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 downfal of the latter, and is subverting that of the former; and it will have the same tendency in all countries; because thought, by some means or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though reading may.

If RIGHTS OF MAN were a book that deserved the vile description 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 Proclamation has given rise, the meetings of the Justices in several 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, whatever 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 Justices 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 country 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

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 investigation, 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 falsehood and abuse, that have been published against the "RIGHTS OF MAN," have fallen before it like pointless arrows; 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, Pensioners, 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 aristocratical, and the democratical.

Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a discordant 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 consequence 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

has been, that of flattering them into taxes, by calling the Government, (or as they please to express it, the English Constitution)" the envy 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 established 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, respecting 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 reasonableness 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 now has, were he to call himself Thomas Paine.

B

!

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, consisted 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 consent, and that his sons, and his sons' sons, whether 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 hereditary Legislators.

Thirdly-That the other house should be chosen in the same manner as the house now called the House of Commons, 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 imposition 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 pretensions any man could have, or what services he could render, to entitle him to a milion 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 hereafter to be born, who might, for any thing they could foresee, 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.

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 accomplished 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 representatives, would become no better than 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 antecedent 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 character, 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 afterwards 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."

66

Then follow the several articles which appoint the manner 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 amendments, shall be made to the Constitution. Consequently, every improvement that can be made in the science of Go