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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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The Bank of Wisdon
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Box 926 Louisville, KY 40201
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NOTE: This is volume four of the 'Writings of Thomas Paine' by
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Moncure Daniel Conway, this volume contains the Theological
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writings of Thomas Paine and as these are the writings that has
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been most slandered and suppressed by pious interests we are
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pleased to publish them in Reproducible Electronic form so that
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interested readers can judge these writings for themselves. We do
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not publish the entire four volume set as the information in the
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first three volumes are in print and easily obtainable. EFF.
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THE WRITINGS
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of
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THOMAS PAINE
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COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
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MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
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AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE," "OMITTED CHAPTERS OF
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HISTORY DISCLOSED IN THE LIFE AND PAPERS OF EDMUND RANDOLPH,"
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"GEORGE WASHINGTON AND MOUNT VERNON," ETC.
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VOLUME IV.
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G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
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NEW YORK LONDON
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27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
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1896
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION,
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WITH LAST GLEANINGS, HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.
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BEFORE sending out this final volume, I have rambled again in
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some of the fields harvested in my seven years' labor on the Life
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and Works of Thomas Paine, and present the more important gleanings
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in these preliminary pages.
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I recently obtained from a solicitor of Rotherham, Mr. Rising,
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a letter (on whose large seal part of the P remains), written by
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Paine from London to Thomas Walker, Esq., a member of the firm
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which manufactured the large model of the iron bridge invented by
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the author, and exhibited at Paddington in June, 1790. The letter
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is dated February 26, 1789, and the first part, which relates to
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the bridge, is quoted in Appendix E. The political part, here
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given, relates to the controversy which arose on the insanity of he
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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Prince of Wales by hereditary right, while the Pitt Ministry
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maintained that the Prince had no right during the King's lifetime,
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more than any other person, though it was "expedient" to select him
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as the Regent, with restrictions on his power imposed by the two
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Houses of Parliament. Paine writes:
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"With respect to News and Politics, the King is certainly
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greatly amended, but what is to follow from it is a matter of much
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uncertainty. How far the Nation may be safe with a man of a
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deranged mind at the head of it, and who, ever since he took up the
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notion of quitting England and going to live in Hanover, has been
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continually planning to entangle England with German connections,
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which if followed must end in a war, is a matter that will occasion
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various opinions. However unfortunate it may have been for the
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sufferer, the King's malady has been no disservice to the Nation;
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he was burning his fingers very fast in the German war, and whether
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he is enough in his senses to keep out of the fire is a matter of
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doubt.
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"You mention the Rotherham Address as complimenting Mr. Pitt
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on the success of his administration, and for asserting and
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supporting the Rights of the People. I differ exceedingly from you
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in this opinion, and I think the conduct of the Opposition much
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nearer to the principles of the Constitution, than what the conduct
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of the Ministry was. So far from Mr. Pitt asserting and supporting
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the Rights of the people, it appears to me taking them away -- but
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as a man ought not to make an assertion without giving his reasons,
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I will give you mine.
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"The English Nation is composed of two orders of men -- Peers
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and Commoners. By Commoners is properly meant every man in the
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Nation not having the title of Peer. And it is the existence of
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those two orders, setting up distinct and opposite Claims, the one
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hereditary and the other elective, that makes it necessary to
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establish a third order, or that known by the name of the Regal
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Power, or the Power of the Crown.
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"The Regal Power is the Majesty of the Nation collected to a
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center, and residing in the person exercising the Regal Power. The
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Right therefore of the Prince is a Right standing on the Right of
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the whole Nation. But Mr. Pitt says it stands on the Right of
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Parliament. Is not Parliament composed of two houses, one of which
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is itself hereditary, and over which the people have no control,
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and in the establishment of which they have no election; and the
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other house the representative of only a small part of the nation?
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How then can the Rights of the People be asserted and supported by
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absorbing them into an hereditary house of Peers? Is not one
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hereditary power or Right as dangerous as the other? And yet the
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Addressers have all gone on the Error of establishing Power in the
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house of Peers, over whom, as I have already said, they have no
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control, for the inconsistent purpose of opposing it in the prince
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over whom they have some control.
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"It was one of those Cases in which there ought to have been
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a National Convention for the express purpose: for if Government be
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permitted to alter itself, or any of the parts be permitted to
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alter the other, there is no fixed Constitution in the Country. And
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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if the Regal Power, or the person exercising the Regal Power,
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either as King or Regent, instead of standing on the universal
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ground of the Nation, be made the mere Creature of Parliament, it
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is, in my humble opinion, equally as inconsistent and
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unconstitutional as if Parliament was the mere Creature of the
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Crown.
