Produced by David Widger





THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE, VOLUME I.

By Thomas Paine

Collected And Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway


Transcriber's Note:This file posted, on the US President's Day Holiday,
in memory of Thomas Paine, one of our most influential and most
unappreciated patriots.



THE AMERICAN CRISIS


   Table of Contents

   Editor's Preface

   The Crisis No. I

   The Crisis No. II - To Lord Howe

   The Crisis No. III

   The Crisis No. IV

   The Crisis No. V - To General Sir William Howe
   - To The Inhabitants Of America

   The Crisis No. VI - To The Earl Of Carlisle, General Clinton, And
   William Eden, ESQ., British Commissioners At New York

   The Crisis No. VII  - To The People Of England

   The Crisis No. VIII - Addressed To The People Of England

   The Crisis No. IX   - The Crisis Extraordinary - On the Subject
   of Taxation

   The Crisis No. X    - On The King Of England's Speech
   - To The People Of America

   The Crisis No. XI   - On The Present State Of News
   - A Supernumerary Crisis (To Sir Guy Carleton.)

   The Crisis No. XII  - To The Earl Of Shelburne

   The Crisis No. XIII - On The Peace, And The Probable Advantages
   Thereof

   A Supernumerary Crisis - (To The People Of America)




THE AMERICAN CRISIS.




EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THOMAS PAINE, in his Will, speaks of this work as The American Crisis,
remembering perhaps that a number of political pamphlets had appeared in
London, 1775-1776, under general title of "The Crisis." By the blunder
of an early English publisher of Paine's writings, one essay in the
London "Crisis" was attributed to Paine, and the error has continued
to cause confusion. This publisher was D. I. Eaton, who printed as
the first number of Paine's "Crisis" an essay taken from the London
publication. But his prefatory note says: "Since the printing of this
book, the publisher is informed that No. 1, or first Crisis in this
publication, is not one of the thirteen which Paine wrote, but a
letter previous to them." Unfortunately this correction is sufficiently
equivocal to leave on some minds the notion that Paine did write the
letter in question, albeit not as a number of his "Crisis "; especially
as Eaton's editor unwarrantably appended the signature "C. S.,"
suggesting "Common Sense." There are, however, no such letters in the
London essay, which is signed "Casca." It was published August, 1775,
in the form of a letter to General Gage, in answer to his Proclamation
concerning the affair at Lexington. It was certainly not written by
Paine. It apologizes for the Americans for having, on April 19, at
Lexington, made "an attack upon the King's troops from behind walls and
lurking holes." The writer asks: "Have not the Americans been driven
to this frenzy? Is it not common for an enemy to take every advantage?"
Paine, who was in America when the affair occurred at Lexington, would
have promptly denounced Gage's story as a falsehood, but the facts known
to every one in America were as yet not before the London writer. The
English "Crisis" bears evidence throughout of having been written in
London. It derived nothing from Paine, and he derived nothing from it,
unless its title, and this is too obvious for its origin to require
discussion. I have no doubt, however, that the title was suggested
by the English publication, because Paine has followed its scheme in
introducing a "Crisis Extraordinary." His work consists of thirteen
numbers, and, in addition to these, a "Crisis Extraordinary" and a
"Supernumerary Crisis." In some modern collections all of these have been
serially numbered, and a brief newspaper article added, making sixteen
numbers. But Paine, in his Will, speaks of the number as thirteen,
wishing perhaps, in his characteristic way, to adhere to the number
of the American Colonies, as he did in the thirteen ribs of his iron
bridge. His enumeration is therefore followed in the present volume, and
the numbers printed successively, although other writings intervened.

The first "Crisis" was printed in the Pennsylvania Journal, December
19, 1776, and opens with the famous sentence, "These are the times that
try men's souls"; the last "Crisis" appeared April 19,1783, (eighth
anniversary of the first gun of the war, at Lexington,) and opens with
the words, "The times that tried men's souls are over." The great
effect produced by Paine's successive publications has been attested by
Washington and Franklin, by every leader of the American Revolution,
by resolutions of Congress, and by every contemporary historian of the
events amid which they were written. The first "Crisis" is of especial
historical interest. It was written during the retreat of Washington
across the Delaware, and by order of the Commander was read to groups of
his dispirited and suffering soldiers. Its opening sentence was adopted
as the watchword of the movement on Trenton, a few days after its
publication, and is believed to have inspired much of the courage which
won that victory, which, though not imposing in extent, was of great
moral effect on Washington's little army.




THE CRISIS




THE CRISIS I. (THESE ARE THE TIMES THAT TRY MEN'S SOULS)

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man
and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the
triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness
only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper
price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an
article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to
enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX)
but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that
manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon
earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can
belong only to God.

Whether the independence of the continent was declared too soon, or
delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my own
simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it would have
been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter, neither
could we, while we were in a dependent state. However, the fault, if it
were one, was all our own*; we have none to blame but ourselves. But
no great deal is lost yet. All that Howe has been doing for this month
past, is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the spirit of the
Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and which time and a
little resolution will soon recover.


