d shows
the title of the pamphlet related to the rise of Socialism in France.
The leader of that move-ment, Francois Noel Babeuf, a frantic and
pathetic figure of the time, had just been executed. He had named
himself "Gracchus," and called his journal "Tribune du Peuple," in
homage to the Roman Tribune, Caius Gracchus, the original socialist and
agrarian, whose fate (suicide of himself and his servant) Babeuf and his
disciple Darthe invoked in prison, whence they were carried bleeding to
the guillotine. This, however, was on account of the conspiracy they had
formed, with the remains of the Robespierrian party and some disguised
royalists, to overthrow the government. The socialistic propaganda of
Babeuf, however, prevailed over all other elements of the conspiracy:
the reactionary features of the Constitution, especially the property
qualification of suffrage of whose effects Paine had warned the
Convention in the speech printed in this volume, (chapter xxv.) and the
poverty which survived a revolution that promised its abolition, had
excited wide discontent. The "Babouvists" numbered as many as 17,000 in
Paris. Babeuf and Lepelletier were appointed by the secret council of
this fraternity (which took the name of "Equals") a "Directory of Public
Safety." May 11, 1796, was fixed for seizing on the government, and
Babeuf had prepared his Proclamation of the socialistic millennium. But
the plot was discovered, May 10th, the leaders arrested, and, after
a year's delay, two of them executed,--the best-hearted men in the
movement, Babeuf and Darthe. Paine too had been moved by the cry for
"Bread, and the Constitution of '93 "; and it is a notable coincidence
that in that winter of 1795-6, while the socialists were secretly
plotting to seize the kingdom of heaven by violence, Paine was devising
his plan of relief by taxing inheritances of land, anticipating by a
hundred years the English budget of Sir William Harcourt. Babeuf having
failed in his socialist, and Pichegru in his royalist, plot, their blows
were yet fatal: there still remained in the hearts of millions a Babeuf
or a Pichegru awaiting the chieftain strong enough to combine them,
as Napoleon presently did, making all the nation "Egaux" as parts of a
mighty military engine, and satisfying the royalist triflers with the
pomp and glory of war.

AUTHOR'S INSCRIPTION.

To the Legislature and the Executive Directory of the French Republic.

The plan contained in