Eaton

(Daniel Isaac), bookseller, b. about 1752, was educated at the Jesuits’ College, St. Omer. Being advised to study the Bible, he did so, with the result of discarding it as a revelation. In 1792 he was prosecuted for publishing Paine’s Rights of Man , but the prosecution fell through. He afterwards published Politics for the People , which was also prosecuted, 1793, as was his Political Dictionary , 1796. To escape punishment, he fled to America, and lived there for three years and a half. Upon returning to England, his person and property were seized. Books to the value of £2,800 were burnt, and he was imprisoned for fifteen months. He translated from Helvetius and sold at his “ Rationcinatory or Magazine for Truths and Good Sense,” 8 Corn hill, in 1810, The True Sense and Meaning of the System of Nature . The Law of Nature had been previously translated by him. In ’11 he i ued the first and second parts of Paine’s Age of Reason , and on 6 March, ’12, was tried before Lord Ellen borough on a charge of blasphemy for i uing the third and last part. He was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment and to stand in the pillory. The sentence evoked Shelley’s spirited Letter to Lord Ellen borough . Eaton translated and published Freret’s Preservative against Religious Prejudices , 1812, and shortly before his death, at Deptford, 22 Aug. 1814, he was again prosecuted for publishing George Houston’s Ecce Homo .