     * The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if
lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the evil; and
there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or what, or
where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious
and useful.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret
opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up
a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish,
who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities
of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I
so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the
government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I
do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up
to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a
house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through
a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has
trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed
boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army,
after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified
with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces
collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might
inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair
fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases,
have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is
always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer
habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the
touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to
light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact,
they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary
apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the
hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many
a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially
solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge
of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which
those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our
situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow
neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force
was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe could bring
against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the garrison, had
we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our ammunition, light
artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been removed, on the
apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the Jerseys, in
which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it must occur to every
thinking man, whether in the army or not, that these kind of field forts
are only for temporary purposes, and last in use no longer than the
enemy directs his force against the particular object which such forts
are raised to defend. Such was our situation and condition at Fort Lee
on the morning of the 20th of November, when an officer arrived with
information that the enemy with 200 boats had landed about seven miles
above; Major General [Nathaniel] Green, who commanded the garrison,
immediately ordered them under arms, and sent express to General
Washington at the town of Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry
= six miles. Our first object was to secure the bridge over the
Hackensack, which laid up the river between the enemy and us, about six
miles from us, and three from them. General Washington arrived in about
three-quarters of an hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards
the bridge, which place I expected we should have a brush for; however,
they did not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our
troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some which
passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the ferry, and
made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town of Hackensack,
and there passed the river. We brought off as much baggage as the wagons
could contain, the rest was lost. The simple object was to bring off
the garrison, and march them on till they could be strengthened by the
Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as to be enabled to make a stand.
We staid four days at Newark, collected our out-posts with some of
the Jersey militia, and marched out twice to meet the enemy, on being
informed that they were advancing, though our numbers were greatly
inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little opinion, committed a great error
in generalship in not throwing a body of forces off from Staten Island
through Amboy, by which means he might have seized all our stores
at Brunswick, and intercepted our march into Pennsylvania; but if we
believe the power of hell to be limited, we must likewise believe that
their agents are under some providential control.

I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat to
the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers
and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest,
covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long retreat,
bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes centred in
one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive
the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King William never appeared
to full advantage but in difficulties and in action; the same remark may
be made on General Washington, for the character fits him. There is a
natural firmness in some minds which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but
which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it
among those kind of public blessings, which we do not immediately see,
that God hath blessed him with uninterrupted health, and given him a
mind that can even flourish upon care.

I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the state
of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following question, Why
is it that the enemy have left the New England provinces, and made these
middle ones the seat of war? The answer is easy: New England is not
infested with Tories, and we are. I have been tender in raising the
cry against these men, and used numberless arguments to show them their
danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly
or their baseness. The period is now arrived, in which either they or
we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a
Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred
Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms.
Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is
the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may
be cruel, never can be brave.

But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between us,
let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation to the
enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to join him.
Howe is as much deceived by you as the American cause is injured by you.
He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his standard, with
muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no use to him, unless
you support him personally, for 'tis soldiers, and not Tories, that he
wants.

I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against
the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a
tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his
hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking
his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this
unfatherly expression, "Well! give me peace in my day." Not a man lives
on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or
other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If
there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have
peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to
awaken every man to duty. Not a place upon earth might be so happy as
America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she
has nothing to do but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself
between temper and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God
governs the world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear
of foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that
period arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for
though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can
never expire.

America did not, nor does not want force; but she wanted a proper
application of that force. Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it
is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off. From an excess
of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise an army, and trusted our
cause to the temporary defence of a well-meaning militia. A summer's
experience has now taught us better; yet with those troops, while they
were collected, we were able to set bounds to the progress of the enemy,
and, thank God! they are again assembling. I always considered militia
as the best troops in the world for a sudden exertion, but they will not
do for a long campaign. Howe, it is probable, will make an attempt on
this city [Philadelphia]; should he fail on this side the Delaware, he
is ruined. If he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. He stakes all on his
side against a part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the consequence will
be, that armies from both ends of the continent will march to assist
their suffering friends in the middle states; for he cannot go
everywhere, it is impossible. I consider Howe as the greatest enemy the
Tories have; he is bringing a war into their country, which, had it not
been for him and partly for themselves, they had been clear of. Should
he now be expelled, I wish with all the devotion of a Christian, that
the names of Whig and Tory may never more be mentioned; but should the
Tories give him encouragement to come, or assistance if he come, I
as sincerely wish that our next year's arms may expel them from the
continent, and the Congress appropriate their possessions to the relief
of those who have suffered in well-doing. A single successful battle
next year will settle the whole. America could carry on a two years' war
by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made
happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather
the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view
but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful
event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence
may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear
of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with
prejudice.

Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to
those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter
out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that
state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the
wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an
object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the
depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that
the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to
meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your
tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but
"show your faith by your works," that God may bless you. It matters not
where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing
will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the
back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart
that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his
cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the
whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble,
that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.
'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm,
and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles
unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear
as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I
believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think
it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my
property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it,
and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to
suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or
a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by
an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root
of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be
assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other.
Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I
should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by
swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid,
stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in
receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to
the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the
orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one.
There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which
threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he
succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect
mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where
conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the
fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard
equally against both. Howe's first object is, partly by threats and
partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their
arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage,
and this is what the tories call making their peace, "a peace which
passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which would be the immediate
forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of
Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to
give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are
all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were
the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the
resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to
chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up
its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons
and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is
the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state
that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous
destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see
it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your
ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.

I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know
our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While our army was
collected, Howe dared not risk a battle; and it is no credit to him
that he decamped from the White Plains, and waited a mean opportunity to
ravage the defenceless Jerseys; but it is great credit to us, that, with
a handful of men, we sustained an orderly retreat for near an hundred
miles, brought off our ammunition, all our field pieces, the greatest
part of our stores, and had four rivers to pass. None can say that our
retreat was precipitate, for we were near three weeks in performing it,
that the country might have time to come in. Twice we marched back to
meet the enemy, and remained out till dark. The sign of fear was not
seen in our camp, and had not some of the cowardly and disaffected
inhabitants spread false alarms through the country, the Jerseys had
never been ravaged. Once more we are again collected and collecting; our
new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall
be able to open the next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed
and clothed. This is our situation, and who will may know it. By
perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue;
by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils--a
ravaged country--a depopulated city--habitations without safety, and
slavery without hope--our homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses
for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall
doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet
remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it
unlamented.

COMMON SENSE.

