But he has taken care to provide wisdom for his country before he quits her shores. His far-reaching eye sees that a Federal Constitution will have to be formed for the states, and in 1786 he is careful to incorporate into his Dissertation on Government a _Declaration of Rights_. In this Declaration of Rights lies the foundation of the republic, and although not prefixed to the Federal Constitution at the time it was formed and adopted, a complete synopsis of it was afterward added as the ten first amendments thereto. Franklin has also come home to labor awhile, now more than eighty years old; and being chosen a delegate to the Federal Convention, Mr. Paine sailed for France the 16th of April, 1787, just a month before it convened. He has finished his work in America. This work he did faithfully and well. He is now fifty years old, and there are ten years of revolutionary work, and twenty-two of life before him yet. He took with him to Paris the model of an _iron bridge_. He submits it to the Academy of Sciences. It is pronounced a success, if theory can be sustained by mathematical demonstration. He proposes an iron arch with a span of four hundred and eighty feet. But theory must be tested, and the next year he builds his bridge in an open field near Paddington, in England. Experiment said it was a success, but he got into gaol for debt on account of it. The bridge now spans the river Wear, at Sunderland. This iron arch bridge was the first in the world. The principles are now seen in thousands of bridges in Europe and America; and if they could speak, each one would say: "I was born from the brain of Thomas Paine." Two American merchants assist him to pay his debts, and he gets out of an English gaol in time to go over to France to witness the taking of the Bastile, on the 14th of July, 1789. That "high altar and castle of despotism" fell at the bidding of those republican principles which he had dedicated his life to teach and maintain. It was a most fitting and grand event when Lafayette gave to Thomas Paine the key to the Bastile to present to Washington. It is now the property of this nation.