Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/103

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V.

OUTLAWS AND CONSPIRATORS.

Paine—Vaughan—Muir—Perry—British Club.


The French Revolution, like a new religion, effaced the feeling of nationality, and led men, partly from a sense of duty to the world, partly from inordinate vanity, to expatriate themselves, or even to plot their country's downfall. Prominent among these was Thomas Paine—in France he spelt his name Payne—who was the only foreigner besides Cloots who sat in the Convention, and who, more fortunate than Cloots, suffered nothing worse than imprisonment. He had twice visited Paris prior to the Revolution, but his previous career need not be related. He paid a third visit in 1790, and a fourth in 1791, when four Frenchmen joined him in constituting themselves a "Republican Society." On the king's flight to Varennes, Paine drew up a Republican manifesto, which Achille Duchatelet, though his English wife, Charlotte Comyn, was a court pensioner, translated, signed, and placarded on the doors of the Assembly.