December 23, 1776.




THE CRISIS II. TO LORD HOWE.

            "What's in the name of lord, that I should fear
              To bring my grievance to the public ear?"
                                              CHURCHILL.

UNIVERSAL empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with
all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, he can assign
them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy,
and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of
Britain; he that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in
defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to "Defender
of the Faith," than George the Third.

As a military man your lordship may hold out the sword of war, and call
it the "ultima ratio regum": the last reason of kings; we in return
can show you the sword of justice, and call it "the best scourge of
tyrants." The first of these two may threaten, or even frighten for a
while, and cast a sickly languor over an insulted people, but reason
will soon recover the debauch, and restore them again to tranquil
fortitude. Your lordship, I find, has now commenced author, and
published a proclamation; I have published a Crisis. As they stand, they
are the antipodes of each other; both cannot rise at once, and one of
them must descend; and so quick is the revolution of things, that your
lordship's performance, I see, has already fallen many degrees from
its first place, and is now just visible on the edge of the political
horizon.

It is surprising to what a pitch of infatuation, blind folly and
obstinacy will carry mankind, and your lordship's drowsy proclamation
is a proof that it does not even quit them in their sleep. Perhaps you
thought America too was taking a nap, and therefore chose, like Satan
to Eve, to whisper the delusion softly, lest you should awaken her. This
continent, sir, is too extensive to sleep all at once, and too watchful,
even in its slumbers, not to startle at the unhallowed foot of an
invader. You may issue your proclamations, and welcome, for we have
learned to "reverence ourselves," and scorn the insulting ruffian that
employs you. America, for your deceased brother's sake, would gladly
have shown you respect and it is a new aggravation to her feelings,
that Howe should be forgetful, and raise his sword against those, who at
their own charge raised a monument to his brother. But your master has
commanded, and you have not enough of nature left to refuse. Surely
there must be something strangely degenerating in the love of monarchy,
that can so completely wear a man down to an ingrate, and make him proud
to lick the dust that kings have trod upon. A few more years, should you
survive them, will bestow on you the title of "an old man": and in some
hour of future reflection you may probably find the fitness of Wolsey's
despairing penitence--"had I served my God as faithful as I have served
my king, he would not thus have forsaken me in my old age."

The character you appear to us in, is truly ridiculous. Your friends,
the Tories, announced your coming, with high descriptions of your
unlimited powers; but your proclamation has given them the lie, by
showing you to be a commissioner without authority. Had your powers been
ever so great they were nothing to us, further than we pleased; because
we had the same right which other nations had, to do what we thought
was best. "The UNITED STATES of AMERICA," will sound as pompously in the
world or in history, as "the kingdom of Great Britain"; the character of
General Washington will fill a page with as much lustre as that of
Lord Howe: and the Congress have as much right to command the king and
Parliament in London to desist from legislation, as they or you have
to command the Congress. Only suppose how laughable such an edict would
appear from us, and then, in that merry mood, do but turn the tables
upon yourself, and you will see how your proclamation is received here.
Having thus placed you in a proper position in which you may have a full
view of your folly, and learn to despise it, I hold up to you, for
that purpose, the following quotation from your own lunarian
proclamation.--"And we (Lord Howe and General Howe) do command (and in
his majesty's name forsooth) all such persons as are assembled together,
under the name of general or provincial congresses, committees,
conventions or other associations, by whatever name or names known and
distinguished, to desist and cease from all such treasonable actings and
doings."

You introduce your proclamation by referring to your declarations of
the 14th of July and 19th of September. In the last of these you sunk
yourself below the character of a private gentleman. That I may not
seem to accuse you unjustly, I shall state the circumstance: by a verbal
invitation of yours, communicated to Congress by General Sullivan, then
a prisoner on his parole, you signified your desire of conferring with
some members of that body as private gentlemen. It was beneath the
dignity of the American Congress to pay any regard to a message that
at best was but a genteel affront, and had too much of the ministerial
complexion of tampering with private persons; and which might probably
have been the case, had the gentlemen who were deputed on the business
possessed that kind of easy virtue which an English courtier is so truly
distinguished by. Your request, however, was complied with, for honest
men are naturally more tender of their civil than their political fame.
The interview ended as every sensible man thought it would; for
your lordship knows, as well as the writer of the Crisis, that it is
impossible for the King of England to promise the repeal, or even the
revisal of any acts of parliament; wherefore, on your part, you had
nothing to say, more than to request, in the room of demanding, the
entire surrender of the continent; and then, if that was complied with,
to promise that the inhabitants should escape with their lives. This was
the upshot of the conference. You informed the conferees that you were
two months in soliciting these powers. We ask, what powers? for as
commissioner you have none. If you mean the power of pardoning, it is
an oblique proof that your master was determined to sacrifice all before
him; and that you were two months in dissuading him from his purpose.
Another evidence of his savage obstinacy! From your own account of the
matter we may justly draw these two conclusions: 1st, That you serve
a monster; and 2d, That never was a messenger sent on a more foolish
errand than yourself. This plain language may perhaps sound uncouthly to
an ear vitiated by courtly refinements, but words were made for use,
and the fault lies in deserving them, or the abuse in applying them
unfairly.

Soon after your return to New York, you published a very illiberal and
unmanly handbill against the Congress; for it was certainly stepping out
of the line of common civility, first to screen your national pride
by soliciting an interview with them as private gentlemen, and in the
conclusion to endeavor to deceive the multitude by making a handbill
attack on the whole body of the Congress; you got them together under
one name, and abused them under another. But the king you serve, and the
cause you support, afford you so few instances of acting the gentleman,
that out of pity to your situation the Congress pardoned the insult by
taking no notice of it.

