Tom Paine's nightly pest, James Gillray

Paine lies asleep on straw on a ramshackle wooden bedstead, covered by his coat. He wears a cap and lies diagonally from left to right, facing the spectator. On the head of his bed are drawn the profile heads, with wings, of his Guardian Angels: Priestley (left) and Fox (right). His head rests on a bundle of straw round which is a striped and torn (?) flag. His arm lies across an open book. From his coat-pocket protrudes a pamphlet. On a table by his side (right) are a rat with its head caught in a trap, writing materials, and a paper. His dream appears surrounded with clouds on the right of the design. Three judges are represented by their empty wigs. Before each hangs a long scroll. Behind is the stone wall of a dungeon with a closely barred window, on each side of which hang heavy shackles. A gibbet and a pillory also emerge from the clouds (BM). / In December of 1792, Paine, who was in France, and therefore out of the reach of the law, was prosecuted and found guilty of a libel contained in the second part of his "Rights of Man." He is here represented on his couch of poverty, dreaming of the punishments which awaited his political crimes. At the time when this print was published, the prosecution had been made known, but the trial and condemnation only took place on the 18th of December (Wright/Evans).
Courtesy of Boston Public Library