Up to this point Paine had, indeed, carried England with him,--for England was at heart with Fox and the Opposition. When Burke made his first attack on the French Revolution (February 9, 1790), he was repeatedly called to order; and Fox--with tears, for their long friendship was breaking forever--overwhelmed Burke with his rebuke. Even Pitt did not say a word for him. His pamphlet nine months later was ascribed to inspiration of the King, from whom he expected favors; and although the madmen under whom the French Revolution fell presently came to the support of his case. Burke personally never recovered his place in the esteem of England. That the popular instinct was true, and that Burke was playing a deeper game than appeared, was afterwards revealed in the archives of England and France.* * "Thirty thousand copies of Burke's book were circulated in all the courts and among the European aristocracy as so many lighted brands to set Europe in flames. During this time the author, by his secret correspondence, excited Queen Marie- Antoinette, the court, the foreigners, to conspire against the Revolution. 'No compromises with rebels!' he wrote; 'appeal to sovereign neighbors; above all trust to the support of foreign armies.'"--"Histoire de France," par Henri Martin, i., p. 151. There was every reason why Paine's reply should carry liberal statesmen with him. His pamphlet was statesmanlike. The French Constitution at that time was the inchoate instrument beginning with the "Declaration of Rights," adopted on Lafayette's proposal (August 26, 1789), and containing provisions contrary to Paine's views. It recognized the reigning house, and made its executive power hereditary. Yet so free was Paine from pedantry, so anxious for any peaceful advance, that it was at the expected inauguration of this Constitution he had consented to bear the American flag, and in his reply to Burke he respects the right of a people to establish even hereditary executive, the right of constitutional reform being retained. "The French constitution distinguishes between the king and the sovereign; it considers the station of the king as official, and places sovereignty in the nation." In the same practical way he deals with other survivals in the French Constitution--such as clericalism, and the property qualification for suffrage--by dwelling on their mitigations, while reaffirming his own principles on these points.