Tom Paine's Nightly Pest 1792

This 1792 satirical cartoon by James Gillray depicts the American revolutionary and author, Thomas Paine, being tormented by the ghosts of his own writings, as he lies in bed, with a nightmarish devil figure in the background. The work is a critique of Paine's radical political ideas and his controversial book *The Rights of Man*. The "nightly pest" alludes to the guilt and anxiety he experiences, and the image is part of a larger series of Gillray's political cartoons critical of Enlightenment thought.