. Little journeys to the homes of great reformers ... con-tinents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were givingthe king unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole w^as set-ting up his private press at Strawberry Hill; the Her-schels—brother and sister—were sweeping the heavensfor comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney andGainsborough were founding the first school of BritishArt; and Hume, the Scotchman, was putting fortharguments irrefutable. And into this seething discon-tent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading, study-ing, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but hisreputation. He was twenty-sev
. Little journeys to the homes of great reformers ... con-tinents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were givingthe king unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole w^as set-ting up his private press at Strawberry Hill; the Her-schels—brother and sister—were sweeping the heavensfor comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney andGainsborough were founding the first school of BritishArt; and Hume, the Scotchman, was putting fortharguments irrefutable. And into this seething discon-tent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading, study-ing, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but hisreputation. He was twenty-seven years of age whenhe met Ben Franklin, at a coffee-house in got his first real mental impetus from were working men. Paine sat and watched andlistened to Franklin one whole evening, and then said,What he is I can at least in part become jt Painethought Franklin quite the greatest man of his time,an opinion he never relinquished, and which also,among various others held by Paine, the world has nowfinally accepted. 144. GREAT REFORMERS —Thomas Paine AINE at t-wenty-four, from asimple weaver,had been calledinto the office of his employerto help straighten out the ac-counts. He tried store-keepingbut with indifferent it seems he was em-ployed by the Board of Exciseon a similar task. Finally hew^as given a position in th^ position he mighthave held indefinitely, andbeen promoted in the -work, for he had clerical talentswhich made his services valuable jt But there -wasanother theme that interested him quite as much ascollecting taxes for the government, and that was thephilosophy of taxation ^ This ■was very foolish inThomas Paine—a tax collector should collect taxes,and not concern himself ■with the righteousness of thebusiness, nor about what becomes of the had made note of the fact that England collectedtaxes from Jews but that Je^ws ■were not allo^wed tovote, because they were not Christians, it bein
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