You say in that handbill, "that they, the Congress, disavowed every
purpose for reconciliation not consonant with their extravagant and
inadmissible claim of independence." Why, God bless me! what have you to
do with our independence? We ask no leave of yours to set it up; we ask
no money of yours to support it; we can do better without your fleets
and armies than with them; you may soon have enough to do to protect
yourselves without being burdened with us. We are very willing to be at
peace with you, to buy of you and sell to you, and, like young beginners
in the world, to work for our living; therefore, why do you put
yourselves out of cash, when we know you cannot spare it, and we do not
desire you to run into debt? I am willing, sir, that you should see
your folly in every point of view I can place it in, and for that reason
descend sometimes to tell you in jest what I wish you to see in earnest.
But to be more serious with you, why do you say, "their independence?"
To set you right, sir, we tell you, that the independency is ours, not
theirs. The Congress were authorized by every state on the continent to
publish it to all the world, and in so doing are not to be considered as
the inventors, but only as the heralds that proclaimed it, or the office
from which the sense of the people received a legal form; and it was as
much as any or all their heads were worth, to have treated with you on
the subject of submission under any name whatever. But we know the men
in whom we have trusted; can England say the same of her Parliament?

I come now more particularly to your proclamation of the 30th of
November last. Had you gained an entire conquest over all the armies
of America, and then put forth a proclamation, offering (what you call)
mercy, your conduct would have had some specious show of humanity; but
to creep by surprise into a province, and there endeavor to terrify
and seduce the inhabitants from their just allegiance to the rest by
promises, which you neither meant nor were able to fulfil, is both cruel
and unmanly: cruel in its effects; because, unless you can keep all
the ground you have marched over, how are you, in the words of your
proclamation, to secure to your proselytes "the enjoyment of their
property?" What is to become either of your new adopted subjects, or
your old friends, the Tories, in Burlington, Bordentown, Trenton, Mount
Holly, and many other places, where you proudly lorded it for a few
days, and then fled with the precipitation of a pursued thief? What, I
say, is to become of those wretches? What is to become of those who went
over to you from this city and State? What more can you say to them than
"shift for yourselves?" Or what more can they hope for than to wander
like vagabonds over the face of the earth? You may now tell them to take
their leave of America, and all that once was theirs. Recommend them,
for consolation, to your master's court; there perhaps they may make
a shift to live on the scraps of some dangling parasite, and choose
companions among thousands like themselves. A traitor is the foulest
fiend on earth.

In a political sense we ought to thank you for thus bequeathing estates
to the continent; we shall soon, at this rate, be able to carry on a war
without expense, and grow rich by the ill policy of Lord Howe, and the
generous defection of the Tories. Had you set your foot into this city,
you would have bestowed estates upon us which we never thought of, by
bringing forth traitors we were unwilling to suspect. But these men,
you'll say, "are his majesty's most faithful subjects;" let that honor,
then, be all their fortune, and let his majesty take them to himself.

I am now thoroughly disgusted with them; they live in ungrateful ease,
and bend their whole minds to mischief. It seems as if God had
given them over to a spirit of infidelity, and that they are open to
conviction in no other line but that of punishment. It is time to have
done with tarring, feathering, carting, and taking securities for their
future good behavior; every sensible man must feel a conscious shame
at seeing a poor fellow hawked for a show about the streets, when it is
known he is only the tool of some principal villain, biassed into his
offence by the force of false reasoning, or bribed thereto, through sad
necessity. We dishonor ourselves by attacking such trifling characters
while greater ones are suffered to escape; 'tis our duty to find
them out, and their proper punishment would be to exile them from the
continent for ever. The circle of them is not so great as some imagine;
the influence of a few have tainted many who are not naturally corrupt.
A continual circulation of lies among those who are not much in the way
of hearing them contradicted, will in time pass for truth; and the crime
lies not in the believer but the inventor. I am not for declaring
war with every man that appears not so warm as myself: difference of
constitution, temper, habit of speaking, and many other things, will go
a great way in fixing the outward character of a man, yet simple honesty
may remain at bottom. Some men have naturally a military turn, and can
brave hardships and the risk of life with a cheerful face; others have
not; no slavery appears to them so great as the fatigue of arms, and
no terror so powerful as that of personal danger. What can we say? We
cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son because the
father begot him in a cowardly mood. However, I believe most men have
more courage than they know of, and that a little at first is enough
to begin with. I knew the time when I thought that the whistling of a
cannon ball would have frightened me almost to death; but I have since
tried it, and find that I can stand it with as little discomposure, and,
I believe, with a much easier conscience than your lordship. The same
dread would return to me again were I in your situation, for my solemn
belief of your cause is, that it is hellish and damnable, and, under
that conviction, every thinking man's heart must fail him.

From a concern that a good cause should be dishonored by the least
disunion among us, I said in my former paper, No. I. "That should the
enemy now be expelled, I wish, with all the sincerity of a Christian,
that the names of Whig and Tory might never more be mentioned;" but
there is a knot of men among us of such a venomous cast, that they
will not admit even one's good wishes to act in their favor. Instead
of rejoicing that heaven had, as it were, providentially preserved this
city from plunder and destruction, by delivering so great a part of the
enemy into our hands with so little effusion of blood, they stubbornly
affected to disbelieve it till within an hour, nay, half an hour, of
the prisoners arriving; and the Quakers put forth a testimony, dated the
20th of December, signed "John Pemberton," declaring their attachment to
the British government.* These men are continually harping on the great
sin of our bearing arms, but the king of Britain may lay waste the world
in blood and famine, and they, poor fallen souls, have nothing to say.


     * I have ever been careful of charging offences upon whole societies
of men, but as the paper referred to is put forth by an unknown set of
men, who claim to themselves the right of representing the whole:
and while the whole Society of Quakers admit its validity by a silent
acknowledgment, it is impossible that any distinction can be made by
the public: and the more so, because the New York paper of the 30th of
December, printed by permission of our enemies, says that "the Quakers
begin to speak openly of their attachment to the British Constitution."
We are certain that we have many friends among them, and wish to know
them.

