The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (top reads txt) 📕

capture, as I was informed, succeeded by the following stratagem:⁠—The captain of the Madame privateer, who spoke English, on coming up with the packet, passed himself for the captain of an English frigate, and invited the captain of the packet on board, which, when done, he sent some of his own hands back, and he secured the mail. But be the circumstance of the capture what it may, I speak with certainty as to the Government dispatches. They were sent up to Paris to Count Vergennes, and when Colonel Lawrens and myself returned to America we took the originals to Congress.

By these dispatches I saw into the stupidity of the English Cabinet far more than I otherwise could have done, and I renewed my former design. But Colonel Lawrens was so unwilling to return alone, more especially as, among other matters, we had a charge of upwards of two hundred thousand pounds sterling in money, that I gave in to his wishes, and finally gave up my plan. But I am now certain that if I could have executed it that it would not have been altogether unsuccessful. ↩

At a Society for Political Inquiries which met at Dr. Franklin’s house, 1787, (Philadelphia), Paine read a paper “On the inexpediency of incorporating, towns.” (Penn. Hist. Soc. Memoirs, 1840.) The essay has not been discovered. —⁠Conway ↩

It is difficult to account for the origin of charter and corporation towns, unless we suppose them to have arisen out of, or been connected with, some species of garrison service. The times in which they began justify this idea. The generality of those towns have been garrisons, and the corporations were charged with the care of the gates of the towns, when no military garrison was present. Their refusing or granting admission to strangers, which has produced the custom of giving, selling, and buying freedom, has more of the nature of garrison authority than civil government. Soldiers are free of all corporations throughout the nation, by the same propriety that every soldier is free of every garrison, and no other persons are. He can follow any employment, with the permission of his officers, in any corporation towns throughout the nation. ↩

See Sir John Sinclair’s History of the Revenue. The land-tax in 1646 was £2,473,499. ↩

The motto of the Liberator (Boston, U.S., Jan. 1, 1831) was: “Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind.” In adopting this motto Garrison was not aware of Paine’s sentence above, nor that Paine had been a pioneer in the cause of emancipation in America. The facts were pointed out to me by one of Mr. Garrison’s sons. See my Life of Paine, Vol. I, p. 52 —⁠Conway ↩

The two paragraphs preceding this were omitted by Paine in the cheap edition (Symonds, 1792) with the following in parenthesis: “Those two short paragraphs are taken into the information as prosecutable matter; but on what ground such a prosecution can be supported I am at a loss to discover. Every part of which a government is composed must be alike open to examination and investigation; and where this is not the case the country is not in a state of freedom; for it is only by the free and rational exercise of this right, that errors, impositions, and absurdities can be detected and rendered either in the parts severally, or in the whole.⁠—If there be any part in a government on which the exercise of this right ought to be more fully insisted upon by a nation than on another part, it is on that part for which a nation pays the most money, and which, in England, is called the crown.”

It may be noted that the two prosecuted paragraphs might now be quoted by conservatism in favour of the English monarchy, since Paine agrees that it is the laws that govern, and not the man. Practically, he regards retention of the throne as merely a question of expense. —⁠Conway ↩

Several of the court newspapers have of late made frequent mention of Wat Tyler. That his memory should be traduced by court sycophants and an those who live on the spoil of a public is not to be wondered at. He was, however, the means of checking the rage and injustice of taxation in his time, and the nation owed much to his valour. The history is concisely this:⁠—In the time of Richard II a poll tax was levied of one shilling per head upon every person in the nation of whatever estate or condition, on poor as well as rich, above the age of fifteen years. If any favour was shown in the law it was to the rich rather than to the poor, as no person could be charged more than twenty shillings for himself, family and servants, though ever so numerous; while all other families, under the number of twenty were charged per head. Poll taxes had always been odious, but this being also oppressive and unjust, it excited as it naturally must, universal detestation among the poor and middle classes. The person known by the name of Wat Tyler, whose proper name was Walter, and a tiler by trade, lived at Deptford. The gatherer of the poll tax, on coming to his house, demanded tax for one of his daughters, whom Tyler declared was under the age of fifteen. The tax-gatherer insisted on satisfying himself, and began an indecent examination of the girl, which, enraging the father, he struck him with a hammer that brought him to the ground, and was the cause of his death. This circumstance served to bring the discontent to an issue. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood espoused the cause of Tyler, who in a few days was joined, according to some histories, by upwards of fifty thousand