In a letter to Paine (June 19, 1792,) Jefferson says: "Our good people are firm and unanimous in their principles of Republicanism, and there is no better proof of it than that they love what you write and read it with delight." James Madison declared the "Rights of Man" to be "a written defense of the principles on which that [our] Government is based." For our so-called Jeffersonian Democracy we are indebted to Thomas Paine. He formulated its principles. Jefferson, Madison and others of his disciples popularized them. After commending the "Rights of Man" Richard Henry Lee wrote: "I sincerely regret that our country could not have offered sufficient inducements to have retained as a permanent citizen a man so thoroughly republican in sentiment and fearless in the expression of his opinions." In his book, one of the most brilliant volumes ever penned, Burke, long the friend of popular government, defended royalty and aristocracy. He sought to arouse the sympathies of Europe in behalf of royalty and aristocracy in France which were tottering to their fall, a disaster which endangered their existence everywhere. The book was circulated by tens of thousands. Captivated by its marvelous beauty a reaction in favor of despotism was setting in when Paine's immortal work appeared. The glowing rhetoric of Burke went down before the merciless logic of Paine. Burke is filled with sorrow for the French king and nobles whose rule and privileges have been abolished or restricted, but expresses none for the millions who for centuries have been persecuted, impoverished and imprisoned by the ruling classes. In words that come from the heart of the author and which reach the hearts of the people, Paine answers him: "Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection, that I can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those that lingered out the most wretched of lives; a life without hope, in the most miserable of prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he has been to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching upon his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratic hand that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his heroine must be a tragedy-victim, expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon."