Inscribed in pencil above image: The monkey who had seen the world; below image: Tom Pain Republican Infidel.
Evidently based on an illustration by John Wootton for John Gay's fable of "The monkey who had seen the world"; the design being reversed and the figure of Thomas Paine taking the place of the "worldly" ape of the story.
See: George, Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, no. 8295, for a similar treatment of the same subject.
At bottom right: V1.P 63.
Plate evidently intended as an illustration for an unidentified publication.
Print shows Thomas Paine standing in a forest, facing right, surrounded by a group of five monkeys who smile and laugh, as he reads to them from a copy of his Rights of man; a large tree trunk stands behind him and a monkey sitting on the ground behind him at left reaches out to pull the long queue of his wig.