On the tenth of August, 1792, after the massacre of the Marseillese by the King's Swiss guards, one book, hurled from the window of the mobbed palace, felled an American spectator--Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore--who consoled himself by carrying it home. The book, now in the collection of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, New York, was a copy of "The Thirteen Constitutions," translated by Franklin's order into French (1783) and distributed among the monarchs of Europe.** * "Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men may see that the Legislature is in a false position. As, alas, who is in a true one? Voices already murmur for a National Convention."--Carlyle. ** "Constitutions des Treize etats-Unis de l'Amerique." The French king's arms are on the red morocco binding, and on the title a shield, striped and winged; above this thirteen minute stars shaped into one large star, six-pointed. For the particulars of Franklin's gift to the monarchs see Sparks' "Franklin," x., p. 39. See also p. 390 of this volume. What a contrast between the peace and order amid which the thirteen peoples, when the old laws and authorities were abolished, formed new ones, and these scenes in France! "For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war," wrote Paine, "and a longer period, in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments; yet, during this interval, order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe." When Burke pointed to the first riots in France, Paine could make a retort: the mob is what your cruel governments have made it, and only proves how necessary the overthrow of such governments. That French human nature was different from English nature he could not admit. Liberty and equality would soon end these troubles of transition. On that same tenth of August Paine's two great preliminaries are adopted: the hereditary representative is superseded and a national convention is called. The machinery for such convention, the constituencies, the objects of it, had been read in "The Rights of Man," as illustrated in the United States and Pennsylvania, by every French statesman.1 It was the American Republic they were about to found; and notwithstanding the misrepresentation of that nation by its surviving courtiers, these French republicans recognized their real American Minister: Paine is summoned.