erts. Henry Dundas
and his nephew, Robert Dundas (Lord Advocate for Scotland), opposed the
motion, mainly because it would infringe the terms of the Act of Union;
but Henry added the curious argument that, if Scottish Presbyterians
were relieved from the Test Act, then the English Dissenters would have
been "unjustly, harshly, and cruelly used." Pitt avowed himself "not a
violent friend, but a firm and steady friend" of the Test Act, as being
essential to the security of the Church and therefore of the civil
establishment of the country. Accordingly, Elliot's motion was defeated
by 149 votes to 62.[26] It is curious that, a month earlier, the House
had agreed to a Bill granting slightly wider toleration to "Catholic
Dissenters."[27]

While Pitt was thus strengthening the old buttresses of Church and
State, the son of a Quaker had subjected the whole fabric to a battery
of violent rhetoric. It is scarcely too much to call Thomas Paine the
Rousseau of English democracy. For, if his arguments lacked the novelty
of those of the Genevese thinker (and even they were far from original),
they equalled them in effectiveness, and excelled them in
practicability. "The Rights of Man" (Part I) may be termed an insular
version of the "Contrat Social," with this difference, that the English
writer pointed the way to changes which were far from visionary, while
the Genevese seer outlined a polity fit only for a Swiss canton peopled
by philosophers. Paine had had the advantage of close contact with men
and affairs in both hemispheres. Not even Cobbett, his literary
successor, passed through more varied experiences. Born in 1737 at
Thetford in Norfolk, Paine divided his early life between stay-making,
excise work, the vending of tobacco, and a seafaring life. His keen
eyes, lofty brow, prominent nose, proclaimed him a thinker and fighter,
and therefore, in that age, a rebel. What more natural than that he, a
foe to authority and hater of oppression, should go to America to help
on the cause of Washington? There at last he discovered his true
vocation. His broadsides struck home. "Rebellious staymaker, unkempt,"
says Carlyle, "who feels that he, a single needleman, did by his
'Common Sense' pamphlet, free America; that he can, and will free all
this world; perhaps even the other." Tom Paine, indeed, had the rare
gift of voicing tersely and stridently the dumb desires of the masses.
Further, a sojourn in France before and during the early