Dr. James Currie (1793): "The prosecutions that are commenced all over England against printers, publishers, etc., would astonish you; and most of these are for offenses committed months ago. The printer of the Manchester _Herald_ has had... six different indictments for selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine--all previous to the trial of Paine. The man was opulent, supposed worth £20,000; but these different actions will ruin him, as they were intended to do." The trial of Paine was followed by a veritable reign of terror in England. Alluding to the prosecutions and persecutions of the publishers and venders of Paine's books, Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," says: "It is no exaggeration to say that for some years England was ruled by a system of absolute terror." It was over the writings of Thomas Paine chiefly, his "Rights of Man" at first and later his "Age of Reason," that the battle for free speech and a free press in England was fought and won. In this great struggle England's gifted statesman, Charles James Fox, whom Edmund Burke describes as "the greatest debater the world ever saw," and whom Sir James Mackintosh declares to De "the most Demosthenian speaker since Demosthenes," ably and fearlessly upheld the rights of Paine and the disseminators of his writings and teachings. In this struggle the poet Shelley, too, did valiant work. Richard Carlile: "It is not too much to say that if the 'Rights of Man' had obtained two or three years' free circulation in England and Scotland, it would have produced a similar effect to that which 'Common Sense' did in the United States." Sir Francis Burdett: "Ministers know that a united people are not to be resisted; and it is this that we must understand by what is written in the works of an honest man too long calumniated. I mean Thomas Paine." M. Brissot: "The grievance of the British Cabinet against France is not that Louis is in judgment, but that Thomas Paine wrote the 'Rights of Man'." Abbe Sieyes: "His 'Rights of Man,' translated into our language, is universally known; and where is the patriotic Frenchman who has not already, from the depths of his soul, thanked him for having fortified our cause with all the power of his reason and his reputation."