The early, though not immediate success of the Reflections with the propertied classes – amid the growing alarm caused by the progress of the Revolution – and its effect in restoring Burke to royal favour† and in earning him a pension* in his retirement naturally led Burke’s opponents to suggest that he had – as would now be said – ‘sold out’, abandoning his real principles for praise and money. Tom Paine in Rights of Man had charged bribery; contemporary cartoons made play with the congenial theme; Marx, years afterwards was content to account for Burke’s counterrevolutionary writing in this
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