sufficiently enough known, from the number of houses assessed to the House and Window-light tax in each county. This will give the rule for apportioning the number of Members to be elected to the National Conven- tion in each of the counties.

If the total number of inhabitants in England be. seven millions, and the total number of Members to be elected to the Convention be one thousand, the number of Members to be elected in a county containing one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, will be twenty-one, said in like propor- tion for any other county.

As the election of a Convention must, in order to ascer- tain the general sense of the Nation, go on grounds different from that of Parliamentary elections, the mode that, best promises this end will have no difficulties to combat with from absurd customs, and pretended rights. The right of every man will be the same, whether he live in a city, town, or a village. The custom of attaching Rights to place, or in other words to inanimate matter, instead of to the person, independently of place, is too absurd to make any part of a rational argument.

As every man in the Nation of the age of twenty-one years, pays taxes either out of the property he possesses, or out of the product of his labour, which is property to him, and is amenable in his own person to every law of the land; so has every one the same equal right to vote, and no one part of a Nation, nor any individual, has a right to dispute the right of another. The man who should do this, ought to forfeit the exercise of his own right for a term of years. This would render the punishment consistent with the crime.

When a qualification to vote is regulated by years, it is placed on the firmest possible ground, because the qualifica-

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 41

tiou is such as nothing but dying before the time can take away ; and the equality of Rights, as a principle, is recog- nized in the act of regulating the exercise. But when Rights are placed upon, or made dependent upon property, they are on the most precarious of all tenures. " Riches make themselves wings, and fly away," and the lights fly with them ; and thus they become lost to the man when they would be of most value.

It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The bold- ness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last iuto fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an indivi- dual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other, and the Little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other ; and it will always be found, that when the rich pro- tect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.

Exclusions are not only unjust, but they frequently ope- rate as injuriously to the party who monopolizes, as to those who are excluded. When men seek to exclude, others from participating in the exercise of any right, they should, at least, be assured that they can effectually perform the whole of the business they undertake ; for unless they do this, themselves will be losers by the monopoly. This has been the case with respect to the monopolized right of Election. The monopolizing party has not been able to keep the Par- liamentary Representation, to whom the power of taxation was entrusted, in the state it ought to have been, and have thereby multiplied taxes upon themselves equally with those who were excluded.

A great deal has been, and will continue to be said, about disqualifications, arising from the commission of offences ; but were this subject urged to its full extent, it would dis- qualify a great number of the present Electors, together with

42 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

their Representatives ; for, of all offences, none are more de- structive to the morals of Society than Bribery and Corrup- tion. It is, therefore, civility to such persons to pass this subject over, and to give them a fair opportunity of recover- ing, or rather of creating character.

Every thing, in the present mode of electioneering in England is the reverse of what it ought to be, and the vul- garity that attends elections is no other than the natural con- sequence of inverting the order of the system.

In the first place, the Candidate seeks the Elector, instead of the Elector seeking for a Representative ; and the Electors are advertised as being in the interest of the Candidate, instead of the Candidate being in the interest of the Elec- tors. The Candidate pays the Elector for his vote, instead of the Nation paying the Representative for his time and attendance on public business. The complaint for an undue election is brought by the Candidate, as if he, and not the Electors, were the party aggrieved ; and he takes on himself at any period of the election to break it up, by declining, as if the election was in his right, and not in theirs.

The compact that was entered into at the last Westmin- ster election, between two of the Candidates (Mr. Fox and Lord Hood) was an indecent violation of the principles of election. The Candidates assumed, in their own persons, the rights of the Electors ; for it was only in the body of the Electors, and not at all in the Candidates, that the right of making any such compact or compromise could exist. But the principle of Election and Representation is so completely done away, in every stage thereof, that inconsistency has no longer the power of surprising.

Neither from Elections thus conducted, nor from rotten Borough Addressers, nor from County-meetings, promoted by Placemen and Pensioners, can the sense of the Nation be known. It is still corruption appealing to itself. But a Convention of a thousand persons fairly elected would bring every matter to a decided issue.

As to County-meetings, it is only persons of leisure, or those who live near to the place of meeting, that can attend, and the number on such occasions is but like a drop in the bucket, compared with the whole. The only consistent ser- vice which such meetings could render, would be that of apportioning the county into convenient districts ; and when this is done, each district might, according to its number of inhabitants, elect its quota of County Members to the National Convention ; and the vote of each Elector might

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 43

be taken in the parish where he resided, either by ballot or by voice, as he should chuse to give it.

A National Convention thus formed, would bring together the sense and opinions of every part of the nation, fairly taken. The science of Government, and the interest of the Public, and of the several parts thereof, would then undergo an ample and rational discussion, freed from the language of Parliamentary disguise.

But in all deliberations of this kind, though men have a right to reason with, and endeavour to convince each other, upon any matter that respects their common good, yet, in point of practice, the majority of opinions, when known, forms a rule for the whole, and to this rule every good citi- zen practically conforms.

Mr. Burke, as if he knew (for every concealed Pensioner has the opportunity of knowing) that the abuses acted under the present system are too flagrant to be palliated, and that the majority of opinions, whenever such abuses should be made public, would be for a general and effectual reform, has endeavoured to preclude the event, by sturdily denying the right of a majority of a Nation to act as a whole. Let us bestow a thought upon this case.

When any matter is proposed as a subject for consulta- tion, it necessarily implies some mode of decision. Common consent, arising from absolute necessity, has placed this in a majority of opinions; because without it there can be no decision, and consequently no order. It is, perhaps, the only case in which mankind, however various in their ideas upon other matters, can consistently be unanimous; because it is a mode of decision derived from the primary original right of every individual concerned; that right being first individually exercised in giving an opinion, and whether that opinion shall arrange with the minority or the majority is a subsequent accidental thing that neither increases nor diminishes the individual, original right itself. Prior to any debate, inquiry, or investigation, it is not supposed to be known on which side the majority of opinions will fall, and therefore whilst this mode of decision secures to every one the right of giving an opinion, it admits to every one an equal chance in the ultimate event.

Among the matters that will present themselves to the consideration of a National Convention, there is one, wholly of a domestic nature, but so marvellously loaded with con- fusion, as to appear, at first sight, almost impossible to be reformed. I mean the condition of what is called Law.

44 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS

But if we examine into the cause from whence this con- fusion, now so much the subject of universal complaint, is produced, not only the remedy will immediately present itself, but with it the means of preventing the like case hereafter.

In the first place, the confusion has generated itself from the absurdity of every Parliament assuming to be eternal in power, and the laws partake in a similar manner of this as- sumption. They have no period of legal or natural expira- tion, and however absurd in principle, or inconsistent in practice, many of them have become, they still are, if riot especially repealed, considered as making a part of the ge- neral mass. By this means the body of what is called Law, is spread over a space of several hundred years, compre- hending laws obsolete, laws repugnant, laws ridiculous, and every other kind of laws, forgotten, or remembered; and what renders the case still worse is, that the confusion mul- tiplies with the progress of time.*

To bring this mis-shapen monster into form, and to prevent its lapsing again into a wilderness state, only two things, and those very simple, are necessary.

The first is, to review the whole mass of laws, and to bring forward such only as are worth retaining, arid let all the rest drop ; and to give to the laws so brought forward a new era commencing from the time of such reform.

Secondly, that at the expiration of every twenty-one years, (or any other stated period) a like review shall again be taken, and the laws found proper to be retained, be again carried forward commencing with that date, and the useless laws dropped and discontinued. By this means there can be no obsolete laws, and scarcely such a thing as laws standing in direct or equivocal contradiction to each other, and every person will know the period of time to which he is to look back for all the laws in being.

It is worth remarking, that whilst every other branch of science is brought within some commodious system, and the study of it simplified by easy methods, the laws take the contrary course, and become every year more complicated, entangled, confused, and obscure.

* In the time of Henry the Fourth, a law was passed making it felony " to multiply i;old or silver, or to make use of the craft of multiplication," and this law remained two hundred and eighty- six years upon the statute books. It WHS then repealed as being jydiculous and injurious.

ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION. 45

Among the paragraphs which the Attorney-General has taken from the Rights of Man, and put into his information, one is, that where I have said, " that with respect to regular law, there is scarcely such a thing."

