* "Theorie et Pratique des Droits de l'Homme. Par Thomas Paine, Secrettaire da Congres au Departement des Affaires £trangeres pendant la guerre d'Araenque, auteur du ' Sens Commun,' et des Reponses a Burke. Traduit en Francais par F. Lanthenas, D.M., et par le Traducteur du "Sens Common." A Paris: Chez les Directeurs de l'lmprimerie du Cercle Social, rue du Theatre Francais, No. 4. 1792. L'an quatrierae de La Liberte." On August 26, 1792, the National Assembly, on proposal of M. Guadet, in the name of the "Commission Extraordinaire," conferred the title of French citizen on "Priestley, Payne, Ben thorn, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David Williams, Gorani, Anacharsis Clootz, Campe, Cornielle, Paw, N. Pestalozzi, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Klopstoc, Kosciusko, Gilleers." Schiller was afterwards added, and on September 25 th the _Patriote_ announces the same title conferred on Thomas Cooper, John Home Tooke, John Oswald, George Boies, Thomas Christie, Dr. Joseph Warner, Englishmen, and Joel Barlow, American.* * "Life and Letters of Joel Barlow," etc., by Charles Burr Todd, New York, 1886, p. 97. Paine was elected to the French Convention by four different departments--Oise, Puy-de-Dome, Somme, and Pas-de-Calais. The votes appear to have been unanimous. Here is an enthusiastic appeal (Riom, le 8 Septembre) signed by Louvet, "auteur de la Sentinelle," and thirty-two others, representing nine communes, to Paine, that day elected representative of Puy-de-Dome: "Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause. Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an assembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race. The happy period you have predicted for the nations has arrived. Come! do not deceive their hope!" But already Calais, which elected him September 6th, had sent a municipal officer, Achille Audibert, to London, to entreat Paine's acceptance. Paine was so eager to meet the English government in court, that he delayed his answer. But his friends had reason to fear that his martyrdom might be less mild than he anticipated, and urged his acceptance. There had been formed a society of the "Friends of Liberty," and, at its gathering of September 12th, Paine appears to have poured forth "inflammatory eloquence." At the house of his friend Johnson, on the following evening, Paine was reporting what he had said to some sympathizers, among them the mystical William Blake, who was convinced that the speech of the previous night would be followed by arrest. Gilchrist's account of what followed is here quoted: