last to open his mouth in French, could reply only by putting his hand to his heart. His portrait found its way even into village inns, and an English lady archly wrote home:
"At the very moment you are sentencing him to instalment in the pillory we may be awarding him a triumph. Perhaps we are both right. He deserves the pillory from you for having endeavoured to destroy a good constitution; and the French may with equal reason grant him a triumph, as their constitution is likely to be so bad that even Mr. Thomas Paine's writings may make it better."[1]
Captain Monro, with more seriousness and severity, exclaimed in a despatch to the English Foreign Office, "What must a nation come to that has so little discernment in the election of their representatives as to elect such a fellow?" Safely out of reach, Paine sent a defiant letter to the English Government, thanking them for extending the popularity of his book by prosecuting it, and sneering at "Mr. Guelph and his debauchee sons" as "incapable of governing a nation." When this letter was read at the trial, Erskine, reprobating its tone, could only suggest that it might be a forgery, and urge that in any case it was irrelevant.
When the king's trial came on Paine voted for his detention during the war, this to be followed by
- ↑ "Residence in France," 1792–5, edited by John Gifford (who perhaps himself wrote these pretended letters).