As I do not know whether the Attorney-General means to shew this expression to be libellous, because it is TRUE, or because it is FALSE, I shall make no other reply to him in this place than by remarking, that if almanack- makers had not been more judicious than law-makers, the study of almanacks would by this time have become as abstruse as the study of law, and we should hear of a library of almanacks as we now do of statutes ; but by the simple operation of letting the obsolete matter drop, and carrying forward that only which is proper to be retained, all that is necessary to be known is found within the space of a year, and laws also admit of being kept within some given period.

I shall here close this letter, so far as it respects the Ad- dresses, the Proclamation, and the Prosecution ; and shall offer a few observations to the Society styling itself, " THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE." '

That the science of Government is beginning to be better understood than in former times, and that the age of fiction and political superstition, and of craft and mystery, is pass- ing away, are matters which the experience of every day proves to be true, as well in England as in other countries.

As therefore it is impossible to calculate the silent pro- gress of opinion, and also impossible to govern a Nation after it has changed its habits of thinking, by the craft or policy that it was governed by before, the only true method to pre- vent propular discontents and commotions is, to throw, by every fair and rational argument, all the light upon the subject that can possibly be thrown; and, at the same time, to open the means of collecting the general sense of the Na- tion ; and this cannot, as already observed, be done by any plan so effectually as a National Convention. Here indivi- dual opinion will quiet itself by having a centre to rest upon.

The Society already mentioned, (which is made up of men of various descriptions, but chiefly of those called Foxites,) appears to me, either to have taken wrong grounds from want of judgment, or to have acted with cunning re- serve. It is now amusing the people with a new phrase, namely, that of " a temperate and moderate reform," the in- terpretation of which is, a continuance of the abuses as long as possible. If we cannot hold a//, let us hold some.

Who are those that are frightened at reforms? Are the

46 LETTER TO THE ADDRESSERS, &C.

public afraid that their taxes should be lessened too much ? Are they afraid that sinecure places, and pensions, should be abolished too fast? Are the poor afraid that their condition should be rendered too comfortable? Is the worn-out me- chanic, or the aged and decayed tradesman, frightened at the prospect of receiving ten pounds a year out of the sur- plus taxes? Is the soldier frightened at the thoughts of his discharge, and three shillings per week during life? Is the sailor afraid that press-warrants will be abolished ? The So- ciety mistakes the fears of borough-mongers, placemen, and pensioners, for the fears of the people, and the temperate and moderate Reform it talks of, is calculated to suit the condi- tion of the former.

Those words, " temperate and moderate,*' are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. — A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue ; but moderation in principle is a species of vice. But who is to be the judge of what is a temperate and moderate Reform? The Society is the representative of nobody ; neither can the unrepre- sented part of the Nation commit this power to those in Parliament, in whose election they had no choice ; and, therefore, even upon the ground the Society has taken, re- course must be had to a National Convention.

The objection which Mr. Fox made to Mr. Grey's pro- posed Motion for a Parliamentary Reform was, that it con- tained no plan. — It certainly did not. But the plan very easily presents itself; and whilst it is fair for all parties, it prevents the dangers that might otherwise arise from private or popular discontent.

THOMAS PAINE.

DISSERTATION

ON

Of

GOVERNMENT

BY

THOMAS PAINE

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.

1819.

DISSERTATION

ON

FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.

THERE is no subject more interesting to every man than the subject of government. His security, be he rich or poor, and, in a great measure, his prosperity, is connected therewith; it is therefore his interest, as well as his duty, to make himself acquainted with its principles, and what the practice ought to be.

Every art and science, however imperfectly known at first, has been studied, improved, and brought to what we call prefection, by the progressive labours of succeeding generations; but the science of government has stood still. No improvement has been made in the principle, and scarcely any in the practice, till the American revolution began. In all the countries of Europe (except in France) the same forms and systems that were erected in the remote ages of ignorance still continue, and their antiquity is put in the place of principle : it is forbidden to investigate their origin or by what right they exist. If it be asked how has this happened, the answer is easy ; they are established on a principle that is false, and they employ their power to prevent detection.

Notwithstanding the mystery with which the science of government has been enveloped, for the purpose of enslav- ing, plundering, and imposing upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy to be under- stood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point, or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by the assistance of which

4 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

the progress is facilitated. The same method ought to be observed with respect to the science of government.

Instead then of embarrassing the subject in the outset with the numerous subdivisions, under which different forms of government have been classed, such, as aristo- cracy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, &c. the better method will be to begin with what may be called primary divisions, or those under which all the several subdivisions will be comprehended.

The primary divisions are but two.

First, Government by election and representation.

Secondly, Government by hereditary succession.

All the several forms and systems of government, how- ever numerous or diversified, class themselves under one or other of those primary divisions; for either they are on the system of representation, or on that of hereditary succes- sion. As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered, are either representative or hereditary.

Beginning then our enquiries at this point, we have first to examine into the nature of those two primary divisions. If they are equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other, that difference directs our choice ; but if one of them should be so absolutely false, as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles itself at once; because a negative proved on one thing, where two only are offered, and one must be accepted, amounts to an affirmative on the other.

The revolutions that are now spreading themselves in the world have their origin in this state of the case; and the present war is a conflict between the representative system, founded on the rights of the people, and the here- ditary system, founded in usurpation. As to what are called Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, they do not, either as things or as terms, sufficiently describe the here- ditary system ; they are but secondary things or signs of the hereditary system, and which fall of themselves if that system has not a right to exist. Were there no such terms as Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, or were other terms substituted in their place, the hereditary system, if it con- tinued, would not be altered thereby. It would be be the same system under any other titulary name as it is now.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 5

The character therefore of the revolutions of the present day distinguishes itself most definitively by grounding itself on the system of representative government, in opposition to the hereditary. No other distinction reaches the whole of the principle.

Having thus opened the case generally, I proceed, in the first place, to examine the hereditary system, because it has the priority in point of time. The representative system is the invention of the modern world; and that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it beforehand, which is, that there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true, than tJtat hereditary government has not a right to exist. When, therefore, we take from any man the exercise of heredi* tary power, we take away that which he never had the right to possess, and which no law or custom could, or ever can, give him a title to.

The arguments that have hitherto been employed against the hereditary system have been chiefly founded upon the absurdity of it, and its incompetericy to the purpose of good government. Nothing can present to our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity than that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does, into the hands of a lad necessarily destitute of experience, and often little better than a fool. It is an insult to every man of years, of character, and of talent, in a country. The moment we begin to reason upon the hereditary system, it fails into derision : let but a single idea begin, and a thou- sand will soon follow. Insignificance, imbecility, childhood, dotage, want of moral character; in fine, every defect serious or laughable, unite to hold up the hereditary system as a figure of ridicule. Leaving however the ridiculousness of the thing, to the reflections of the reader, I proceed to the more important part of the question, namely, whether such a system has a right to exist ?

To be satisfied of the right of a thing to exist, we must be satisfied that it had a right to begin; if it had not a right to begin, it has not a right to continue. By what right then did the hereditary system begin ? Let a man but ask himself this question, and he will find that he cannot satisfy himself with an answer.

The right which any man, or any family had to set itself up at first to govern a nation, and to establish itself here- ditarily, was no other than the right which Robespierre had to do the same thing in France. If he had none, they had none. If they had any, he had as much; for it is impossi-

G DISSEKTATION ON FIRST

ble to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of which hereditary governments could begin. The Capets, the Guelphs, the Robespierres, the Marats, are all on the same standing as to the question of right. It belongs exclu- sively to none.

It is one step towards liberty, to perceive that hereditary government could not begin as an exclusive right in any family. The next point will be, whether, having once began, it could grow into a right by the influence of time?

This would be supposing an absurdity; for either it is putting time in the place of principle, or making it supe- rior to principle; whereas time has no more connection with, or influence upon principle, than principle has upon time. The wrong which began a thousand years ago, is as much a wrong as if it began to day; and the right which originates to-day, is as much a right as if it had the sanc- tion of a thousand years. Time, with respect to principles, is an eternal NOW: it has no operation upon them: it changes nothing of their nature and qualities. But what have we to do with a thousand years? Our life-time is but a short portion to that period, and if we find the wrong in existence as soon as we begin to live, that is the point of time at which it begins to us: and our right to resist it, is the same as if it had never existed before.