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It is a common Idea in all countries that to take Power from
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the Prince is to give liberty to the people. But Mr. Pitt's conduct
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is almost the reverse of this: his is to take power from one part
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of the Government to add it to another; for he has increased the
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Power of the Peers, not the Rights of the People. -- I must give
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him credit for his ingenuity if I do not for his principles, and
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the less so because the object of his conduct is now visible, which
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was to [keep] themselves in pay after they should be out of
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f[avor], by retaining, thro' an Act of Parliament of their own
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making, between four and five hundred thousand pounds of the Civil
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List in their own hands. This is the key of the whole business; and
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it was for this and not for the Rights of the people that he set up
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the Right of Parliament, because it was only by that means that the
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spoil could be divided. If the restrictions had been that he should
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not declare war, or enter into foreign alliances without the
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consent of Parliament, the objects would have been national and
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would have had some sense in them; but it is, that he should not
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have all the money. If Swift was alive he would say ---- on such
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Patriotism.'
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"How they will manage with Ireland I have no opportunity of
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learning, as I have not been at the other end of the Town since the
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Commission arrived. Ireland will certainly judge for itself, and
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not permit the English Parliament or Doctors to judge for her. --
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Thus much for Politics."
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The letter just quoted is the more remarkable because the
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Prince Regent was particularly odious to Paine. The reader will
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find this issue of the Regency dealt with in the "Rights of Man"
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(ii., p. 371 of this edition), but it may be remarked in passing
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that this supposed purblind enemy of thrones was found in 1789
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maintaining that the monarch, however objectionable, was more
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related to the people than a non-representative Parliament, and
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that. in 1793 he pleaded for the life of Louis XVI.
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The last paragraph in the above extract shows that Paine was
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already in sympathy with Irish discontent. I have a little scrap of
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his writing (early 1792) which appears to be from the draft of a
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note to one of the associations in London, respecting the Society
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of United Irishmen, whose Declaration was issued in October, 1791:
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"I have the honor of presenting the Gentlemen present a
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letter I have received from the United Irishmen of Dublin
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informing me of my having been elected an honorary member of
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their Society. By this adoption of me as one of their body I
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have the pleasure of considering myself on their" --
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[caeteradesunt].
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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The tremendous effect produced in Ireland by Paine's answer to
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Burke is indicated in the Charlemont Papers (Hist. MSS. Com. 1894).
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Mr. Thomas Shore first called attention to the items concerning
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Paine in the London 'Freethinker,' March and April, 1896. Although
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a Liberal Whig. In 1791 (April ii) Sheridan writes from Downpatrick
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to Charlemont;
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"I find from the newspapers that the Whigs of the capital
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(a society of which I am a member, and into which I entered
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with the best intentions) have, in my absence, and without my
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knowledge, named and published me one of a committee for
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disseminating Mr. Paine's pamphlet in reply to Mr. Burke's
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'Reflections on the French Revolution.' I have read that
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pamphlet; it appears to me designed to level all distinction,
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and to have this object in view -- a total overthrow of the
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Constitution. With this opinion I must naturally feel it
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indecent, in my public situation as a member of parliament, a
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citizen, a barrister and (what I value least) one of his
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majesty's counsel, to disseminate that work, but I am at a
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loss how to act. My first intention was to contradict it
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publicly. I fear a misinterpretation of my motives, and I
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dislike public differences with men in whose cause I am an
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humble assistant."
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Two days later Charlemont replies:
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"Thinking exactly as you do of Paine's very
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entertaining, very ingenious, but very dangerous performance
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. . . yet how to advise upon this occasion I do not well
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know. A serious public contradiction would not be pleasant,
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and possibly not innoxious. Perhaps the best method may be
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to expostulate between jest and earnest with some of your
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brethren on the liberty they have taken, and to declare in
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all companies, without being too serious, your real opinion
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of the tendency of the pamphlet, giving it, however, its due
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praise, for much merit it certainly has. . . . Men connected
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with the popular party will often be brought into scrapes of
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this sort, as the people who sometimes do not go too far
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will seldom go far enough."
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It is evident that Paine had a powerful following, and that
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it was not at that time prudent for a Whig politician to
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repudiate him. Soon after we find Earl Charlemont writing from
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Dublin, May 9, 1791, to Dr. Alexander Haliday, Belfast: "I did,
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indeed, suppose that Paine's pamphlet, which is, by the way, a
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work of great genius, would be well received in your district;
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yet, in my opinion, it ought to be read with some degree of
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caution. He does, indeed, tear away the bandage from the public
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eye; but in tearing it off there may be some danger of injuring
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the organ." In reply to a radical outburst from Haliday,
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Charlemont writes (July 30, 1791): "Though I admire Mr. Paine, I
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am by no means a convert to his doctrine concerning our
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constitution, and cannot help thinking that some approbation of
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this constitution, as it ought to be, should at all times be
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joined with the applause which we so justly bestow on the
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emancipation of a great people from utter slavery." Charlemont
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was a friend and correspondent of Burke, and frankly expressed
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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4
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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his differences of opinion, but Holiday gave him proofs of a
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dishonorable proceeding on Burke's part, eleven years before
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(borrowing a manuscript play of Haliday's in confidence, showing
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it to Sheridan, and never returning it, professing that it was
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lost), and pronounced him (Burke) a snake in the grass.
