"Thomas Paine was the most far-seeing Englishman of the eighteenth century... [H]e remains the major prophet of democracy and representative government... Almost a century before Lincoln he sought to write into the American Constitution a clause against slavery. Long before John Stuart Mill, he championed the rights of women. He was among the very first of English writers to espouse the cause of Indian freedom. Well ahead of my old friends, Dick Crossman or Barbara Castle, he had a good plan for old age pensions. And how men in all our modern parties might tremble at his proposals for land nationalisation; he wanted new laws for marriage and divorce. International arbitration, family allowances, maternity benefits, free education, prison reform, full employment—yes much of the future the Labour Party has offered was previously on offer, in much better English, from Thomas Paine."