CORNWALLIS, Charles, Marquis (1738-1805). General; capitulated to the Americans at Yorktown.
"I SHOULD NOT RELISH BEING HANGED AS AN ARISTOCRATE"
Fine Autograph Letter Signed ("Cornwallis"), as Governor General of India, to an unnamed Member of Parliament, wryly expressing his fears that French revolutionary sentiment might spread to England, and alluding, with grim humour, to an unflattering reference to himself in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man .
2 pages 4to with integral blank leaf, Calcutta, 14 October 1792.
" . . . Every thing is quiet in this quarter of the Globe, and we are anxiously turning our eyes to the event of the War on the Continent, and what is still more in interesting to us, the progress of the Associators and Reformers in England. I hope they will not establish La Lanterne [the iron lamp-post at the corner of Parisian streets, used by Revolutionary mobs for lynchings] in London, for after broiling seven years in this country, I should not relish being hanged as an Aristocrate as soon as I get home, and I don't see how I could possibly escape after being placed by Mr. Paine between Catherine [the Great] and Tippoo {the Sultan of Mysore], who have neither of them shown any respect for the rights of Man."
Cornwallis had a distinguished and successful career after the debacle of Yorktown (for which he was not personally blamed) and served as Governor-General of India from 1786 to 1793. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man had been published in 1791, embodying the ideas of liberty and equality, and defending the French Revolution against the attacks of Edmund Burke. It was written before the execution of Louis XVI and the excesses of the Terror, and when Britain and France were still at peace. An establishment figure like Corrnwallis would have regarded "Associators" (those in England who had formed "associations" in support of the principles of the Revolution) and "Reformers" with deep suspicion.
Paine's bracketing of Corwallis with Catherine and the Great and the bloodthirsty Tippoo does seem excessive and his annoyance is understandable. It occurs in a passage where Paine is advocating spending the nation's wealth on a system of supporting the elderly instead of maintaining hereditary privilege: "Let peace and justice, let honour and humanity, let even hypocrisy, sycophancy, and Mr. Burke, let George [III] . . . Let Catherine, Cornwallis or Tippoo Sahib, answer the question."
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