As hereditary government could not begin as a natural right in any family, nor derive after its commencement, any right from time, Ve have only to examine whether there exists in a nation a right to set it up and establish it by what is called law, as has been done in England? I answer, NO; and that any law or any constitution made for that purpose is an act of treason against the rights of every minor in the nation, at the time it is made, and against the rights of all succeeding generations. I shall speak upon each of those cases. First, of the minor, at the time such law is made. Secondly, of the generations that are to follow.

A nation, in a collective sense, comprehends all the indi- viduals of whatever age, from just born to just dying. Of these, one part will be minors, the other aged. The average of life is not exactly the same in every climate and country, but in general, the minority in years are the majority in numbers, that is, the number of persons under twenty-one years, is greater than the number of persons above that age. This diiference in numbers, is not necessary to the establish- ment of the principle 1 mean to lay down, but it serves to shew the justice of it more strongly. The principle would

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 7

be equally good, if the majority in years were also the ma- jority in numbers,

The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged. The difference is altogether in the different age of the two parties, and nothing in the nature of the rights; the rights are the same rights ; and are to be preserved in- violate for the inheritance of the minors when they shall come of age. During the minority of minors, their rights are under the sacred guardianship of the aged. The minor cannot surrender them ; the guardian cannot dispossess him ; consequently, the aged part of a nation, who are the law- makers for the time being, and who, in the march of life, are but a few years a-head of those who are yet minors, and to whom they must shortly give place, have not and cannot have the right to make a law to set up and establish hereditary government, or, to speak more distinctly, an here- ditary succession of governors ; because it is an attempt to deprive every minor in the nation, at the time such a law is made, of his inheritance of rights when he shall come of age, and to subjugate him to a system of government, to which, during his minority, he could neither consent nor object.

If a person, who is a minor at the time such a law is pro- posed, had happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If, therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he been of age at the time, it is, unde- niably, a law to take away and annul the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot exist.

I come now to speak of government by hereditary succes- sion as it applies to succeeding generations ; and to shew that in this case, as in the case of minors, there does not exist in a nation a right to set it up.

A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of renewal and succession. It is never stationary. Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and old persons from the stage. In this ever-run- ning flood of generations there is no part superior in autho- rity to another. Could we conceive an idea of superiority

8 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

in any, at what point of time, or in what century of the world, are we to fix it? To what cause are we to ascribe it ? By what evidence are we to prove it ? By what cri- terion are we to know it ? A single reflection will teach us that our ancestors, like ourselves, were but tenants for life in the great freehold of rights. The fee-absolute was not in them, it is not in us, it belongs to the whole family of man, through all ages. If we think otherwise than this, we think either as slaves or as tyrants. As slaves, if we think that any former generation had a right to bind us; as tyrants, if we think that we have authority to bind the generations that are to follow.

It may not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what is to be understood by a generation in the sense the word is here used.

As a natural term, its meaning is sufficiently clear. The father, the son, the grandson, are so many distinct genera- tions. But when we speak of a generation as describing the persons in whom legal authority resides, as distinct from another generation of the same description who are to suc- ceed them, it comprehends all those who are above the age of twenty-one years, at the time we count from ; and a ge- neration of this kind will continue in authority between fourteen and twenty-one years, that is, until the number of minors, who shall have arrived at age, shall be greater than the number of persons remaining of the former stock.

For example, if France at this or any other moment, con- tain twenty-four millions of souls, twelve millions will be males, and twelve females. Of the twelve millions of males, six millions will be of the age of twenty-one years, and six will be under, and the authority to govern will reside in the first six. But every day will make some alteration, and in twenty-one years, every one of those minors who survive will have arrived at age, and the greater part of the former stock will be gone: the majority of persons then living, in whom the legal authority resides, will be composed of those who, twenty-one years before, had no legal existence. Those will be fathers~and grandfathers in their turn, and in the next twenty-one years, (or less) another race of minors, arrived at age, will succeed them, and so on.

As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any, to establish government by heredi- tary succession, because it would be supposing itself pos- sessed of a right superior to the rest, namely, that of com-

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 9

manding by its own authority how the world shall be here- after governed, and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is and must be (as a matter of right) as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that pre- ceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow.

In the first part of Rights of Man, I have spoken of government by hereditary succession ; and I will here close the subject with an extract from that work, which states it under the two following heads.

" First, of the right of any family to establish itself with hereditary power.

" Secondly, of the right of a nation to establish a parti- cular family.

" With respect to the first of those heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independent of the nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism, and it would be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove it.

" But the second head, that of a nation, that is, of a generation for the time being, establishing a particular family with hereditary powers, it does not present itself as despotism on the first reflection ; but if men will permit a second reflection to take place, and carry that reflection forward, even but one remove out of their own persons to that of their offspring, they will then see, that hereditary succession becomes the same despotism to others, which the first persons reprobated for themselves. It operates to pre- clude the consent of the succeeding generation, and the preclusion of consent is despotism,

" In order to see this matter more clearly, let us consider the generation which undertakes to establish a family with hereditary powers, separately from the generations which are to follow.

" The generation which first selects a person and puts him at the head of its government, either with the title of king, or any other nominal distinction, acts its own choice, as a free agent for itself, be that choice wise or foolish. The person so set up is not hereditary, but selected and appointed ; and the generation which sets him up, does not live under an hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice. Were the person so set up, and the generation who sets him up, to live for ever, it never could become

10 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

hereditary succession, and of consequence, hereditary suc- cession could only follow on the death of the first parties.

*' As therefore hereditary succession is out of the ques- tion with respect to the first generation, we have next to consider the character in which that generation acts to- wards the commencing generation, and to all succeeding ones.

" It assumes a character to which it has neither right nor title ; for it changes itself from a legislator to a testator, and affects to make a will and testament which is to have opera- tion after the demise of the makers, to bequeath the government; and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to establish on the succeeding generation a new and different form of government under which itself lived. Itself, as already observed, lived not under an hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice; and it now attempts by virtue of a will and testament, which it has not authority to make, to take from the commencing gene- ration, and from all future ones, the right, and free agency by which itself acted.

" In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will and testament of some former generation, pre- sents itself, it is both criminal and absurd. A. cannot make a will to take from B. the property of B. and give it to C. ; yet this is the manner in which what is called hereditary succession by law, operates. A certain generation makes a will, under the form of a law, to take away the rights of the commencing generation, and of all future generations, and convey those rights to a third person, who afterwards comes forward, and assumes the government in consequence of that illicit conveyance."

The history of the English parliament furnishes an ex- ample of this kind ; and which merits to be recorded, as being the greatest instance of legislative ignorance and want of principle that is to be found in the history of any coun- try. The case is as follows: —

The English parliament of 1688, imported a man and his wife from Holland, William and Mary, and made them king and queen of England. Having done this, the said par- liament made a law to convey the government of the country to the heirs of William and Mary, in the following words: " We, the lords spiritual and temporal, and com- mons, do, in the name of the People of England, most humbly and faithfully submit ourselves, our heirs, and pos- terities, to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities for

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 11

ever." And in a subsequent law, as quoted by Edmund Burke, the said Parliament, in the name of the People of England then living, binds the said people, their heirs, and posterities, to William and Mary, their heirs, and posterities % to the end of time.

It is not sufficient that we laugh at the ignorance of such law-makers, it is necessary that we reprobate their want of principle. The constituent assembly of France (1789) fell into the same vice as the Parliament of England had done, and assumed to establish an hereditary succession in the family of the Capets, as an act of the constitution of that year. That every nation for the time being, has a right to govern itself as it pleases, must always be admitted; but government by hereditary succession is government for another race of people, and not for itself; and as those on whom it is to operate are not yet in existence, or are minors, so neither is the right in existence to set it up for them, and to assume such a right is treason against the right of posterity.

I here close the arguments on the first head, that of government by hereditary succession; and proceed to the second, that of government by election and representation ; or, as it may be concisely expressed, representative govern- ment in contradistinction to hereditary government.

Reasoning by exclusion, if hereditary government has not a right to exist, and that it has not, is proveable, representa- tive government is admitted of course.

In contemplating government by election and representa- tion, we amuse not ourselves in enquiring when or how, or by what right it began. Its origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence of the right. It apper- tains to him in right of his existence, and his person is the title-deed.

