“PRACTICALLY A THIRD PART OF HIS RIGHTS OF MAN”: PAINE’S LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ADDRESSERS, 1819
PAINE, Thomas. A Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation. London: R. Carlile, 1819. Slim octavo, disbound; pp. 46, [2].
1819 London edition of Paine’s fiery Letter, his defense of Rights of Man that calls forth the model of American Revolution in “a brazen call for a revolution in England… sometimes referred to as the Third Part of the Rights of Man” (Gimbel-Yale).
Following publication of the second part of Rights of Man (1792), British authorities "spied on Paine's every move… In May 1792 the government issued a proclamation 'against wicked and seditious writings… Defiantly Paine penned another, shorter pamphlet Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation'" (Kaye, 77-8). Now an enemy of the state, in this work Paine "makes a brazen call for a revolution in England" (Gimbel-Yale 76). Continuing his proposal in Rights of Man that defined a constitution as "the act of the people creating a government and giving it power"—implying England had no constitution—Paine writes: "Two Revolutions have taken place—those of America and France; and both of them have rejected the unnatural compounded system of the English Government" (16). His Letter also attacks the banning of his works, proclaiming "It is a dangerous attempt in any Government to say to a Nation, 'thou shalt not read" (14). Before this pamphlet could be published, however, Paine was forced to flee to France, and in December was tried in absentia and found guilty of seditious libel. "This attack on the evils of English government is practically a third part of [Paine's] Rights of Man" (Howes P28). When exiled in Paris, Paine "corrected the proofs [of this Letter] and sent them back to London, where the work was published around the 16th of October 1792" (Gimbel-Yale 76). See Lowndes, 1761; Gimbel-Paine, 74; Goldsmiths 15482-83; PMM 241.
A clean, near-fine disbound copy.