In some future paper I intend to distinguish between the different kind
of persons who have been denominated Tories; for this I am clear in,
that all are not so who have been called so, nor all men Whigs who
were once thought so; and as I mean not to conceal the name of any true
friend when there shall be occasion to mention him, neither will I that
of an enemy, who ought to be known, let his rank, station or religion be
what it may. Much pains have been taken by some to set your lordship's
private character in an amiable light, but as it has chiefly been done
by men who know nothing about you, and who are no ways remarkable for
their attachment to us, we have no just authority for believing it.
George the Third has imposed upon us by the same arts, but time, at
length, has done him justice, and the same fate may probably attend your
lordship. You avowed purpose here is to kill, conquer, plunder, pardon,
and enslave: and the ravages of your army through the Jerseys have been
marked with as much barbarism as if you had openly professed yourself
the prince of ruffians; not even the appearance of humanity has been
preserved either on the march or the retreat of your troops; no general
order that I could ever learn, has ever been issued to prevent or
even forbid your troops from robbery, wherever they came, and the only
instance of justice, if it can be called such, which has distinguished
you for impartiality, is, that you treated and plundered all alike; what
could not be carried away has been destroyed, and mahogany furniture has
been deliberately laid on fire for fuel, rather than the men should be
fatigued with cutting wood.* There was a time when the Whigs confided
much in your supposed candor, and the Tories rested themselves in your
favor; the experiments have now been made, and failed; in every town,
nay, every cottage, in the Jerseys, where your arms have been, is
a testimony against you. How you may rest under this sacrifice of
character I know not; but this I know, that you sleep and rise with the
daily curses of thousands upon you; perhaps the misery which the Tories
have suffered by your proffered mercy may give them some claim to their
country's pity, and be in the end the best favor you could show them.


     * As some people may doubt the truth of such wanton destruction, I
think it necessary to inform them that one of the people called Quakers,
who lives at Trenton, gave me this information at the house of Mr.
Michael Hutchinson, (one of the same profession,) who lives near Trenton
ferry on the Pennsylvania side, Mr. Hutchinson being present.

In a folio general-order book belonging to Col. Rhal's battalion, taken
at Trenton, and now in the possession of the council of safety for
this state, the following barbarous order is frequently repeated, "His
excellency the Commander-in-Chief orders, that all inhabitants who
shall be found with arms, not having an officer with them, shall be
immediately taken and hung up." How many you may thus have privately
sacrificed, we know not, and the account can only be settled in another
world. Your treatment of prisoners, in order to distress them to enlist
in your infernal service, is not to be equalled by any instance in
Europe. Yet this is the humane Lord Howe and his brother, whom the
Tories and their three-quarter kindred, the Quakers, or some of them at
least, have been holding up for patterns of justice and mercy!

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men; and whoever
will be at the pains of examining strictly into things, will find that
one and the same spirit of oppression and impiety, more or less,
governs through your whole party in both countries: not many days ago,
I accidentally fell in company with a person of this city noted for
espousing your cause, and on my remarking to him, "that it appeared
clear to me, by the late providential turn of affairs, that God Almighty
was visibly on our side," he replied, "We care nothing for that you may
have Him, and welcome; if we have but enough of the devil on our side,
we shall do." However carelessly this might be spoken, matters not, 'tis
still the insensible principle that directs all your conduct and will at
last most assuredly deceive and ruin you.

If ever a nation was made and foolish, blind to its own interest and
bent on its own destruction, it is Britain. There are such things as
national sins, and though the punishment of individuals may be reserved
to another world, national punishment can only be inflicted in this
world. Britain, as a nation, is, in my inmost belief, the greatest and
most ungrateful offender against God on the face of the whole earth.
Blessed with all the commerce she could wish for, and furnished, by
a vast extension of dominion, with the means of civilizing both the
eastern and western world, she has made no other use of both than
proudly to idolize her own "thunder," and rip up the bowels of whole
countries for what she could get. Like Alexander, she has made war her
sport, and inflicted misery for prodigality's sake. The blood of India
is not yet repaid, nor the wretchedness of Africa yet requited. Of
late she has enlarged her list of national cruelties by her butcherly
destruction of the Caribbs of St. Vincent's, and returning an answer by
the sword to the meek prayer for "Peace, liberty and safety." These
are serious things, and whatever a foolish tyrant, a debauched court,
a trafficking legislature, or a blinded people may think, the national
account with heaven must some day or other be settled: all countries
have sooner or later been called to their reckoning; the proudest
empires have sunk when the balance was struck; and Britain, like an
individual penitent, must undergo her day of sorrow, and the sooner it
happens to her the better. As I wish it over, I wish it to come, but
withal wish that it may be as light as possible.

Perhaps your lordship has no taste for serious things; by your
connections in England I should suppose not; therefore I shall drop this
part of the subject, and take it up in a line in which you will better
understand me.

By what means, may I ask, do you expect to conquer America? If you could
not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than yours, nor
in the winter, when we had none, how are you to do it? In point of
generalship you have been outwitted, and in point of fortitude outdone;
your advantages turn out to your loss, and show us that it is in our
power to ruin you by gifts: like a game of drafts, we can move out of
one square to let you come in, in order that we may afterwards take
two or three for one; and as we can always keep a double corner for
ourselves, we can always prevent a total defeat. You cannot be so
insensible as not to see that we have two to one the advantage of you,
because we conquer by a drawn game, and you lose by it. Burgoyne might
have taught your lordship this knowledge; he has been long a student in
the doctrine of chances.