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Thereafter no communication appears between Charlemont and Burke.
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The prosecution of the second Part of the "Rights of Man,"
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and the paniccaused by massacres in France, thinned the ranks of
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Paine's eminent friends, while the popularity of his work
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increased. Malone, writing from London to Charlemont, December 3,
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1792, says: "For several weeks past not less than four thousand
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per week of Paine's despicable and nonsensical pamphlet have been
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issued forth, for almost nothing, and dispersed all over the
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kingdom. At Manchester the innovators bribe the poor by drink to
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hear it read." And on December 22, four days after Paine's trial,
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Malone has the satisfaction of reporting: "That vain fellow
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Erskine has been going about this month past, saying he would
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make a speech in defence of Paine's nonsensical and impudent
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libel on the English constitution, that would astonish the world,
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and make him to be remembered when Pitt and Fox and Burke, etc.,
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were all forgotten. After speaking for four hours, and fainting
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in the usual form, the jury, without suffering the attorney-
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general to reply, found Paine guilty." Malone (Edmund, the
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Shakespearian) was an admirable Irishman, but he seems to have
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been taken off his feet by 'the court-panic in London. There is a
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touch of comedy in finding him bringing out a quarto with a
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republican publisher.
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"This person," he tells Charlemont, November 15, 1793,
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"a Mr. George Robinson, is unluckily too a determined
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republican, on which account alone I am sorry that I have
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employed him. In consequence of his political frenzy he at
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this moment is apprehensive of judgment being pronounced
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against him by the king's bench for selling Paine's
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pamphlet, and may probably be punished for his zeal in the
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'good old cause,' as they called it in the last century, by
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six months' imprisonment. I shall not have the smallest pity
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for him. To do any act whatever that may tend to forward the
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principles maintained by the diabolical ruffians in France
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is so highly criminal that I hope the chief justice will
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inflict the most exemplary punishment on all the favorers of
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that vile system, whenever he can lay hold on them."
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Robinson had been found guilty August 10, and when called up
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for judgment seems to have escaped with a fine (Sherwin's
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"Paine," p. 138). Before leaving the Charlemont Papers it may be
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remarked that in no case does the Earl respond to Malone's
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acrimonious language against Paine, and even when the good
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Catholic has before him the author's direst offenses, he limits
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himself in writing to Haliday (long since scared) to a mild
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sentence: "So Paine has now attacked Washington! No wonder; he
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has lately dared to attack heaven."
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From the papers of Francis Place (British Museum), it
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appears that the work of repressing political discussion was
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begun by the Lord Mayor, who on November 27, 1792, closed the
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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5
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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debating society which had been meeting at the King's Arms,
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Cornhill. (By the diary of Paine's friend, John Hall, I find that
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after the information had been lodged against Paine, all of the
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debating societies in London were intimidated, and the King's
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Arms debate had come down to the question, "Whether a husband
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obstinate and ignorant, or a man of parts, though tyrannical, was
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the most eligible for woman of refined sensibilities?" Hall
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adds:" Did not stay a to the end, but it seemed to be going in
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favor of the sensible man, the tyrant." Whether the Lord Mayor
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scented sedition in such questions or not, John Hall, after some
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absence from London, enters in his diary, November 26, "Could not
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find where Debating Society met.")
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In the Francis Place MSS., 27, 809, p. 268, there is a list
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of the prosecutions in 1793; and in 27, 812, pp. 10, 12, are
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documents showing that about the middle of June, 1792,
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subscriptions had been opened, for the defence of Paine, by both
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the "London Corresponding Committee and the "Constitutional
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Society." In MSS. 27, 817, p. 24, "Mr. Payne" (sic) and Rickman
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are in the list of those who met in the London Coffee House, May
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9, 1792, and founded the Society of Friends of the People."
