Hérault de Sechelles, (President of National Assembly): "France calls you, Sir, to its bosom to fill the most useful, and consequently the most honorable of functions--that of contributing, by wise legislation, to the happiness of a people whose destinies interest and unite all who think and all who suffer in the world. "It is meet that the nation which proclaimed the Rights of Man should desire to have him among its legislators who first dared to measure all their consequences." Philip Van Ness Myers, LL.D.: "The Convention, consisting of seven hundred and forty-nine deputies, among whom was the celebrated freethinker, Thomas Paine, embraced two active groups, the Girondins and the Mountainists [Jacobins]." Alphonse de Lamartine: "A stranger sat among the members of the Convention--the philosopher, Thomas Paine, born in England, the apostle of American independence, the friend of Franklin, author of 'Common Sense,' the 'Rights of Man,' and the 'Age of Reason'--three pages of the New Evangelist in which he brought back political institutions and religious creeds to their primitive justice and lucidity; his name possessed great weight among the innovators of the two worlds." "Everyone," says Paul Desjardins, "turned toward Paine as toward the living statue of liberty. The enfranchisement of America consecrated him." The official reports of the National Convention state that when Paine arose in the Convention and cast his vote for its first decree the act was received by "acclamations of joy, the cries of _Vive la nation!_ repeated by all the spectators, prolonging themselves for many minutes!" Referring to this Convention, the Hon. E. B. Washburne says: "Never was there a legislative or constituent body which displayed such stupendous energy or performed such immense labor. In the delirium of its passions it stamped itself on the history of the world not only by its crimes, but by its great acts of legislation, which will live as long as France shall endure. Thomas Paine was a member of this Convention. His popularity in France at this time is shown by the fact that he was chosen a member of the Convention by three departments. "The Convention was not long in giving Paine a striking recognition of the consideration in which it held him. One of its earliest decrees was to establish a special Commission (committee) of nine members on the Constitution. This Commission was composed of the most distinguished men of the Convention: Gensonne, Thomas Paine, Brissot, Petion, Vergniaud, Barrere, Danton, Condorcet, and the Abbe Sieyes."