The true, and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting or of electing and being elected, than the poor have to exclude the rich ; and wherever it is attempted, or pro- posed on either side, it is a question of force, and not of right. Who is he that would exclude another? — That other has a right to exclude him.

That which is now called aristocracy, implies an inequa- lity of rights; but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality ? Will the rich exclude themselves?

12 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

No! Will the poor exclude themselves? No! By what right then can any be excluded? It would be a question, if any man, or class of men, have a right to exclude them- selves ; but be this as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to assume it, is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred kind ; and he that would employ his pecu- niary property, or presume upon the influence it gives him to dispossess or rob another of his property of rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and merits to have it taken from him.

Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a combination of the persons possessing that quantity, to ex- clude those who do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights, never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves; and in this view of the case, pardoning the vanity of the thing, aristocracy is a subject of laughter, This self-soothing vanity is encouraged by another idea not less selfish, which is, that the opposers conceive they are playing a safe game, in which there is a chance to gain and none to lose; that at any rate the doctrine of equality includes them, and that if they cannot get more rights than those whom thy oppose and would exclude, they shall not have less. This opinion has already been fatal to thousands who, not contented with equal rights, have sought more till they lost all, and experienced in themselves, the degrading inequality they endeavoured to fix upon others.

In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes ridiculous, and always unjust, to make property the criterion of the right of voting. If the sum, or value of the property upon which the right is to take place be con- siderable, it will exclude a majority of the people, and v-unite them in a common interest against the government.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 13

and against those who support it, and as the power is always with the majority, they can overturn such a government and its supporters whenever they please.

If, in order to avoid this danger, a small quantity of pro- perty be fixed, as the criterion of the right, it exhibits liberty in disgrace, by putting it in competition with acci- dent and insignificance. When a brood mare shall fortu- nately 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 ? When we consider how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without a crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights.

But the offensive part of the case is, that this exclusion from the right of voting, implies a stigma on the moral character of the persons excluded ; and this is what no part of the community has a right to pronounce upon another part. No external circumstance can justify it ; wealth is no proof of moral character ; nor poverty of the want of it. On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty ; and poverty the negative evidence of inno- cence. If, therefore, property, whether little or much, be made a criterion, the means by which that property has been acquired, ought to be made a criterion also.

The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice, would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should pro- pose to take away that right from others. The right of voting for representatives, is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right, is to reduce a man to a state of slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives, is in this case. The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property. When we speak of right, we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties ; right becomes duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy becomes my duty to guarantee it to another, and he to me ; and those who violate the duty justly incur a forfeiture of the right.

In a political view of the case, the strength and perma- nent security of government is in proportion to the num- ber of people interested in supporting it. The true policy, therefore, is to interest the whole by an equality of rights,

14 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

for the danger arises from exclusions. It is possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion ; and when all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.

While men could be persuaded they had no rights, or that rights appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern them authoritatively. The igno- rance in which they were held, and the superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing it ; but when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it ; when they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them ; when they reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature spontaneously produces ; when they begin to feel their consequence by their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected cannot be redacted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite destruction.

That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the mean of those things, will ever produce that effect with- out having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression ; and besides this, there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery of the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with the care of it, beyond their wants or their independence ; whilst in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable ; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property ', is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally ; but it is always criminally employed, when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights.

In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are wholly created by the property they invest therein ; and no other rights are represented in the government of that company, than what arise out of that property ; neither has that government cognizance of any thing but property.

But the case is totally different with respect to the in- stitution of civil government, organized on the system of

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 15

representation. Such a government has cognizance of every thing and of every man as a member of the national society, whether he has property or not ; and therefore the principle requires that every man and every kind of right be represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man's person is more sacred than the protection of property ; and besides this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or service by which he acquires a livelihood, or maintains his family, is of the nature of property. It is property to him; he has acquired it ; and it is as much the object of his protection, as exterioY property, possessed without that faculty, can be the object of^pr-otection to another person.

I have always believed that the best security for pro- perty, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to violence ; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when pro- perty is made a pretence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right to hold the property, and provokes indig- nation and tumult : for it is unnatural to believe that pro- perty can be secure under the guarantee of a society injured in its rights by the influence of that property.

Next to the injustice and ill-policy of making property a pretence for exclusive rights, is the unaccountable ab- surdity of giving to mere sound the idea of property, and annexing to it certain rights ; for what else is a title but sound ? Nature is often giving to the world some extraor- dinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, 'Plato, &c. These were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd, as if she under- took to manufacture wise men. Hernobles are all counter- feits.

This wax-work order has assumed the name of aristocracy ; and the disgrace of it would be lessened if it could be con- sidered as only childish imbecility. We pardon foppery because of its insignificance, and on the same ground we might pardon the foppery of titles. But the origin of aris- tocracy was worse than foppery. It was robbery. The first aristocrates in all countries were brigands. Those of latter times, sycophants.

It is very well known that in England, (and the same will

16 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

be found in other countries) the great landed estates now held in descent were plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly. If it be asked how they could have been acquired, no answer but that of robbery can be given. That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by manufactures, by agriculture, or by any reputable employ- ment, is certain. How then wrere they acquired? Blush aristocracy to hear your origin, for your progenitors were thieves. They were the Robespierres and the Jacobins of that day. When they had committed the robbery, they en- deavoured to lose the disgrace of it, by sinking their real names under fictitious ones, which they called titles. It is ever the practice of felons to act in this manner.

As property honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protec- tion on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavour to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property ; for when the robber be- comes the legislator, he believes himself secure. That part of the government of England that is called the House of Lords was originally composed of persons who had com- mitted the robberies of which I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the property they had stolen.

But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an injurious effect on the moral and physical charac- ter of man. Like slavery, it debilitates the human faculties ; for as the mind, bowed down by slavery, loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind employed upon ribands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of the objects consumes the man.

It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them ; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them.

An enquiry into the origin of rights, will demonstrate to us, that rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another ; for who is he who could be the first giver ? Or by what principle, or on what au-

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 17

thority, could he possess the right of giving? A declara- tion of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them. It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural right for its foundation, and it in- cludes the principle of a reciprocal guarantee of those rights from man to man. As therefore, it is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man, it consequently follows, that rights appertain to man in right of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The principle of an equality of rights, is clear and simple. Every man can understand it, and it is by under- standing his rights that he learns his duties: for where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most effectual security for his own. But if, in the formation of a constitution we depart from the principle of equal rights, or attempt any modification of it, we plunge into a laby- rinth of difficulties, from which there is no way out but by retreating. Where are we to stop ? Or by what prin- ciple are we to find out the point to stop at, that shall dis- criminate between men of the same country, part of whom shall be free, and the rest not? If property is to be made the criterion, it is a total departure from every moral prin- ciple of liberty, because it is attaching rights to mere matter, and making man the agent of that matter. It is moreover holding up property as an apple of discord, and not only exciting but justifying war against it; for I main- tain the principle, that when property is used as an instru- ment to take away the rights of those who may happen not to possess property, it is used to an unlawful purpose, as fire-arms would be in a similar case.

In a state of nature, all men are equal in rights, but they are not equal in power; the weak cannot protect himself against the strong. This being the case, the institution of civil society is for the purpose of making an equalization of powers that shall be parallel to, and a guarantee of the equality of rights. The laws of a country when properly constructed apply to this purpose. Every man takes the arm of the law for his protection as more effectual than his own; and therefore every man has an equal right in the formation of the government and of the laws by which he is to be governed and judged. In extensive countries and societies, such as America and France, this right, in the individual, can only be exercised by dele-

18 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

gation, that is, by election and representation ; and hence it is that the institution of representative government arises.

Hitherto I have confined myself to matters of principle only. First, that hereditary government has not a right to exist: that it cannot be established on any principle of right; and that it is a violation of all principle. Secondly, that government by election and representation, has its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man; for whe- ther a man be his own law-giver, as he would be in a state of nature ; or whether he exercises his portion of legislative sovereignty in his own person, as might be the case in small democracies where all could assemble for the formation of the laws by which they were to be governed ; or whether he exercises it in the choice of persons to represent him in a national assembly of representatives, the origin of the right is the same in all cases. The first, as is before observed, is defective in power; the second, is practicable only in democracies of small extent; the third, is the greatest scale upon which human government can be insti- tuted.