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Paine was elected a member of the French National Convention
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by four departments -- Oise, Puy-de-Dome, the Somme, and Pas-de-
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Calais, and decided to sit for the latter. Among the manuscripts
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of Genet, the first Minister sent by the Convention to the United
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States, confided to me by his son, George Clinton Genet of New
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York, I find a memorandum of great historical interest, which may
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be inserted here in advance of the monograph I hope to prepare
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concerning that much-wronged ambassador. In this memorandum Genet
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-- a brother of Madame Campan -- states that his appointment to
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the United States was in part because of the position his family
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had held at Court, and with a View to the banishment of the royal
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family to that country. (It had already been arranged that Paine
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should move for this in the Convention.) I now quote Genet:
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Roux Facillac, who had been very intimate in my
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father's family at Versailles, met me one morning [January
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14, 1793] and wished me to spend the evening at Le Brun's,
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where I had been invited. He accompanied me there and we met
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Brissot, Guadet, Leonnet, Ducos, Fauchet, Thomas Paine, and
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most of the Gironde leaders. ... Tom Paine, who did not
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pretend to understand French, took no part in the
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conversation, and sat quietly sipping his claret. "Ask
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Paine, Genet," said Brissot, "what effect the execution of
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Capet would have in America? "Paine replied to my enquiry by
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simply saying "bad, very bad." The next day Paine presented
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to the Convention his celebrated letter demanding in the
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name of Liberty, and the people of the United States, that
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Louis should be sent to the United States. Vergniaux
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enquired of me what effect I thought it would have in
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Europe, I replied in a few words that it would gratify the
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enemies of France who had not forgiven Louis the acceptance
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of the Constitution nor the glorious results of the American
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Revolution. . . . "Genet," continued Le Brun, "how would you
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like to go to the United States and take Capet and his
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family with you?
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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6
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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The next day, January 15, Genet was appointed by Le Brun
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(Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Paine's appeal was made in the
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Convention; but there is reason to believe that Le Brunos servant
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was a spy; and the conversation, reported to the Jacobins soon
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after its occurrence, "contributed," Genet believed, "to the
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early fall of Louis."
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I will now call attention to a passage in "The Journal of a
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Spy in Paris during the Reign of Terror," recently published, and
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will place it beside an extract from Paine's memorial to Monroe
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while in prison.
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The Spy. Paine, 1794.
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"April 2, 1793. He "However discordant the
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[Paine] is said to be moving late American Minister
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heaven and earth to get Gouverneur Morris and the late
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himself recognized as an French Committee of Public
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'American Citizen,' and Safety were, it suited the
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thereon liberated. . . The purpose of both that I should
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Minister of the American be continued in arrestation.
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States [Gouverneur Morris] is The former wished to prevent
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too shrewd to allow such a my return to America that I
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fish to go over and swim in should not expose his
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his waters, if he can prevent misconduct; and the latter,
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it; and avows to Robespierre lest I should publish to the
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that he knows nothing of any world the history of its
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rights of naturalization wickedness. Whilst that Min-
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claimed by Paine." ister and the Committee con
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tinued I had no expectation of
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liberty. I speak here of the
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Committee of which Robespierre
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was a member."
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Here then is corroboration, were it needed, of the criminal
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treachery of Morris to both Paine and Washington, of which I have
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given unanswerable documentary evidence (vol. iii., chap. 21),
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although I had not then conceived that Morris' guilt extended to
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personal incitements of Robespierre against Paine.
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Morris knew well that "naturalization," though an effective
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word to use on Robespierre, had nothing to do with the
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citizenship acquired at the American Revolution by persons of
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alien birth, such as Paine, Hamilton, Robert Morris, -- to name
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three who had held high offices in the United States. But, as
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Monroe stated, all Americans of 1776 were born under the British
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flag, and needed no formal process to make them citizens.
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Mr. J.G. Alger, author of "Englishmen in the French
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Revolution," and "Glimpses of the French Revolution," whose
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continued researches in Paris promise other original and striking
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works, has graciously sent me a document of much interest just
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discovered by him in the National Archives, where it is marked U
|
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1021. It is the copy of a "Declaration" made by Paine, the
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original being buried away in the chaos of Fouquier-Tinville
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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documents. The Declaration was made on October 8, 1794, in
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connection with the trial of Denis Julien, accused of having been
|
|
a Spy of Robespierre and his party in the Luxembourg prison. It
|
|
was proved that on June 29, 1794, Julien had been called on in
|
|
the prison, where he was detained, to inform the revolutionary
|
|
tribunal concerning the suspected conspiracy among the prisoners.
