London, June 21st 1792.
WHEN I wrote you the letter which Mr. Home Tooke did me the favour to
present to you, as chairman of the meeting held at Epsom, Monday, June
18, it was not with much expectation that you would do me the justice of
permitting, or recommending it to be publicly read. I am well aware that
the signature of Thomas Paine has something in it dreadful to sinecure
Placemen and Pensioners; and when you, on seeing the letter opened,
informed the meeting that it was signed Thomas Paine, and added in a
note of exclamation, "the common enemy of us all." you spoke one of the
greatest truths you ever uttered, if you confine the expression to
men of the same description with yourself; men living in indolence and
luxury, on the spoil and labours of the public.
The letter has since appeared in the "Argus," and probably in other
papers.(1) It will justify itself; but if any thing on that account
hath been wanting, your conduct at the meeting would have supplied
the omission. You there sufficiently proved that I was not mistaken in
supposing that the meeting was called to give an indirect aid to the
prosecution commenced against a work, the reputation of which will long
outlive the memory of the Pensioner I am writing to.
When meetings, Sir, are called by the partisans of the Court, to
preclude the nation the right of investigating systems and principles
of government, and of exposing errors and defects, under the pretence
of prosecuting an individual--it furnishes an additional motive for
maintaining sacred that violated right.
The principles and arguments contained in the work in question, _Rights
OF Man_, have stood, and they now stand, and I believe ever will stand,
unrefuted. They are stated in a fair and open manner to the world, and
they have already received the public approbation of a greater number of
men, of the best of characters, of every denomination of religion, and
of every rank in life, (placemen and pensioners excepted,) than all the
juries that shall meet in England, for ten years to come, will amount
to; and I have, moreover, good reasons for believing that the approvers
of that work, as well private as public, are already more numerous than
all the present electors throughout the nation.
1 The _Argus_ was edited by Sampson Perry, soon after
prosecuted.--_Editor_.
Not less than forty pamphlets, intended as answers thereto, have
appeared, and as suddenly disappeared: scarcely are the titles of any of
them remembered, notwithstanding their endeavours have been aided by all
the daily abuse which the Court and Ministerial newspapers, for almost
a year and a half, could bestow, both upon the work and the author;
and now that every attempt to refute, and every abuse has failed,
the invention of calling the work a libel has been hit upon, and the
discomfited party has pusillanimously retreated to prosecution and a
jury, and obscure addresses.
As I well know that a long letter from me will not be agreeable to you,
I will relieve your uneasiness by making it as short as I conveniently
can; and will conclude it with taking up the subject at that part where
Mr. HORNE TOOKE was interrupted from going on when at the meeting.
That gentleman was stating, that the situation you stood in rendered it
improper for you to appear _actively_ in a scene in which your private
interest was too visible: that you were a Bedchamber Lord at a thousand
a year, and a Pensioner at three thousand pounds a year more--and here
he was stopped by the little but noisy circle you had collected round.
Permit me then, Sir, to add an explanation to his words, for the benefit
of your neighbours, and with which, and a few observations, I shall
close my letter.
When it was reported in the English Newspapers, some short time since,
that the empress of RUSSIA had given to one of her minions a large tract
of country and several thousands of peasants as property, it very justly
provoked indignation and abhorrence in those who heard it. But if we
compare the mode practised in England, with that which appears to us so
abhorrent in Russia, it will be found to amount to very near the same
thing;--for example--
As the whole of the revenue in England is drawn by taxes from the
pockets of the people, those things called gifts and grants (of which
kind are all pensions and sinecure places) are paid out of that stock.
The difference, therefore, between the two modes is, that in England the
money is collected by the government, and then given to the Pensioner,
and in Russia he is left to collect it for himself. The smallest sum
which the poorest family in a county so near London as Surry, can be
supposed to pay annually, of taxes, is not less than five pounds; and as
your sinecure of one thousand, and pension of three thousand per annum,
are made up of taxes paid by eight hundred such poor families, it comes
to the same thing as if the eight hundred families had been given to
you, as in Russia, and you had collected the money on your account.
Were you to say that you are not quartered particularly on the people
of Surrey, but on the nation at large, the objection would amount to
nothing; for as there are more pensioners than counties, every one may
be considered as quartered on that in which he lives.
What honour or happiness you can derive from being the PRINCIPAL PAUPER
of the neighbourhood, and occasioning a greater expence than the poor,
the aged, and the infirm, for ten miles round you, I leave you to enjoy.
At the same time I can see that it is no wonder you should be strenuous
in suppressing a book which strikes at the root of those abuses. No
wonder that you should be against reforms, against the freedom of the
press, and the right of investigation. To you, and to others of your
description, these are dreadful things; but you should also consider,
that the motives which prompt you to _act_, ought, by reflection, to
compel you to be _silent_.
Having now returned your compliment, and sufficiently tired your
patience, I take my leave of you, with mentioning, that if you had not
prevented my former letter from being read at the meeting, you would not
have had the trouble of reading this; and also with requesting, that
the next time you call me "_a common enemy_," you would add, "_of us
sinecure placemen and pensioners_."