They were fiercely Republican; and though they were not entirely free from contemporary notions of government established on the ruins of a lost innocence, they struck a valiant note of self-reliance, and emphasised the importance of the average honest man.

"Time makes more converts than reason," wrote Paine.

Of monarchy he could say, "The fate of Charles I.hath only made kings more subtle--not more just"; and, "Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived." Paine was in England in 1787, busy with scientific inventions, popular in Whig circles and respected.

The fall of the Bastille won his applause, as it did the applause of Fox and the Whigs, but it was not till the publication of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France," in 1790, that Paine again took up his pen on behalf of democracy.
Burke had been the hero of Paine and the Americans in the War of Independence, and his speeches and writings had justified the republic.

And now it was the political philosophy of Hobbes that Burke seemed to be contending for when he insisted that the English people were bound for ever to royalty by the act of allegiance to William III.
Paine replied to Burke the following year with the "Rights of Man" which he wrote in a country inn, the "Angel," at Islington.