Paine was not a politician. He had not labored for seven years to get an office. His services were no longer needed in America. He concluded to educate the English people, to inform them of their rights, to expose the pretences, follies and fallacies, the crimes and cruelties of nobles, kings, and parliaments. In the brain and heart of this man were the dream and hope of the universal republic. He had confidence in the people. He hated tyranny and war, despised the senseless pomp and vain show of crowned robbers, laughed at titles, and the "honorable" badges worn by the obsequious and servile, by fawners and followers; loved liberty with all his heart, and bravely fought against those who could give the rewards of place and gold, and for those who could pay only with thanks. Hoping to hasten the day of freedom, he wrote the "Rights of Man"--a book that laid the foundation for all the real liberty that the English now enjoy--a book that made known to Englishmen the Declaration of Nature, and convinced millions that all are children of the same mother, entitled to share equally in her gifts. Every Englishman who has outgrown the ideas of 1688 should remember Paine with love and reverence. Every Englishman who has sought to destroy abuses, to lessen or limit the prerogatives of the crown, to extend the suffrage, to do away with "rotten boroughs," to take taxes from knowledge, to increase and protect the freedom of speech and the press, to do away with bribes under the name of pensions, and to make England a government of principles rather than of persons, has been compelled to adopt the creed and use the arguments of Thomas Paine. In England every step toward freedom has been a triumph of Paine over Burke and Pitt. No man ever rendered a greater service to his native land. The book called the "Rights of Man" was the greatest contribution that literature had given to liberty. It rests on the bed-rock. No attention is paid to precedents except to show that they are wrong. Paine was not misled by the proverbs that wolves had written for sheep. He had the intelligence to examine for himself, and the courage to publish his conclusions. As soon as the "Rights of Man" was published the Government was alarmed. Every effort was made to suppress it. The author was indicted; those who published, and those who sold, were arrested and imprisoned. But the new gospel had been preached--a great man had shed light--a new force had been born, and it was beyond the power of nobles and kings to undo what the author-hero had done. To avoid arrest and probable death, Paine left England. He had sown with brave hand the seeds of thought, and he knew that he had lighted a fire that nothing could extinguish until England should be free.