|
|
He said that he knew nothing; that his room was at the extremity
|
|
of the building divided off from the mass of prisoners, and he
|
|
could not pronounce against any one. (Wallon's "Hist. Tribunal
|
|
Rdvolutionnaire," iv., p. 409.) Wallon, however, had not
|
|
discovered this document found by Mr. Alger, which shows that
|
|
Paine was long a room-mate of Julien in the prison where his
|
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(Paine's) Declaration was demanded and given as follows:
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"Denis Julien was my room mate from the time of his
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|
entering the Luxembourg prison at the end of the month of
|
|
Ventose [about the middle of March] till towards the end of
|
|
Messidor [about the middle of July], at which date I was
|
|
visited with a violent fever which obliged me to go into a
|
|
room better suited to the condition I was in. It is for the
|
|
time when we were room mates that I shall speak of him, as
|
|
being within my personal knowledge. I shall not go beyond
|
|
that date, because my illness rendered me incapable of
|
|
knowing anything of what happened in the prison or
|
|
elsewhere, and my companions on their part, all the time
|
|
that my recovery remained doubtful, were silent to me on all
|
|
that happened. The first news which they told me was of the
|
|
fall of Robespierre. I state all this so that the real
|
|
reason why I do not speak of any of the allegations
|
|
preferred against Julien in the summoning of him as a
|
|
witness before the revolutionary tribunal, in the case of
|
|
persons accused of conspiracy, may be clearly known, and
|
|
that my silence on that case may not be attributed to any
|
|
unfavorable reticence. Of his conduct during the time of our
|
|
room intimacy, which lasted more than four months, I can
|
|
speak fully. He appeared to me during all that time a man of
|
|
strict honor, probity, and humanity, incapable of doing
|
|
anything repugnant to those principles. We found ourselves
|
|
in entire agreement in the horror which we felt for the
|
|
character of Robespierre, and in the opinion which we formed
|
|
of his hypocrisy, particularly on the occasion of his
|
|
harangue on the Supreme Being, and on the atrocious perfidy
|
|
which he showed in proposing the bloody law of the 22
|
|
Prairial [June 10, 1794]; and we communicated our opinions
|
|
to each other in writing, and these confidential notes we
|
|
wrote in English to prevent the risk of our being understood
|
|
by the prisoners, and for our own safety we threw them into
|
|
the fire as soon as read. As I knew nothing of the
|
|
denunciations which took place at the Luxembourg, or of the
|
|
judgments and executions which were the consequence, until
|
|
at least a month after the event, I can only say that when I
|
|
was informed of them, as also of the appearance of Julien as
|
|
a witness in that affair, I concluded from the opinion which
|
|
I had already formed of him that he had been an unwilling
|
|
witness, or that he had acted with the view of rendering
|
|
service to the accused, and I have now no reason to believe
|
|
otherwise. That the accused were not guilty of any anti-
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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8
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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revolutionary conduct is also what I believe, but the fact
|
|
was that all the prisoners saw themselves shut up like sheep
|
|
in a pen to be sacrificed in turn just as they daily saw
|
|
their companions were, and the expression of discontent
|
|
which the misery of such a situation forced from them was
|
|
converted into a conspiracy by the spies of Robespierre who
|
|
were posted in the prison. -- Luxembourg, 7 Vendemiaire,
|
|
Year 3."
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Julien was discharged without trial. The answers he had
|
|
given to the Revolutionary Committee, quoted above, unknown of
|
|
course to Paine, justified his opinion of Julien, though the fact
|
|
of his being summoned at all looks as if Julien had been placed
|
|
with Paine as an informer. In the companionship of the author
|
|
Julien may have found a change of heart! Mr. Alger in a note to
|
|
me remarks, "What a picture of the prisoners' distrust of each
|
|
other!" The document also brings before us the notable fact that,
|
|
though at its date, fourteen weeks after the fall of Robespierre,
|
|
the sinister power of Gouverneur Morris' accomplices on the
|
|
Committee of Public Safety still kept Paine in prison, his
|
|
testimony to the integrity of an accused man was called for and
|
|
apparently trusted.
|
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|
The next extract that I give is a clipping from a London
|
|
paper of 1794, the name not given, preserved in a scrap-book
|
|
extending from 1776 to 1827, which I purchased many years ago at
|
|
the Bentley sale.
|
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|
"GENERAL O'HARA AND MR. THOMAS PAYNE -- These well
|
|
known Gentlemen are at Paris -- both kept at the Luxembourg
|
|
-- imprisoned, indeed, but in a mitigated manner as to
|
|
accommodations, apartments, table, intercourse, and the
|
|
liberty of the garden -- which our well-informed readers
|
|
know is very large. The ground plan of the Luxembourg is
|
|
above six acres. In this confinement General O'Hara and Mr.
|
|
Thomas Payne have often met, and their meeting has been
|
|
productive of a little event in some sort so unexpected as
|
|
to be added to the extraordinary vicissitudes of which the
|
|
present time is so teeming. The fact was that General O'Hara
|
|
wanted money; and that through Mr. Thomas Payne he was able
|
|
to get what he wanted. The sum was 200 pounds sterling. The
|
|
General's bill, through other channels tried in vain, was
|
|
negotiated by Mr. Thomas Payne."
|
|
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|
The story of this money, and how Paine contrived to keep it,
|
|
is told in vol. iii., p. 396, n. The mitigations of punishment
|
|
alluded to in the paragraph did not last long; the last months of
|
|
Paine's imprisonment were terrible. O'Hara, captured at Toulon
|
|
and not released until August, 1795, was the General who carried
|
|
out the sword of Cornwallis for surrender at Yorktown.