Next to matters of principle, are matters of opinion, and it is necessary to distinguish between the two. Whether the rights of men shall be equal is not a matter of opinion but of right, and consequently of principle ; for men do not hold their rights as grants from each other, but each one in right of himself. Society is the guardian but not the giver. And as in extensive societies, such as America and France, the right of the individual, in matters of govern- ment, cannot be exercised but by election and representa- tion; it consequently follows that the only system of government, consistent with principle, where simple demo- cracy is impracticable, is the representative system. But as to the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of government shall be arranged and composed, it is altogether matter of opinion. It is necessary that all the parts be conformable with the principle of equal rights; and as long as this principle be religiously adhered to, no very material error can take place, neither can any error con- tinue long in that part that falls within the province of opinion.

In all matters of opinion, the social compact, or the prin- ciple by which society is held together, requires that the majority of opinions become the rule for the whole, and that the minority yields practical obedience thereto. This is perfectly conformable to the principle of equal rights;

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 19

for, in the first place, every man has a right to give an opinion, but no man has a right that his opinion should govern the rest. In the second place, it is not supposed to be known before-hand on which side of any question, whe- there for or against, any man's opinion will fall. He may happen to be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority upon others ; and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one case, he must yield it in the other. All the disorders that have arisen in France, during the progress of the revolution have had their origin, not in the principle of equal rights, but in the violation of that prin- ciple. The principle of equal rights has been repeatedly violated, and that not by the majority, but by -the minority and that minority has been composed of men possessing pro- perty, as welt as of men witJiout property ; property, therefore^ even upon the experience already had, is no more a criterion of character than it is of rights. It will sometimes happen that the minority are right, and the majority are wrong, but as soon as experience proves this to be the case, the minority will increase to a majority, and the error will reform itself by the tranquil operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights. Nothing therefore can justify an insurrection, neither can it ever be necessary, where rights are equal and opinions free.

Taking then the principle of equal rights as the founda- tion of the revolution, and consequently of the constitution, the organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of the government shall be arranged in the constitution, will, as is already said, fall within the province of opinion.

Various methods will present themselves upon a question of this kind ; and though experience is yet wanting to determine which is the best, it has, I think sufficiently de- cided which is the worst. That is the worst, which in its deliberations and decisions is subject to the precipitancy and passion of an individual ; and when the whole legisla- ture is crowded into one body, it is an individual in mass. In all cases of deliberation it is neccesary to have a corps of reserve, and it would be better to divide the representation by lot into two parts, and let them revise and correct each other, than that the whole should sit together and debate at once.

Representative government is not necessarily confined to any one particular form. The principle is the same in all the forms under which it it can be arranged. The equal rights of the people is the root from which the whole

B

20 DISSERTATION ON FIRST

springs, and the branches may be arranged as present opinion or future experience shall best direct. As to that hospital of incurables, (as Chesterfield calls it) the British House of Peers, it is an excrescence growing out of corrup- tion; and there is no more affinity or resemblance between any of the branches of a legislative body originating from the rights of the people, and the aforesaid house of peers, than between a regular member of the human body and an ulcerated wen.

As to that part of government that is called the executive, it is necessary in the first place to fix a precise meaning to the word.

There are but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First, that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing, or putting them in practice. The former corresponds to the intellectual faculties of the human mind, which reasons and determines what shall be done; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body, that puts that determination into practice. If the former decides, and the latter does not perform, it is a state of imbecility; and if the latter acts without the pre- determination of the former, it is a state of lunacy. The executive department therefore is official, and is subordinate to the legislative, as the body is to the mind in a state of health; for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two sovereignties, a sovereignty to will, and a sovereignty to act. The executive is not invested with the power of delibera- ting whether it shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case ; for it can act no other thing than what the laws decree, and it is obliged to act conformably there- to ; and in this view of the case, the executive is made up of all the official departments that execute the laws, of which, that which is called the judiciary is the chief.

But mankind have conceived an idea that some kind of authority is necessary to superintend the execution of the laws, and to see that they are faithfully performed ; and it is by confounding this superintending authority with the official execution, that we get embarrassed about the term executive power. — All the parts in the government of the United States of America that are called THE EXECUTIVE, are no other than authorities to superintend the execution of the laws; and they are so far independent of the legis- lative, that they know the legislative only through the laws and cannot be controuled or directed by it through any other medium.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 21

In what manner this superintending authority shall be appointed or composed, is a matter that falls within the province of opinion. Some may prefer one method, and some another; and in all cases, where opinion only, and not principle, is concerned, the majority of opinions forms the rule for all. There are, however, some things deducible from reason, and evinced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case. The one is, never to invest any individual with extraordinary power ; for besides his being tempted to mis-use it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest <power long in the hands of any number of indivi- duals. The inconveniencies that may be supposed to accom- pany frequent changes, are less to be feared than the danger that arises from long continuance.

I shall conclude this discourse with offering some obser- vations on the means of preserving liberty ; for it is not only necessary that we establish it, but that we preserve it.

It is, in the first place, necessary that we distinguish be- tween the means made use of to overthrow despotism, in order to prepare the way for the establishment of liberty, and the means to be used after the despotism is overthrown.

The means made use of in the first case are justified by necessity. Those means are in general, insurrections ; for whilst the established government of despotism continues in any country, it is scarcely possible that any other means can be used. It is also certain that in the commencement of a revolution, the revolutionary party permit to them- selves a discretionary exercise of power, regulated more by circumstances than by principle, which were the practice to continue, liberty would never be established, or if establish- ed would soon be overthrown. It is never to be expected in a revolution, that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious, that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must co-operate with each other to the final establishment of any principle ; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have no right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct ; not to destroy.

Had a constitution been established two years ago, (as ought to have been done) the violences that have since deso- lated France, and injured the character of the revolution, would, in my opinion, have been prevented. The nation

22 DISSERTATION ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, &C.

would then have been a bond of union, and every individual would have known the line of conduct he was to fpllow. But instead of this, a revolutionary government, a thing without either principle or authority, -was substituted in its place ; virtue and crime depended upon accident ; and that which was patriotism one day became treason the next. AH these things have followed from the want of a constitution ; for it is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and controul the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, THUS FAR SHALT THOU GO AND NO FARTHER. But in the absence of a constitution men look entirely to party ; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty se- cure, must guard even his enemy from oppression ; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

THOMAS PAJNE.

AGRARIAN JUSTICE

OPPOSED TO

agrarian Sato,

AND TO

AGRARIAN MONOPOLY;

BEING A PLAN FOR

MELIORATING THE CONDITION OF MAN,

BY CREATING IN EVERY NATION

a National dfunZr,

To pay to every Person, when arrived at the Age of Twenty-one Years, the Sum of Fifteen Pounds Sterling, to enable him, or her, to begin the World.

AND ALSO,

Ten Pounds Sterling per Annum during Life to every Person now living, of the Age of Fifty Years, and to all Others when they shall arrive at that Age, to enable them to live in Old Age without Wretchedness, and go decently out of the World.

BY THOMAS PAINE.

?lont*on :

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R, CAROLE, 55, FLEET STREET.

1819.

PREFACE.

THE following little piece was written in the winter of 1795 and 96 ; and, as I had not determined whether to publish it during the present war, or to wait till the commencement of a peace, it has lain by me, without addition, from the time it was written.

What has determined me to publish it now is, a Sermon, preached by Watson, Bishop of Llandaff. Some of my readers will recollect, that this Bishop wrote a book, entitled " An Apology for the Bible/' in answer to my " Second Part of the Age of Reason." I procured a copy of his book, and he may depend upon hearing from me on that subject.

At the end of the Bishop's book is a list of the works he has written, among which is the Sermon alluded to ; it is entitled " The Wisdom and Good- ness of God in having made both rich and poor ; with an Appendix containing Reflections on the present State of England and France."

The error contained in the title of this Sermon, determined me to publish my Agrarian Justice. It is wrong to say that God made Rich and Poor ; he

IV PREFACE.

made only Malt and Female; and he gave them the earth for their inheritance.*

Instead of preaching to encourage one part of mankind in insolence

it would he better that the

Priests employed their time to render the condition of man less miserable than it is. Practical Religion consists in doing good; and the only way of serving God is, that of endeavouring to make his creation happy. — All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.

