I see with pleasure, that in respect to one point, we are already agreed; and that is the extreme danger of a civil list of thirty millions. I can discover no reason why one of the parts of the government should be supported with so extravagant a profusion, whilst the other scarcely receives what is sufficient for its common wants. This dangerous and dishonorable disproportion at once supplies the one with the means of corrupting, and throws the other into the predicament of being corrupted. In America there is but little difference, with regard to this point, between the legislative and the executive part of our government; but the first is much better attended to than it is in France.* In whatsoever manner, sir, I may treat the subject of which you have proposed the investigation, I hope that you will not doubt my entertaining for you the highest esteem. I must also add, that I am not the personal enemy of kings. Quite the contrary. No man more heartily wishes than myself to see them all in the happy and honorable state of private individuals; but, I am the avowed, open, and intrepid enemy of what is called monarchy; and I am such by principles which nothing can either alter or corrupt-by my attachment to humanity; by the anxiety which I feel within myself, for the dignity and the honor of the human race; by the disgust which I experience, when I observe men directed by children, and governed by brutes; by the horror which all the evils that monarchy has spread over the earth excite within my breast; and by those sentiments which make me shudder at the calamities, the exactions, the wars, and the massacres (with which monarchy has crushed mankind: in short, it is against all the hell of monarchy that I have declared war. THOMAS PAINE. A deputy to the congress receives about a guinea and a half daily : and provisions are cheaper in America than in France. ADDRESS TO THE ADDRESSERS. COULD I have commanded circumstances with a wish, I 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 inquiry into principles of government, and a desire to read the Rights of Man, in places where that spirit and that work were before unknown. 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 the 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 easy does even the most illiterate reader distinguish the spontaneous effusions of the heart, from the labored productions of the brain! Truth, whenever it can fully appear, is a |