The Rights of Man; -or- Tommy Paine, the little American taylor, taking the measure of the crown, for a new pair of Revolution-breeches (BM 1868,0808.6057 1)

Tom Paine, lean, and grotesquely caricatured, crouches, kneeling on one knee, to apply his tape-measure to a gigantic crown standing on the ground, the greater part of which is cut off by the right margin of the design. He is dressed as a ragged tailor, a large pair of shears attached to his waist, but wears a cocked hat of French fashion with a cockade inscribed 'Vive la Liberty'; his hair is in a long scraggy queue. He says, gaping with dismay at the crown, '"Fathom and a half! Fathom & a half! Poor Tom!" ah! mercy upon me! thats more by half than my poor Measure will ever be able to reach! - Lord! Lord! I wish I had a bit of the Stay-tape or Buckram which I youst to Cabbage" [pilfer, cf. BMSat 8035, &c] when I was prentice, to lengthen it out; - well, well, who could ever have thought it, that I, who have served Seven Years as an Apprentice, & afterwards worked Four Years as a Journeyman to a Master Taylor, then followd the business of an Exciseman as much longer, should not be able to take the dimensions of this Bauble?" for what is a Crown but a Bauble? which we may see in the Tower for Six-pence a piece? - well, altho' it may be too large for a Taylor to take Measure of, there's one Comfort, he may make mouths at it, & call it as many names as he pleases! - and yet, Lord, Lord, I should like to make it a Yankee doodle Night-Cap & Breeches, if it was not so dam'nd large, or I had stuff enough Ah if I could once do that, I would soon stitch up the mouth of that Barnacled Edmund from making of any more Reflections upon the Flints - & so Flints & Liberty for ever & damn the Dungs'. Four additional Words have been left almost illegible but appear to be 'Down with Hanover Horse.' Above the design is etched: 'Humbly dedicated to the Jacobine Clubs of France and England!!! by Common Sense
'These are your Gods, O, Israel!"' 23 May 1791

Hand-coloured etching