THOMAS PAINE.

* Considerable pains have been taken to procure a perfect copy of this pamphlet, but it does not appear that any such thing was ever printed in England. The publisher is therefore reluctantly compelled to insert the hiatuses, as in the former edition.

AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy, at the same time, the evils it has produced, ought to be considered as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.

Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man, is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances ; on the other he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness ; both of which it has created. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man ; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from Agriculture, Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures.

The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of Europe ; and on the other hand, it appears to be abject when compared to the rich. Civilization, there- fore, or that which is so called, has operated two ways, to make one part of society more affluent, and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

It is always possible to go from the natural to the civilized state, but it is never possible to go from the civilized to the natural state. The reason is, that man, in a natural state, subsisting by hunting, requires ten times the quantity of land to range over to procure himself sustenance, than would

G AGRARIAN JUSTICE,

support him in a civilized state, where the earth is culti- vated. When, therefore, a country becomes populous by the additional aids of cultivation, arts, arid science, there is a necessity of preserving things in that state ; without it, there cannot be sustenance for more, perhaps, than a tenth part of its inhabitants. The thing, therefore, now to be done, is to remedy the evils, and preserve the benefits that have arisen to society, by passing from the natural to that which is called the civilized state.

Taking then the matter upon this ground, the first prin- ciple of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period. But the fact is, that the condition o ' millions in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civi- lization began, or had been born among the Indians of North America of the present day. I will shew how this fact has happened.

It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life- proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.

But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate tre improvement made by cultivation, from the earth itself, upon which that improve- ment is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection ; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent, for I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds ; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.

It is deducible, as well from the nature of the thing, as from all the histories transmitted to us, that the idea of landed property commenced with cultivation, and that there was no such thing as landed property before that time. It could not exist in the first state of man, that of hunters ; it

AGRARIAN J17STICE. 7

did not exist in the second state, that of shepherds : neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Job, so far as the history of the Uible may be credited in probable things, were owners of land. Their property consisted, as is always enumerated, in flocks and herds, and they travelled with them from place to place. The frequent contentions at that time about the use of a well in the dry country of Arabia, where those people lived, shew also there was no landed property. It was not admitted that land could be located as property.

There could be no such thing as landed property origin- ally. Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it ; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title- deeds should issue. — From whence then arose the idea of landed property ? I answer as before, that when cultivation began, the idea of landed property began with it ; from the impossibility of separating the improvement made by cul- tivation from the earth itself upon which that improvement was made. The value of the improvement so far exceeded the value of the natural earth, at that time as to absorb it ; till, in the end, the common right of all became confounded into the cultivated right of the individual. But they are, nevertheless, distinct species of rights, and will continue to be so as long as the world endures.

It is only by tracing things to their origin, that we can gain rightful ideas of them; and it is by gaining such ideas that we discover the boundary that divides right from wrong,, and which teaches every man to know his own. I have en- titled this tract Agrarian Justice, to distinguish it from Agrarian Law. Nothing could be more unjust than Agra- rian Law in a country improved by cultivation; for though every man us an inhabitant of the earth, is a joint pro- prietor of it in its natural state, it does not follow that he is a joint proprietor of cultivated earth. The additional value made by cultivation, after the system was admitted, became the property of those who did it, or who inherited it: from them, or who purchased it. It had originally an owner. Whilst, therefore, I advocate the right and interest myself in the hard ease of all those who have been thrown out of their natural inheritance by the introduction of the system of landed property, I equally defend the ris;ht of the pos- sessor to the part which is his.

Cultivation is, at least, one of the greatest natural im-

8 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

provements ever made by human invention. Jt has given to created earth a ten-fold value. But the lauded monopoly, that began with it, has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss ; and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretched- ness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dipossessed, it is a right and not a charity that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards, till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the sytem of government. Let us then do honour to revolutions by justice, and give cur- rency to their principles by blessings.

Having thus, in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of Fifteen Pounds sterling, as a compensation in part for the loss of his or her natural inheritance by the introduc- tion of the system of landed property ; and also the sum of Ten Pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

MEANS BY WHICH THE FUND IS TO BE CREATED.

I have already established the principle, namely, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state, was, and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE. — that in that state every person would have been born to property — and that the system of landed pro- perty, by its inseparable connection with cultivation, and with what is called civilized life, has absorbed the property of all those whom it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss.

The fault, however, is not in the present possessors. No complaint is intended, or ought to be alleged against them, unless they adopt the crime by opposing justice. The fault is in the system, and it has stolen imperceptibly upon the world, aided afterwards by the Agrarian law of the sword. But the fault can be made to reform itself by successive ge-

AGRARIAN JUSTICE. 9

Derations, without diminishing or deranging the property of any of the present possessors, and yet the operation of the fund can commence, and be in full activity the first year of its establishment, or soon after, as I shall shew.

It is proposed that the payments, as already stated, be made to every person, rich or poor. It is best to make it so, to prevent invidious distinctions. It is also right it should be so, because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created or inherited from those who did. Such persons as do not chuse to receive it, can throw it into the common fund.

Taking it then for granted, that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been, had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.

Various methods may be proposed for this purpose, but that which appears to be the best, not only because it will operate without deranging any present possessions, or with- out interfering with the collection of taxes, or emprunts necessary for the purpose of Government and the Revolu- tion, but because it will be the least troublesome and the most effectual, and also because the subtraction will be made at a time that best admits it, which is, at the moment that property is passing by the death of one person to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives nothing ; the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is, that the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right, begins to cease in his person. A generous man would wish it not to continue, and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished.

My state of health prevents my making sufficient inquiries with respect to the doctrine of probabilities, whereon to found calculations with such degrees of certainty as they are capable of. What, therefore, I offer on this head is more the result of observation and reflection, than of re- ceived information ; but I believe it will be found to agree sufficiently enough with fact.

In the first place, taking twenty-one years as the epoch of maturity, all the property of a Nation, real and personal, is always in the possession of persons above that age. It is

10 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

then necessary to know as a datum of calculation, the average of years which persons above that age will live. I take this average to be about thirty years, for though many persons will live forty, fifty, or sixty years after the age of twenty-one years, others will die much sooner, and some in every year of that time.

Taking, then, thirty years as the average of time, it will give without any material variation, one way or other, the average of time in which the whole property or capital of a Nation, or a sum equal thereto, will have passed through one entire revolution in descent, that is, will have gone by deaths to new possessors ; for though, in many instances, some parts of this capital will remain forty, fifty, or sixty years in the possession of one person, other parts will have revolved two or three times before that thirty years expire, which will bring it to that average ; for were one half the capital of a Nation to revolve twice in thirty years, it would produce the same fund as if the whole revolved once.

Taking, then, thirty years as the average of time in which the whole capital of a Nation, or a sum equal thereto, will revolve once, the thirtieth part thereof will be the sum that will revolve every year, that is, will go by deaths to new possessors, and this last sum being thus known, and the ratio per cent, to be subtracted from it being determined, will give the annual amount or income of the proposed fund, to be applied as already mentioned,

In looking over the discourse of the English Minister, Pitt, in his opening of what is called in England the budget, (the scheme of finance for the year 1796) I find an estimate of the national capital of that country. As this estimate of a national capital is prepared ready to my hand, I take it as a datum to act upon. When a calculation is made upon the known capital of any Nation combined with its popula- tion, it will serve as a scale for any other nation, in pro- portion as its capital and population be more or less. I am the more disposed to take this estimate of Mr. Pitt, for the purpose of shewing to that Minister, upon his own calculation, bow much better money may be employed, than in wasting it, as he has done, on the wild project of setting up Bourbon kings. What, in the name of Heaven, are. Bourbon kings to the people of England ? It is better that the people of Eugl^n'l have bread.