I have no other idea of conquering countries than by subduing the armies
which defend them: have you done this, or can you do it? If you have
not, it would be civil in you to let your proclamations alone for the
present; otherwise, you will ruin more Tories by your grace and favor,
than you will Whigs by your arms.

Were you to obtain possession of this city, you would not know what to
do with it more than to plunder it. To hold it in the manner you hold
New York, would be an additional dead weight upon your hands; and if a
general conquest is your object, you had better be without the city than
with it. When you have defeated all our armies, the cities will fall
into your hands of themselves; but to creep into them in the manner you
got into Princeton, Trenton, &c. is like robbing an orchard in the
night before the fruit be ripe, and running away in the morning. Your
experiment in the Jerseys is sufficient to teach you that you have
something more to do than barely to get into other people's houses; and
your new converts, to whom you promised all manner of protection, and
seduced into new guilt by pardoning them from their former virtues, must
begin to have a very contemptible opinion both of your power and your
policy. Your authority in the Jerseys is now reduced to the small circle
which your army occupies, and your proclamation is no where else seen
unless it be to be laughed at. The mighty subduers of the continent have
retreated into a nutshell, and the proud forgivers of our sins are fled
from those they came to pardon; and all this at a time when they were
despatching vessel after vessel to England with the great news of
every day. In short, you have managed your Jersey expedition so very
dexterously, that the dead only are conquerors, because none will
dispute the ground with them.

In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in you had only
armies to contend with; in this case you have both an army and a country
to combat with. In former wars, the countries followed the fate of their
capitals; Canada fell with Quebec, and Minorca with Port Mahon or St.
Phillips; by subduing those, the conquerors opened a way into, and
became masters of the country: here it is otherwise; if you get
possession of a city here, you are obliged to shut yourselves up in it,
and can make no other use of it, than to spend your country's money in.
This is all the advantage you have drawn from New York; and you would
draw less from Philadelphia, because it requires more force to keep it,
and is much further from the sea. A pretty figure you and the Tories
would cut in this city, with a river full of ice, and a town full of
fire; for the immediate consequence of your getting here would be, that
you would be cannonaded out again, and the Tories be obliged to make
good the damage; and this sooner or later will be the fate of New York.

I wish to see the city saved, not so much from military as from natural
motives. 'Tis the hiding place of women and children, and Lord Howe's
proper business is with our armies. When I put all the circumstances
together which ought to be taken, I laugh at your notion of conquering
America. Because you lived in a little country, where an army might run
over the whole in a few days, and where a single company of soldiers
might put a multitude to the rout, you expected to find it the same
here. It is plain that you brought over with you all the narrow notions
you were bred up with, and imagined that a proclamation in the king's
name was to do great things; but Englishmen always travel for knowledge,
and your lordship, I hope, will return, if you return at all, much wiser
than you came.

We may be surprised by events we did not expect, and in that interval of
recollection you may gain some temporary advantage: such was the case
a few weeks ago, but we soon ripen again into reason, collect our
strength, and while you are preparing for a triumph, we come upon you
with a defeat. Such it has been, and such it would be were you to try
it a hundred times over. Were you to garrison the places you might march
over, in order to secure their subjection, (for remember you can do it
by no other means,) your army would be like a stream of water running to
nothing. By the time you extended from New York to Virginia, you would
be reduced to a string of drops not capable of hanging together; while
we, by retreating from State to State, like a river turning back upon
itself, would acquire strength in the same proportion as you lost it,
and in the end be capable of overwhelming you. The country, in the
meantime, would suffer, but it is a day of suffering, and we ought
to expect it. What we contend for is worthy the affliction we may go
through. If we get but bread to eat, and any kind of raiment to put on,
we ought not only to be contented, but thankful. More than that we ought
not to look for, and less than that heaven has not yet suffered us
to want. He that would sell his birthright for a little salt, is as
worthless as he who sold it for pottage without salt; and he that would
part with it for a gay coat, or a plain coat, ought for ever to be
a slave in buff. What are salt, sugar and finery, to the inestimable
blessings of "Liberty and Safety!" Or what are the inconveniences of
a few months to the tributary bondage of ages? The meanest peasant in
America, blessed with these sentiments, is a happy man compared with a
New York Tory; he can eat his morsel without repining, and when he has
done, can sweeten it with a repast of wholesome air; he can take his
child by the hand and bless it, without feeling the conscious shame of
neglecting a parent's duty.

In publishing these remarks I have several objects in view.

On your part they are to expose the folly of your pretended authority
as a commissioner; the wickedness of your cause in general; and the
impossibility of your conquering us at any rate. On the part of the
public, my intention is, to show them their true and sold interest;
to encourage them to their own good, to remove the fears and falsities
which bad men have spread, and weak men have encouraged; and to excite
in all men a love for union, and a cheerfulness for duty.

I shall submit one more case to you respecting your conquest of this
country, and then proceed to new observations.

Suppose our armies in every part of this continent were immediately to
disperse, every man to his home, or where else he might be safe, and
engage to reassemble again on a certain future day; it is clear that you
would then have no army to contend with, yet you would be as much at
a loss in that case as you are now; you would be afraid to send your
troops in parties over to the continent, either to disarm or prevent us
from assembling, lest they should not return; and while you kept them
together, having no arms of ours to dispute with, you could not call it
a conquest; you might furnish out a pompous page in the London Gazette
or a New York paper, but when we returned at the appointed time, you
would have the same work to do that you had at first.

