The remains of the old Convention invited Paine to resume his place in their assemblage. A committee of eleven, unaided by his experience, had been working at a new constitution, the political spring-fashion in Paris for that year. It was the plan since known as the _Directoire_, reported complete about the time Paine reappeared in the Convention. Disapproving of some of the details of this instrument, Paine furbished up his old weapons, and published "A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government." This tract he distributed among members,--the _libretto_ of the speech he intended to make. Accordingly, on the 5th of July, on motion of his old ally, Lanthenas, who had managed to crawl safely through the troubles, permission was granted to Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the "Declaration of Rights and the Constitution." He ascended the tribune for the last time, and the secretary read the translation. He began, of course, with rights; but qualified them by adding, that, when we consider rights, we ought always to couple with them the idea of duties,--a happy union, which did not strike him before the Reign of Terror, and which is almost always overlooked. He then brought forward his universal political specific and panacea,--representative government and a written constitution. "Had a constitution been established two years ago," he said, "(as ought to have been done,) the violences that have since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution would, in my opinion, have been prevented." There is nothing else in his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use of the _reductio-ad-absurdum_ illustration so often attributed to Dr. Franklin:--"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?" The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's lesson to the insurgents of Vendémiaire, in front of the Church of St. Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for France.