|
|
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|
Charles Nodier, in his "Souvenirs de la Revolution et de
|
|
I'Empire " (Paris, 1850), has some striking sketches of Paine and
|
|
his friends in the last years of the eighteenth century. Nodier
|
|
had no sympathy with Paine's opinions, but was much impressed by
|
|
the man. I piece together some extracts from various parts of his
|
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rambling work.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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9
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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"One of our dinners at Bonneville's has left such an
|
|
impression on me that when I am thinking of these things it
|
|
seems like a dream. There were six of us in the Poet's
|
|
immense sitting room. It had four windows looking on the
|
|
street. The cloth was spread on an oblong table, loaded at
|
|
each end with bronzes, globes, maps, books, crests, and
|
|
portraits. The only one of the guests whom I knew was the
|
|
impenetrable Seyffert, with his repertory of ideas a
|
|
thousand times more profound, but also a thousand times more
|
|
obscure than the cave of Trophonius. Old Mercier came in and
|
|
sat down with his chin resting on his big ivory-topped cane.
|
|
... The fifth guest was a military man, fifty years of age,
|
|
with a sort of inverted curled up face, reserved in
|
|
conversation, like a man of sense, common in manners, like a
|
|
man of the people. They called him a Pole. The last guest
|
|
was an Anglo-American, with a long, thin, straight head, all
|
|
in profile as it were, without any
|
|
|
|
expression; for gentleness, benevolence, shyness, give
|
|
little scope for it. ... This Anglo-American was Thomas
|
|
Payne, and the Tartar with sullen looks was Kosciusko. ...
|
|
Thomas Payne, whom I seldom saw, has left on me the
|
|
impression of a well-to-do man, bold in principle, cautious
|
|
in practice; liable to yield himself up to revolutionary
|
|
movements, incapable of accepting the dangerous
|
|
consequences; good by nature, and a sophist by conviction.
|
|
... On the whole an honest and unpretending person who, in
|
|
the most fatal day of our annals, exhibited every courage
|
|
and virtue; and of whom history, in order to be just to his
|
|
memory, ought to forget nothing but his writings."
|
|
|
|
At a somewhat later period Paine was met in Paris by the
|
|
eminent engraver, Abraham Raimbach, Corresponding Member of the
|
|
Institute of France, whose "Recollections," privately printed,
|
|
were loaned me by Mr. Henry Clifton. I am permitted by Mr. W.L.
|
|
Raimbach, grandson of the engraver, to use this family volume.
|
|
Raimbach probably had met Paine between 1800 and 1802, and
|
|
writes:
|
|
|
|
"He was at this time constantly to be seen at an
|
|
obscure cabaret in an obscure street in the fauxbourg St.
|
|
Germain (Cafe Jacob, rue Jacob). The scene as we entered the
|
|
room from the street -- it was on the ground floor -- was,
|
|
under the circumstances, somewhat impressive. It was on a
|
|
summer's evening, and several tables were occupied by men,
|
|
apparently tradesmen and mechanics, some playing at the then
|
|
universal game of dominoes, others drinking their bottle of
|
|
light, frothy, but pleasant beer, or their little glass of
|
|
liqueur. while in a retired part of the room sat the once-
|
|
dreaded demagogue, the supposed conspirator against thrones
|
|
and altars, the renowned Thomas Paine! He was in
|
|
conversation with several well-dressed Irishmen, who soon
|
|
afterwards took leave, and we placed ourselves at his table.
|
|
His general appearance was mean and poverty-stricken. The
|
|
portrait of him engraved by Sharp from Romney's portrait is
|
|
a good likeness, but he was now much withered and careworn,
|
|
tho' his dark eye still retained its sparkling vigor. He was
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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10
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
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fluent in his speech, of mild and gentle demeanor, clear and
|
|
distinct in enunciation, and his voice exceedingly soft and
|
|
agreeable. The subject of his talk being of course
|
|
political, resembled very much his printed opinions; and the
|
|
dogmatic form in which he delivered them seemed to evince
|
|
his own perfect self-conviction of their truth."
|
|
|
|
Raimbach mentions having afterwards understood that Colonel
|
|
Bosville, of Yorkshire, was very kind to him, and enabled Paine
|
|
to return to America. Lewis Goldsmith says that Sir Francis
|
|
Burdett and Mr. William Bosville made him a present of 300 louis
|
|
d'ors, with which he remunerated Bonneville, with whom he had
|
|
resided nearly six years. Goldsmith's article on Paine (Anti-
|
|
Gallican Monitor, February 28, 1813) contains a good many errors,
|
|
but some shrewd remarks:
|
|
|
|
"From what I knew of this man, who once made such a
|
|
noise in this country and America, I judge him to have been
|
|
harmless and inoffensive; and I firmly believe that if he
|
|
could have imagined that his writings would have caused
|
|
bloodshed be would never have written at all. . . . He never
|
|
was respected by any party in France, as he certainly was
|
|
not an advocate of (what was falsely called) French liberty,
|
|
-- that system which enforced Republican opinions by
|
|
drowning, shooting, and the guillotine. ... He even saw
|
|
several foreigners, who like himself were staunch admirers
|
|
of the French Revolution, led to the scaffold -- such as
|
|
Anacharsis Clootz, Baron Trenk, etc. -- and had Robespierre
|
|
lived eight days longer Paine would have certainly followed
|
|
them, as his name was already on the Proscribed list of the
|
|
Public Accuser. . . . I have no doubt that if Paine, on his
|
|
return to America, had found the head of the government of
|
|
that country [Jefferson] to be that stern Republican which
|
|
he professed to be, he would have written some account of
|
|
the French Revolution, and of the horrid neglect which he
|
|
experienced there from Robespierre as well as from
|
|
Buonaparte; for if the former designed to take away his
|
|
life, the latter refused him the means of living. . . . I
|
|
must in justice to him declare that he left France a decided
|
|
enemy to the Revolution in that country, and with an
|
|
unconquerable aversion to Buonaparte, against whom he
|
|
indulged himself in speaking in severe terms to almost every
|
|
person of his acquaintance in Paris."
