Questions 1-11 are based on the following
passage.
This passage is taken from Thomas Paine’s preface to Rights of Man, originally published in 1791. Rights of Man was initially written as a response to Irish statesman Edmund Burke’s attack on the French Revolution.
From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution,
it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind;
and as our acquaintance commenced on that ground, it would
have been more agreeable to me to have had cause to
5 continue in that opinion than to change it.
At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter
in the English Parliament against the French Revolution and
the National Assembly, I was in Paris, and had written to him
but a short time before to inform him how prosperously
10 matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his
advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the
attack was to be made in a language but little studied, and
less understood in France, and as everything suffers by
translation, I promised some of the friends of the Revolution
15 in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's Pamphlet came
forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more
necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant
misrepresentations which Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and
that while it is an outrageous abuse on the French
20 Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an imposition
on the rest of the world.
I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might
never more have existence in the world, and that some other
25 mode might be found out to settle the differences that should
occasionally arise in the neighbourhood of nations. This
certainly might be done if Courts were disposed to set
honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened enough not
to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had
30 been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at
that time characterised the people of England; but experience
and an acquaintance with the French Nation have most
effectually shown to the Americans the falsehood of those
prejudices; and I do not believe that a more cordial and
35 confidential intercourse exists between any two countries
than between America and France.
When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the
Archbishop of Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time
highly esteemed. I became much acquainted with the private
40 Secretary of that Minister, a man of an enlarged benevolent
heart; and found that his sentiments and my own perfectly
agreed with respect to the madness of war, and the wretched
impolicy of two nations, like England and France,
continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of
45 a mutual increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be
assured I had not misunderstood him, nor he me, I put the
substance of our opinions into writing and sent it to him;
subjoining a request, that if I should see among the people of
England, any disposition to cultivate a better understanding
50 between the two nations than had hitherto prevailed, how far
I might be authorised to say that the same disposition
prevailed on the part of France? He answered me by letter in
the most unreserved manner, and that not for himself only,
but for the Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was
55 declared to be written.
I put this letter into the hands of Mr. Burke almost three
years ago, and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping,
and at the same time naturally expecting, from the opinion I
had conceived of him, that he would find some opportunity
60 of making good use of it, for the purpose of removing those
errors and prejudices which two neighbouring nations, from
the want of knowing each other, had entertained, to the injury
of both.
When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly
65 afforded to Mr. Burke an opportunity of doing some good,
had he been disposed to it; instead of which, no sooner did he
see the old prejudices wearing away, than he immediately
began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were
afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies.
70 That there are men in all countries who get their living by
war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as
shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in
the government of a country make it their study to sow
discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes
75 the more unpardonable.