It has been the folly of Britain to suppose herself more powerful than
she really is, and by that means has arrogated to herself a rank in the
world she is not entitled to: for more than this century past she
has not been able to carry on a war without foreign assistance. In
Marlborough's campaigns, and from that day to this, the number of German
troops and officers assisting her have been about equal with her own;
ten thousand Hessians were sent to England last war to protect her
from a French invasion; and she would have cut but a poor figure in her
Canadian and West Indian expeditions, had not America been lavish both
of her money and men to help her along. The only instance in which she
was engaged singly, that I can recollect, was against the rebellion in
Scotland, in the years 1745 and 1746, and in that, out of three battles,
she was twice beaten, till by thus reducing their numbers, (as we
shall yours) and taking a supply ship that was coming to Scotland
with clothes, arms and money, (as we have often done,) she was at last
enabled to defeat them. England was never famous by land; her officers
have generally been suspected of cowardice, have more of the air of a
dancing-master than a soldier, and by the samples which we have taken
prisoners, we give the preference to ourselves. Her strength, of late,
has lain in her extravagance; but as her finances and credit are now
low, her sinews in that line begin to fail fast. As a nation she is the
poorest in Europe; for were the whole kingdom, and all that is in it, to
be put up for sale like the estate of a bankrupt, it would not fetch as
much as she owes; yet this thoughtless wretch must go to war, and with
the avowed design, too, of making us beasts of burden, to support her in
riot and debauchery, and to assist her afterwards in distressing those
nations who are now our best friends. This ingratitude may suit a Tory,
or the unchristian peevishness of a fallen Quaker, but none else.

'Tis the unhappy temper of the English to be pleased with any war, right
or wrong, be it but successful; but they soon grow discontented with ill
fortune, and it is an even chance that they are as clamorous for peace
next summer, as the king and his ministers were for war last winter.
In this natural view of things, your lordship stands in a very critical
situation: your whole character is now staked upon your laurels; if they
wither, you wither with them; if they flourish, you cannot live long to
look at them; and at any rate, the black account hereafter is not far
off. What lately appeared to us misfortunes, were only blessings in
disguise; and the seeming advantages on your side have turned out to
our profit. Even our loss of this city, as far as we can see, might be a
principal gain to us: the more surface you spread over, the thinner
you will be, and the easier wiped away; and our consolation under that
apparent disaster would be, that the estates of the Tories would become
securities for the repairs. In short, there is no old ground we can fail
upon, but some new foundation rises again to support us. "We have put,
sir, our hands to the plough, and cursed be he that looketh back."

Your king, in his speech to parliament last spring, declared, "That
he had no doubt but the great force they had enabled him to send to
America, would effectually reduce the rebellious colonies." It has not,
neither can it; but it has done just enough to lay the foundation of
its own next year's ruin. You are sensible that you left England in a
divided, distracted state of politics, and, by the command you had here,
you became a principal prop in the court party; their fortunes rest on
yours; by a single express you can fix their value with the public, and
the degree to which their spirits shall rise or fall; they are in your
hands as stock, and you have the secret of the alley with you. Thus
situated and connected, you become the unintentional mechanical
instrument of your own and their overthrow. The king and his ministers
put conquest out of doubt, and the credit of both depended on the proof.
To support them in the interim, it was necessary that you should make
the most of every thing, and we can tell by Hugh Gaine's New York
paper what the complexion of the London Gazette is. With such a list
of victories the nation cannot expect you will ask new supplies; and
to confess your want of them would give the lie to your triumphs, and
impeach the king and his ministers of treasonable deception. If you make
the necessary demand at home, your party sinks; if you make it not, you
sink yourself; to ask it now is too late, and to ask it before was too
soon, and unless it arrive quickly will be of no use. In short, the part
you have to act, cannot be acted; and I am fully persuaded that all you
have to trust to is, to do the best you can with what force you have
got, or little more. Though we have greatly exceeded you in point of
generalship and bravery of men, yet, as a people, we have not entered
into the full soul of enterprise; for I, who know England and the
disposition of the people well, am confident, that it is easier for us
to effect a revolution there, than you a conquest here; a few thousand
men landed in England with the declared design of deposing the present
king, bringing his ministers to trial, and setting up the Duke of
Gloucester in his stead, would assuredly carry their point, while you
are grovelling here, ignorant of the matter. As I send all my papers to
England, this, like Common Sense, will find its way there; and though
it may put one party on their guard, it will inform the other, and the
nation in general, of our design to help them.

Thus far, sir, I have endeavored to give you a picture of present
affairs: you may draw from it what conclusions you please. I wish
as well to the true prosperity of England as you can, but I consider
INDEPENDENCE as America's natural right and interest, and never could
see any real disservice it would be to Britain. If an English merchant
receives an order, and is paid for it, it signifies nothing to him who
governs the country. This is my creed of politics. If I have any where
expressed myself over-warmly, 'tis from a fixed, immovable hatred I
have, and ever had, to cruel men and cruel measures. I have likewise an
aversion to monarchy, as being too debasing to the dignity of man; but
I never troubled others with my notions till very lately, nor ever
published a syllable in England in my life. What I write is pure nature,
and my pen and my soul have ever gone together. My writings I have
always given away, reserving only the expense of printing and paper, and
sometimes not even that. I never courted either fame or interest, and my
manner of life, to those who know it, will justify what I say. My study
is to be useful, and if your lordship loves mankind as well as I do,
you would, seeing you cannot conquer us, cast about and lend your hand
towards accomplishing a peace. Our independence with God's blessing
we will maintain against all the world; but as we wish to avoid
evil ourselves, we wish not to inflict it on others. I am never
over-inquisitive into the secrets of the cabinet, but I have some notion
that, if you neglect the present opportunity, it will not be in our
power to make a separate peace with you afterwards; for whatever
treaties or alliances we form, we shall most faithfully abide by;
wherefore you may be deceived if you think you can make it with us at
any time. A lasting independent peace is my wish, end and aim; and to
accomplish that, I pray God the Americans may never be defeated, and I
trust while they have good officers, and are well commanded, and willing
to be commanded, that they NEVER WILL BE.

                                     COMMON SENSE.

    PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 13, 1777.




