#14: Thomas Paine
Publishing Rights of Man made Thomas Paine a hero to radicals and a criminal to the British government. His defense of the French Revolution and attack on hereditary monarchy prompted authorities to prosecute him for seditious libel. Paine had already fled to France by the time of his 1792 trial, so proceedings continued without him and resulted in conviction. Britain effectively outlawed the political writer while France welcomed him into the National Convention. International travel was apparently the eighteenth-century version of changing jurisdictions.
