Eight public figures are depicted reading excerpts from Rights of Man and reacting to them. Fox, Sheridan and Wollstonecraft are the three supporters of Paine's writings while the rest deplore them.; Shortly before the publication of this cartoon, Mary Wollstonecraft published a well-known response to Burke entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Considering this, and following the lead of catalogs at other institutions, we have identified the second figure from the left on the lower row as Mary Wollstonecraft. We offer the viewer the benefit of acknowledging that the figure could have been intended to represent either Helen Maria Williams whose Letters from France (1790–96) strongly extolled French revolutionary ideals, or Catharine Macaulay whose pamphlet response to Burke had also been recently published. The interested researcher is encouraged to explore further.
