Mr. Paine was likewise elected as deputy for Abbeville, Beauvais, and Versailles, as well as for the department of Calais, but the latter having been the first in their choice, he preferred being their representative.
On reaching Paris, Mr. Paine addressed a letter to the English Attorney General, apprizing him of the circumstances of his departure from England, andhinting to him, that any further prosecution of "Rights of Man," would form a proof that the Author was not altogether the object, but the book, and the people of England who should approve its sentiments. A hint was also thrown out that the events of France ought to form a lesson to the English Government, on its attempt to arrest the progress of correct principles and wholesome truths. This letter was in some measure due to the Attorney General, as Mr. Paine had written to him in England on the commencement of the prosecution assuring him, that he should defend the work in person. Notwithstanding the departure of Mr. Paine, as a member of the French National Convention, the information against "Rights of Man" was laid before a jury, on the 2d of December in the same year, and the Government, and its agents, were obliged to content themselves with outlawing Mr. Paine, and punishing him, in effigy, throughout the country! Many a faggot have I gathered in my youth to burn old Tom Paine! In the West of England, his name became quite a substitute for that of Guy Faux. Prejudice, so aptly termed by Mr. Paine, the spider of the mind, was never before carried to such a height against any other individual; and what will future ages think of the corrupt influence of the English Government at the close of the eighteenth century, when it could excite the rancour of a majority of the nation against such a man as Thomas Paine!