In those days there used to meet in Franklin's library a "Society for Political Inquiries." It had forty-two members, among them Washington, James Wilson, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, Clymer, Rush, Bingham, Bradford, Hare, Rawle, and Paine. A memorandum of Rawle says: "Paine never opened his mouth, but he furnished one of the few essays which the members of the Society were expected to produce. It was a well written dissertation on the inexpediency of incorporating towns."* That in such company, and at such a time, Paine should be silent, or discuss corporations, suggests political solitude. Franklin, indeed, agreed with him, but was too old to struggle against the reaction in favor of the bicameral and other English institutions. * "Memoir of Penn. Hist. Soc, 1840." The gist of Paine's paper (read Apr. 20,1787) is no doubt contained in "The Rights of Man," Part II., Ch. 5. M. Chanut ("Nouv. Biog. Générale") says that Paine's bridge was not erected on the Schuylkill because of "the imperfect state of iron manufacture in America." Something of the same kind might be said of the state of political architecture. And so it was, that while the Convention was assembling in Independence Hall, he who first raised the standard of Independence, and before the Declaration proposed a Charter of the "United Colonies of America," was far out at sea on his way to rejoin his comrades in the old world, whose hearts and burdens he had represented in the new. The printed Rules of the Society (founded February 9, 1787) are in the Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. The preamble, plainly Paine's, says: "Important as these inquiries are to all, to the inhabitants of these republics they are objects of peculiar magnitude and necessity. Accustomed to look up to those nations, from whom we have derived our origin, for our laws, our opinions, and our manners, we have retained with undistinguishing reverence their errors, with their improvements; have blended with our public institutions the policy of dissimilar countries; and have grafted on our infant commonwealth the manners of ancient and corrupted monarchies. In having effected a separate government, we have as yet effected but a partial independence. The revolution can only be said to be compleat, when we shall have freed ourselves, no less from the influence of foreign prejudices than from the fetters of foreign power." CHAPTER XVI. RETURNING TO THE OLD HOME