|
|
|
|
The last of my gleanings were gathered at Bromley, in Kent,
|
|
where Paine went on April 21, 1792, "to compose," says his friend
|
|
Hall, "the funeral sermon of Burke," but local tradition says, to
|
|
write the "Age of Reason." Paine, as a private letter proves, was
|
|
anxious for a prosecution of his "Rights of Man," which Burke had
|
|
publicly proposed, and no doubt began at Bromley his pamphlet
|
|
with the exposure of Burke's pension. However, when Paine sought
|
|
refuge from the swarm of radicals and interviewers besetting him
|
|
in his London lodgings, it is highly probable that he wished to
|
|
continue his meditations on religious subjects and add to his
|
|
manuscripts, begun many years before, ultimately pieced together
|
|
in the "Age of Reason." Under the guidance of Mr. Coles Childs,
|
|
present owner of Bromley Palace, I visited Mr. How, an
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
11
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|
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|
THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
|
|
|
|
intelligent watchmaker, who remembers when a boy of twelve
|
|
hearing his father say that Paine occupied "Church Cottage," and
|
|
there wrote the "Age of Reason." There is also a local tradition
|
|
that Paine used to write on the same work while seated under the
|
|
"Tom Paine Tree," which is on the palace estate. "Church Cottage"
|
|
was ecclesiastical property, may even have been the Vicarage, and
|
|
Paine would pass by the beautiful palace of the Bishops of
|
|
Rochester to his favorite tree. The legend which has singled out
|
|
the heretical work of Paine as that which was written in an
|
|
ecclesiastical mansion, and in an episcopal park, is too
|
|
picturesque for severe criticism. The "Tom Paine Tree" is a very
|
|
ancient oak, solitary in its field, and very noble. Mr. Childs
|
|
pointed out to me some powerful but much rusted wires, amid the
|
|
upper branches, showing that it had been taken care of. The
|
|
interior surface of the trunk, which is entirely hollow, is
|
|
completely charred. The girth at the ground must be twenty-five
|
|
feet. Not a limb is dead: from the hollow and charred trunk a
|
|
superb mass of foliage arises. I think Paine must have remembered
|
|
it when writing patriotic songs for America in the Revolution, -
|
|
"The Liberty Tree," and the "Boston Patriot's Song," with its
|
|
lines --
|
|
|
|
"Our mountains are crowned with imperial oak,
|
|
Whose roots like our Liberty ages have nourished."
|
|
|
|
From this high and clear spot one may almost see the
|
|
homestead of Darwin who, more heretical than Paine, has
|
|
Westminster Abbey for his monument; and whose neighbor, the Rev.
|
|
Robert Ainslie, of Tromer Lodge, kept in his house the skull and
|
|
right hand of Thomas Paine! Of the remains of Paine, exhumed by
|
|
Cobbett in America, the brain came into the possession of Rev.
|
|
George Reynolds, the skull into that of Rev. Robert Ainslie, both
|
|
orthodox at the time, both subsequently unorthodox, possibly
|
|
through some desire to know what thoughts had played through the
|
|
lamp whose fragments had come into their hands. The daughter of
|
|
Mr. Ainslie, the first wife of the late Sir Russell Reynolds,
|
|
wrote me that she remembered the relics, but could not find them
|
|
after her father's death; if ever discovered they might well be
|
|
given quiet burial or cremation at the foot of this "Tom Paine
|
|
Tree." However that may be, it is a Talking Oak, if one listens
|
|
closely, and tells true fables of the charred and scarred and
|
|
storm-beaten man, rooted deep in the conscience and soul of
|
|
England, whose career, after its special issues are gone, is
|
|
still crowned with living foliage. That none can doubt who
|
|
witnessed the large Paine Exhibition in South Place Chapel, in
|
|
December, 1895, or that in the Bradlaugh Club, January 29, 1896,
|
|
and observes the steady demand for his works in England and
|
|
America. Yet it is certain that comparatively few of those who
|
|
cherish relics of Paine, and read his books, agree with his
|
|
religious opinions, or regard his political theories as now
|
|
practicable. Paine's immortality among the people is derived
|
|
mainly from the life and spirit which were in him, consuming all
|
|
mean partitions between man and man, all arbitrary and unreal
|
|
distinctions, rising above the cheap jingoism that calls itself
|
|
patriotism, and affirming the nobler State whose unit is the man,
|
|
whose motto is "My country is the world, to do good my religion."