Mr. Pitt states the national capital of England, real and personal, to be one thousand three hundred millions sterling, which is about one fourth part of the national capital of

AGRARIAN JUSTICE. 11

France, including Belgia. The event of the last harvest in each country proves that the soil of France is more produc- tive than that of England, and that it can better support twenty four or twenty-five millions of inhabitants than that of England can seven, or seven and a half. -

The thirtieth part of this capital of £1,300,000,000 is £43,333,333, which is the part that will revolve every year by deaths in that country to new possessors ; and the sum that will annually revolve in France in the proportion of four to one, will be about one hundred and seventy-three millions sterling. From this sum of £43,333,333 annually revolving, is to be subtracted the value of the natural inheritance absorbed in it, which perhaps, in fair justice, cannot be taken at less, and ought not to be taken at more, than a tenth part.

It will always happen, that of the property thus revolving by deaths every year, part will descend in a direct line to sons and daughters, and the other part collaterally, and the proportion will be found to be about three to one; that is, about thirty million of the above sum will descend to direct heirs, and the remaining sum of £13,333,333 to more distant relations, and part to strangers.

Considering then that man is always related to society, that relationship will become comparatively greater in pro- portion as the next of kin is more distant. It is therefore consistent with civilization, to say, that where there are no direct heirs, society shall be heir to a part over and above the tenth part due to society. If this additional part be from five to ten or twelve per cent, in proportion as the next of kin be nearer or more remote, so as to average with the escheats that may fall, which ought always to go to society and not to the Government, an addition of ten per cent, more,- the produce from the annual sum of £43,333,333 will be.

From 30,000,000— at 10 per cent 3,000,000

From 13,333,333— at 10 per cent, with addition 10 per cent, more

£43,333,333 £5,666,666

Having thus arrived at the annual amount of the pro- posed fund, I come, in the next place, to speak of the population proportioned to this fund, and to compare it with the uses to which the fund is to be applied.

12 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

The population (I mean that of England) does not exceed seven millions and a half, and the number of persons, above the age of fifty will, in that case, be about four hundred thousand. There would not, however, be more than that number that would accept the proposed ten pounds sterling per annum, though they would be entitled to it. 1 have no idea it would be accepted by many persons who had a yearly income of two or three hundred pounds sterling. But as we often see instances of rich people falling into sudden poverty, even at the age of sixty, they would always have the right of drawing all the arrears due to them. — Four millions, therefore, of the above annual sum of £5,666,666 will be required for four hundred thousand aged persons, at ten pounds sterling each.

I come now to speak of the persons annually arriving at twenty-one years of age. If all the persons who died were above the age of twenty- one years, the number of persons annually arriving at that age, must be equal to the annual number of deaths to keep the population stationary. But the greater part die under the age of twenty-one, and there- fore the number of persons annually arriving at twenty-one, will be less than half the number of deaths. The whole number of deaths upon a population of seven millions and a half, will be about 220,000 annually. — The number at twenty-one years of age will be about 100,000. The whole number of these will not receive the proposed fifteen pounds, for the reasons already mentioned, though, as in the former case, they would be entitled to it. Admitting, then, that a tenth part declined receiving it, the amount would stand thus :

Fund annually ,,... £5,666,666

To 400,000 aged persons, at [01. )

each £4,000,000 f , ™ nnn

To 90,000 persons of twenty-one f

years, 151. sterling each 1,350,000}

Remains £ 316,666

There is in every country a number of blind and lame persons, totally incapable of earning a livelihood. But as it will happen that the greater number of blind persons will be among those who are above the age of fifty years, they will be provided for in that class. The remaining sura of

AGRARIAN JUSTICE. 18

c£316,666, will provide for the lame and blind under that age, at the same rate of 10Z. annually for each person.

Having now gone through all the necessary calculations, and stated the particulars of the plan, I shall conclude with some observations.

It is not charity but a right — not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of what is called civilization is It is the reverse of

what it ought to be, and The

contrast of aflluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches, because they are capable of good. I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. — But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, whilst so much misery is mingled in the scene. The sight of the misery, and the unpleasant sensations it suggests, which though they may be suffocated, can- not be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence than the proposed ten per cent, upon property is worth. He that would not give the one to get rid of the other, has no charity, even for himself.

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities es- tablished by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civiliza- tion upon such principles as to act like a system of pullies, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

The plan here proposed will reach the whole. It will immediately relieve and take out of view three classes of wretchedness ; the blind, the lame, and the aged poor. It will furnish the rising generation with means to pre- vent their becoming poor; and it will do this, without deranging or interfering with any national measures.

To shew that this will be the case, it is sufficient to ob- serve, that the operation and effect of the plan will, in all cases, be the same, as if every individual was voluntarily to make his will, and dispose of his property, in the manner here proposed.

But it is justice, and not charity, that is the principle of the plan, lii all great cases it is necessary to have a

14 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

ciple more universally active than charity ; and with respect to justice, it ought not to be left to the choice of detached individuals, whether they will do justice or not. Consider- ing, then, the plan on the ground of justice, it ought to be the act of the whole, growing spontaneously out of the principles of the revolution, and the reputation of it to be national, and not individual.

A plan upon this principle would benefit the revolution by the energy that springs from the consciousness of justice. It would multiply also the national resources ; for property, like vegetation, increases by off-sets. When a young couple begin the world, the difference is exceedingly great, whether they begin with nothing or with fifteen pounds a piece. With this aid they could buy a cow, and implements to cultivate a few acres of land ; and instead of becoming bur- thens upon society, which is always the case, where chil- dren are produced faster than they can be fed, they would be put in the way of becoming useful and profitable citizens. The national domains also would sell the better, if pecuniary aids were provided to cultivate them in small lots.

It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched, only at the time they become so. — Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to devise means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged face of society, checquered with the extremes of affluence and of want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor, in all countries, are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible for them to get out of that state of them- selves. It ought also to be observed, that this mass increases in all the countries that are called civilized. More persons fall annually into it, than get out of it.

Though in a plan in which justice and humanity are the foundation principles, interest ought not to be admitted into the calculation, yet it is always of advantage to the esta- blishment of any plan, to shew that it is beneficial as a matter of interest. The success of any proposed plan, sub- mitted to public consideration, must finally depend on the numbers interested in supporting it, united with the justice of its principles.

AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

15

The plan here proposed will benefit all without injuring any. It will consolidate the interest of the republic with that of the individual. To the numerous cla.ss dispossessed of their natural inheritance by the system of landed property, it will bean i\ct of national justice. To persons dying pos- sessed of moderate fortunes, it will operate as a tontine to their children, more beneficial than the sum of money paid into the fund ; and it will give to the accumulation of riches a degree of security that none of the old Governments of Europe, now tottering on their foundation, can give.

I do not suppose, that more than one family in ten, in any of the countries of Europe, has, when the head of the family dies, a clear property left of five hundred pounds sterling. To all such the plan is advantageous. That pro- perty would pay fifty pounds into the fund, and if there were only two children under age, they would receive fifteen pounds each (thirty pounds) on coming of age, and be entitled to ten pounds a year after fifty. It is from the overgrown acquisition of property that the fund will sup- port itself; and I know that the possessors of such property in England, though they would eventually be benefited by the protection of nine-tenths of it, will exclaim against the plan. 15ut, without entering into any enquiry how they came by that property, let them recollect, that they have been the advocates of this war, and that Mr. Pitt has already laid on more new taxes to be raised annually upon the People of England, and that for supporting the des- potism of Austria and the Bourbons, against the liberties of France, than would annually pay all the sums proposed in this plan.

I have made the calculations, stated in this plan, upon what is called personal, as well as upon landed property. The reason for making it upon land is already explained ; and the reason for taking personal property into the calcu- lation, is equally well founded, though on a different prin- ciple. Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of Society ; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of Society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to pos- sess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot become rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the

16 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands pro- duce, is derived to him by living in society ; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civiliza- tion, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely, it will be found, that the accu- mulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for (ho labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence. It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labour to the profits it produces ; and it will also be said, as an apology for injustice, that \vere a workman to receive an increase of wages daily, he would not save it against old age, nor be much the better for it in the interim. Make, then, Society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund ; for it is no reason that because he might not make a good use of it for himself, that another shall take it.

The state of civilization that has prevailed throughout Europe, is as unjust in its principle, as it is horrid in its effects; and it is the consciousness of this, and the appre* hension that such a state cannot continue when once inves- tigation begins in any country, that makes t\ie possessors dread every idea of a revolution. It is the hazard, arid not (he principles of a revolution, that retards their progress. This being the case, it is necessary, as well for the protec- tion of property, as for the sake of justice and humanity, to form a system, that whilst it preserves one part of society from wretchedness, shall secure the other from depredation. The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that for- merly surrounded affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendour, instead of fasci- nating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult upon wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.

