More than fifty thousand copies of the first part of "The Rights of Man" had been sold, and the public hungrily awaited the author's next work. But he kept back his proofs until Burke should fulfil his promise of returning to the subject and comparing the English and French constitutions. He was disappointed, however, at finding no such comparison in Burke's "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs." It did, however, contain a menace that was worth waiting for. "Oldys" (Chalmers) says that Paine was disappointed at not being arrested for his first pamphlet on "The Rights of Man," and had, "while fluttering on the wing for Paris, hovered about London a whole week waiting to be taken." It is, indeed, possible that he would have been glad to elicit just then a fresh decision from the courts in favor of freedom of speech and of the press, which would strengthen faint hearts. If he had this desire he was resolved not to be disappointed a second time. A publisher (Chapman) offered him a thousand guineas for the manuscript of Part II. Paine declined; "he wished to reserve it in his own hands." Facts afterwards appeared which rendered it probable that this was a ministerial effort to suppress the book.* * Paine may, indeed, only have apprehended alterations, which he always dreaded. His friends, knowing how much his antagonists had made of his grammatical faults, sometimes suggested expert revision. "He would say," says Richard Carlile, "that he only wished to be known as he was, without being decked with the plumes of another." Paine's Part Second was to appear about the first of February, or before the meeting of Parliament But the printer (Chapman) threw up the publication, alleging its "dangerous tendencies," whereby it was delayed until February 17th, when it was published by Jordan. Meanwhile, his elaborate scheme for reducing taxes so resembled that which Pitt had just proposed in Parliament that the author appended his reasons for believing that his pages had been read by the government clerk, Chalmers, and his plan revealed to Pitt. "Be the case, however, as it may, Mr. Pitt's plan, little and diminutive as it is, would have made a very awkward appearance had this work appeared at the time the printer had engaged to finish it."