Mr. Attorney General:
Sir,--As there can be no personal resentment between two strangers, I
write this letter to you, as to a man against whom I have no animosity.
You have, as Attorney General, commenced a prosecution against me, as
the author of Rights of Man. Had not my duty, in consequence of my being
elected a member of the National Convention of France, called me from
England, I should have staid to have contested the injustice of
that prosecution; not upon my own account, for I cared not about the
prosecution, but to have defended the principles I had advanced in the
work.
1 Read to the Jury by the Attorney General, Sir Archibald
Macdonald, at the trial of Paine, December 18, 1792, which
resulted in his outlawry.--_Editor._
The duty I am now engaged in is of too much importance to permit me to
trouble myself about your prosecution: when I have leisure, I shall have
no objection to meet you on that ground; but, as I now stand, whether
you go on with the prosecution, or whether you do not, or whether you
obtain a verdict, or not, is a matter of the most perfect indifference
to me as an individual. If you obtain one, (which you are welcome to
if you can get it,) it cannot affect me either in person, property, or
reputation, otherwise than to increase the latter; and with respect to
yourself, it is as consistent that you obtain a verdict against the Man
in the Moon as against me; neither do I see how you can continue the
prosecution against me as you would have done against one _your own
people, who_ had absented himself because he was prosecuted; what passed
at Dover proves that my departure from England was no secret. (1)
My necessary absence from your country affords the opportunity of
knowing whether the prosecution was intended against Thomas Paine, or
against the Right of the People of England to investigate systems and
principles of government; for as I cannot now be the object of the
prosecution, the going on with the prosecution will shew that something
else was the object, and that something else can be no other than the
People of England, for it is against _their Rights_, and not against
me, that a verdict or sentence can operate, if it can operate at all.
Be then so candid as to tell the Jury, (if you choose to continue the
process,) whom it is you are prosecuting, and on whom it is that the
verdict is to fall.(2)
But I have other reasons than those I have mentioned for writing you
this letter; and, however you may choose to interpret them, they proceed
from a good heart. The time, Sir, is becoming too serious to play
with Court prosecutions, and sport with national rights. The terrible
examples that have taken place here, upon men who, less than a year ago,
thought themselves as secure as any prosecuting Judge, Jury, or Attorney
General, now can in England, ought to have some weight with men in
your situation. That the government of England is as great, if not the
greatest, perfection of fraud and corruption that ever took place since
governments began, is what you cannot be a stranger to, unless the
constant habit of seeing it has blinded your senses; but though you
may not chuse to see it, the people are seeing it very fast, and the
progress is beyond what you may chuse to believe. Is it possible that
you, or I, can believe, or that reason can make any other man believe,
that the capacity of such a man as Mr. Guelph, or any of his profligate
sons, is necessary to the government of a nation? I speak to you as one
man ought to speak to another; and I know also that I speak what other
people are beginning to think.