To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove (he antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every indi-

AGIIARTAN JUSTICE. 17

vicinal. When the riches of one man above another shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it •shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man ac- quires, the better it shall be for the general mass ; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of natural interest and protection.

I have no property in France to become subject to the plan I propose. What 1 have, which is not much, is in the United States of America. But I will pay one hundred pounds sterling towards this fund in France, the instant it shall be established; and I will pay the same sum in ^ng- land, whenever a similar establishment shall take pL that country.

A revolution in the state of civilization is the necessary companion of revolutions in the system of government. If a revolution in any country be from bad to good, or from good to bad, the state of what is called civilization in that country, must be made conformable thereto, to give that revolution effect. Despotic Government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such Governments consider man merely as an animal ; that the exercise of the intellectual faculty is not his privilege ; I fiat he has nothing to do with the laws, but to obey Ihem;^ and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation.

It is a revolution in the state of civilization, that will give perfection to the revolution of France. Already the con- viction that Government by representation, is the true system of Government, is spreading itself fast in the world. The reasonableness of it can be seen by all. The justness of it makes itself felt even by its opposers. But when a system of civilization, growing out of that system of government, shall be so organized, that not a man or woman born in the Republic, but shall inherit some means of beginning the world, and see before them the certainty of escaping the miseries, that under other Governments accom- pany old ago, the revolution of France will have an advo- cate and an ally in the hearts of ail nations.

* Expression of Horsley, an English Bishop, in the iin^l.sh Parliament.

1 AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot— It will succeed where diplomatic manage- ment would fail — It is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean, that can arrest its progress — It will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.

THOMAS PAINE.

MEANS FOR CARRYING THE PROPOSED PLAN INTO EXECUTION, AND TO RENDER IT AT THE SAME TIME CONDUCIVE TO THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

I. Each canton shall elect in its primary assemblies, three persons, as commissioners for that canton, who shall take cognizance, and keep a register of all matters happening in that canton, conformable to the charter that shall be estab- lished by law, for earring this plan into execution.

II. The law shall fix the manner in which the property of deceased persons shall be ascertained.

III. When the amount of the property of any deceased person shall be ascertained, the principal heir to that pro- perty, or the eldest of the co-heirs, if of lawful age, or if under age, the person authorized by the will of the deceased to represent him, or them, shall give bond to the commis- sioners of the canton, to pay the said tenth part thereof within the space of one year, in four equal quarterly pay- ments, or sooner, at the choice of the payers. One half of the whole property shall remain as security until the bond be paid off.

IV. The bonds shall be registered in the office of the commissioners of the canton, and the original bonds shall be deposited in the national bank at Paris. The bank shall publish every quarter of a year the amount of the bonds in its possession, and also the bonds that shall have been paid off, or what parts thereof, since the last quarterly publication.

V. The national bank shall issue bank notes upon the security of the bonds in its possession. The notes so issued shall be applied to pay the pensions of aged persons, and the compensation of persons arriving at twenty-one years of age. It is both reasonable and generous to suppose, that persons not under immediate necessity will suspend their right of drawing on the fund, until it acquire, as it will dor

AGRARIAN JUSTICE. 19

a greater degree of ability. In this case, it is proposed, that an honorary register be kept in each canton, of the names of the persons thus suspending that right, at least during the present war.

VI. As the inheritors of the property must always take up their bonds in four quarterly payments, or sooner if they chuse, there will aways be numeraire arriving at the bank after the expiration of the first quarter, to exchange for the bank notes that shall be brought in.

VII. The bank notes being thus got into circulation, upon the best of all possible security, that of actual property to more than four times the amount of the bonds upon which the notes are issued, and with numeraire continually arriving at the bank to exchange or pay them off whenever they shall be presented for that purpose, they will acquire a permanent value in all parts of the republic. They can therefore be received in payment of taxes or emprunts, equal to nume- raire, because the Government can always receive numeraire for them at the bank.

VIII. It will be necessary that the payments of the ten per cent, be made in numeraire for the first year, from the establishment of the plan. But after the expiration of the first year, the inheritors of property may pay the ten per cent, either in bank notes issued upon the fund, or in nume- raire. It will lie as a deposit at the bank, to be exchanged for a quantity of notes equal to that amount; and if in notes issued upon the fund, it will cause a demand upon the fund equal thereto; and thus the operation of the plan will create means to carry itself into execution.

Printed by R. Carlile, 55, Fleet Street, London.

THE

DECLINE AND FALL

OF THE

ENGLISH SYSTEM

OF

BY THOMAS PAINE.

liotUron:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.

1819.

THE

DECLINE AND FALL,

Sfc. fyc.

NOTHING, they say, is more certain than death, and no- thing more uncertain than the time of dying; yet we can always fix a period beyond which man cannot live, and within some moment of which he will die. We are en- abled to do this, not by any spirit of prophecy, or foresight into the event, but by observation of what has happened in all cases of human or animal existence. If, then, any other subject, such, for instance, as a System of Finance, exhibits in its progress, a series of symptoms indicating decay, its final dissolution is certain, and the period of it can be calcu- lated from the symptoms it exhibits.

Those who have hitherto written on the English System of Finance (the Funding System) have been uniformly im- pressed with the idea of its downfall happening some time or other. They took, however, no data for that opinion, but expressed it predictively, or merely as opinion, from a con- viction that the perpetual duration of such a system was a natural impossibility. It is in this manner that Doctor Price has spoken of it; and Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, has spoken in the same manner; that is, merely as opinion with- out data. " The progress (says Smith) of the enormous debts, which at present oppress, and will, in the long run, most probably ruin all the great Nations in Europe, (he should have said Government} has been pretty uniform." But this general manner of speaking, though it might make some impression, carried with it no conviction.

It is not my intention to predict any thing ; but I will shew from data already known, from symptoms and facts which the English funding system has already exhibited publicly, that it will not continue to the end of Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live the usual age of a man. How much sooner it may fall, I leave to others to predict.

Let financiers diversify systems of credit as they will, it

4 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE

is nevertheless true, that every system of credit is a system of paper money. Two experiments have already been had upon paper money ; the one in America, the other in France. In both those cases the whole capital was emitted, and that whole capital, which, in America, was called continental money, and in France assignats, appeared in circulation ; the consequence of which was, that the quantity became so enormous, and so disproportioned to the quantity of popu- lation, and to the quantity of objects upon which it could be employed, that the market, if I may so express it, was glut- ted with it, and the value of it fell. Between five and six years determined the fate of those experiments. The same fate would have happened to gold and silver, could gold and silver have been issued in the same abundant manner as paper had been, and confined within the country as paper money always is, by having no circulation out of it; or, to speak on a larger scale, the same thing would happen in the world, could the world be glutted with gold and silver, as America and France have been with paper.

The English system differs from that of America and France in this one particular, that its capital is kept out of sight; that is, it does not appear in circulation. Were the whole capital of the National debt, which at the time I write this is almost four hundred million pounds sterling, to be emitted in assignats or bills, and that whole quantity put into circulation, as was done in America and in France, those English assignats, or bills, would sink in value as those of America and France have done; and that in a greater degree, because the quantity of them would be more disproportioned to the quantity of population in England, than was the case in either of the other two countries. A nominal pound sterling in such bills would not be worth one penny.

But though the English system, by thus keeping the capital out of sight, is preserved from hasty destruction, as in the case of America arid France, it nevertheless ap- proaches the same fate, and will arrive at it with the same certainty, though by a slower progress. The difference is altogether in the degree of speed by which the two systems approach their fate, which, to speak in round numbers, is as twenty is to one; that Jls, the English system, that of funding the capital instead of issuing it, contained within itself a capacity of enduring twenty times longer than the system adopted by America and France ; and at the end of that time it would arrive at the same common grave, the Potter's field, of pu.per money.

ENGLISH SYSTEM OF FINANCE. 5

The datum, 1 take for this proportion of twenty to one, is the difference between a capital and the interest at five per cent. Twenty times the interest is equal to the capital. The accumulation of paper money in England is in propor- tion to the accumulation of the interest upon every new-