|
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
12
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
|
|
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|
Personally I place a very high value on Paine's writings in
|
|
themselves, and not simply for their prophetic genius, their
|
|
humane spirit, and their vigorous style. While his type of deism
|
|
is not to me satisfactory, his religious spirit at times attains
|
|
sublime heights; and while his republican formulas are at times
|
|
impaired by his eagerness to adapt them to existing conditions, I
|
|
do not find any writer at all, not even the most modern, who has
|
|
equally worked out a scheme for harmonizing the inevitable rule
|
|
of the majority with individual freedom and rights. Yet it is by
|
|
no means on this my own estimate of Paine's ideas that I rest the
|
|
claims of his writings to attention and study. Their historical
|
|
value is of the highest. Every page of Paine was pregnant with
|
|
the life of his time. He was the 'enfant terrible' of the times
|
|
that in America, England, France, made the history that is now
|
|
our international heritage: he was literally the only man who
|
|
came out with the whole truth, regardless of persons: his
|
|
testimony is now of record, and the gravest issues of to-day
|
|
cannot be understood until that testimony is mastered.
|
|
|
|
I especially invoke to the study of Paine's Life, and of
|
|
these volumes of his Writings, the historians, scholars,
|
|
statesmen of the mother of nations -- England. I have remarked a
|
|
tendency in some quarters to preserve the old odium against
|
|
Paine, no longer maintainable in respect of his religion or his
|
|
character, by transferring it to his antagonism to the government
|
|
of England in the last century. And it is probable that this
|
|
prejudice may be revived by the republication in this edition of
|
|
several of his pamphlets, notably that on the "Invasion of
|
|
England" in the Appendix (to which some of Paine's most important
|
|
works have been relegated). But if thinking Englishmen will rid
|
|
themselves of that counterfeit patriotism now called "Jingoism,"
|
|
and calmly study those same essays, they will begin to understand
|
|
that while Paine arraigned a transient misgovernment of England,
|
|
his critics arraign England itself by treating attacks on minions
|
|
of George III. as if hostile to the England of Victoria. The
|
|
widespread hostility to England recently displayed in America has
|
|
with some justice been traced to the kind of teaching that has
|
|
gone on for nearly four generations in American schools under the
|
|
name of history; but what remedy can there be for this
|
|
disgraceful situation so long as English historians are
|
|
ignorantly keeping their country, despite the friendship of its
|
|
people for Americans, in the attitude of a party to a 'vendetta'
|
|
transmitted from a discredited past? And much the same may be
|
|
said concerning the strained relations between England and
|
|
France, which constitute a most sad, and even scandalous, feature
|
|
of our time. About a hundred years ago an English government was
|
|
instigating parochial mobs to burn "Tom Paine" in effigy for
|
|
writing the "Rights of Man," little reflecting that it was making
|
|
the nation it misgoverned into an effigy for American and French
|
|
democrats to burn, on occasion, for a century to come. Paine, his
|
|
name and his personal wrongs, passed out of the case altogether,
|
|
like the heart of the hollow "Tom Paine Tree" at Bromley: but
|
|
like its living foliage the principles he represented are still
|
|
renewed, and flourish under new names and forms. But old names
|
|
and forms are coined in prejudices. The Jeffersonian in America
|
|
and the Girondin in France are now in power, and are sometimes
|
|
victimized by a superstition that George III. is still monarch of
|
|
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
|
13
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THE WRITINGS of THOMAS PAINE
|
|
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|
England, and Pitt still his Minister. Meanwhile the credit of
|
|
English Literature commands the civilized world. The next great
|
|
writer will be the historian who shall without flattery, and with
|
|
inflexible justice and truth, examine and settle these long-
|
|
standing accounts with the past; and to him I dedicate in advance
|
|
these volumes, wherein he will find valuable resources and
|
|
materials.
|
|
|
|
Here then close my labors on the history and the writings of
|
|
the great Commoner of Mankind, founder of the Republic of the
|
|
World, and emancipator of the human mind and heart,
|
|
|
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THOMAS PAINE.
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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**** ****
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The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
|
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
|
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
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Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
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nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
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religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
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the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
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that America can again become what its Founders intended --
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The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
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The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
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hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
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and information for today. If you have such books please contact
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us, we need to give them back to America.
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**** ****
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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14
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