THE CRISIS III. (IN THE PROGRESS OF POLITICS)


IN THE progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life,
we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but
frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I may
so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it,
and journey on in search of new matter and new refinements: but as it is
pleasant and sometimes useful to look back, even to the first periods of
infancy, and trace the turns and windings through which we have passed,
so we may likewise derive many advantages by halting a while in our
political career, and taking a review of the wondrous complicated
labyrinth of little more than yesterday.

Truly may we say, that never did men grow old in so short a time! We
have crowded the business of an age into the compass of a few months,
and have been driven through such a rapid succession of things, that
for the want of leisure to think, we unavoidably wasted knowledge as we
came, and have left nearly as much behind us as we brought with us: but
the road is yet rich with the fragments, and, before we finally lose
sight of them, will repay us for the trouble of stopping to pick them
up.

Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable of
forming any just opinion; every thing about him would seem a chaos:
he would have even his own history to ask from every one; and by not
knowing how the world went in his absence, he would be at a loss to
know how it ought to go on when he recovered, or rather, returned to it
again. In like manner, though in a less degree, a too great inattention
to past occurrences retards and bewilders our judgment in everything;
while, on the contrary, by comparing what is past with what is present,
we frequently hit on the true character of both, and become wise with
very little trouble. It is a kind of counter-march, by which we get into
the rear of time, and mark the movements and meaning of things as we
make our return. There are certain circumstances, which, at the time
of their happening, are a kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be
followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed
by their events, and those events are always the true solution. A
considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue our
observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will pass
away unnoticed: but the misfortune is, that partly from the pressing
necessity of some instant things, and partly from the impatience of our
own tempers, we are frequently in such a hurry to make out the meaning
of everything as fast as it happens, that we thereby never truly
understand it; and not only start new difficulties to ourselves by so
doing, but, as it were, embarrass Providence in her good designs.

I have been civil in stating this fault on a large scale, for, as it now
stands, it does not appear to be levelled against any particular set of
men; but were it to be refined a little further, it might afterwards
be applied to the Tories with a degree of striking propriety: those men
have been remarkable for drawing sudden conclusions from single facts.
The least apparent mishap on our side, or the least seeming advantage
on the part of the enemy, have determined with them the fate of a whole
campaign. By this hasty judgment they have converted a retreat into
a defeat; mistook generalship for error; while every little advantage
purposely given the enemy, either to weaken their strength by dividing
it, embarrass their councils by multiplying their objects, or to secure
a greater post by the surrender of a less, has been instantly magnified
into a conquest. Thus, by quartering ill policy upon ill principles,
they have frequently promoted the cause they designed to injure, and
injured that which they intended to promote.

It is probable the campaign may open before this number comes from
the press. The enemy have long lain idle, and amused themselves with
carrying on the war by proclamations only. While they continue their
delay our strength increases, and were they to move to action now, it
is a circumstantial proof that they have no reinforcement coming;
wherefore, in either case, the comparative advantage will be ours. Like
a wounded, disabled whale, they want only time and room to die in; and
though in the agony of their exit, it may be unsafe to live within the
flapping of their tail, yet every hour shortens their date, and lessens
their power of mischief. If any thing happens while this number is in
the press, it will afford me a subject for the last pages of it. At
present I am tired of waiting; and as neither the enemy, nor the state
of politics have yet produced any thing new, I am thereby left in
the field of general matter, undirected by any striking or particular
object. This Crisis, therefore, will be made up rather of variety than
novelty, and consist more of things useful than things wonderful.

The success of the cause, the union of the people, and the means of
supporting and securing both, are points which cannot be too much
attended to. He who doubts of the former is a desponding coward, and
he who wilfully disturbs the latter is a traitor. Their characters are
easily fixed, and under these short descriptions I leave them for the
present.

One of the greatest degrees of sentimental union which America ever
knew, was in denying the right of the British parliament "to bind the
colonies in all cases whatsoever." The Declaration is, in its form, an
almighty one, and is the loftiest stretch of arbitrary power that ever
one set of men or one country claimed over another. Taxation was
nothing more than the putting the declared right into practice; and
this failing, recourse was had to arms, as a means to establish both
the right and the practice, or to answer a worse purpose, which will be
mentioned in the course of this number. And in order to repay themselves
the expense of an army, and to profit by their own injustice, the
colonies were, by another law, declared to be in a state of actual
rebellion, and of consequence all property therein would fall to the
conquerors.

The colonies, on their part, first, denied the right; secondly, they
suspended the use of taxable articles, and petitioned against the
practice of taxation: and these failing, they, thirdly, defended their
property by force, as soon as it was forcibly invaded, and, in answer
to the declaration of rebellion and non-protection, published their
Declaration of Independence and right of self-protection.

These, in a few words, are the different stages of the quarrel; and the
parts are so intimately and necessarily connected with each other as to
admit of no separation. A person, to use a trite phrase, must be a
Whig or a Tory in a lump. His feelings, as a man, may be wounded; his
charity, as a Christian, may be moved; but his political principles must
go through all the cases on one side or the other. He cannot be a Whig
in this stage, and a Tory in that. If he says he is against the united
independence of the continent, he is to all intents and purposes against
her in all the rest; because this last comprehends the whole. And he may
just as well say, that Britain was right in declaring us rebels; right
in taxing us; and right in declaring her "right to bind the colonies in
all cases whatsoever." It signifies nothing what neutral ground, of his
own creating, he may skulk upon for shelter, for the quarrel in no
stage of it hath afforded any such ground; and either we or Britain are
absolutely right or absolutely wrong through the whole.

Britain, like a gamester nearly ruined, has now put all her losses into
one bet, and is playing a desperate game for the total. If she wins
it, she wins from me my life; she wins the continent as the forfeited
property of rebels; the right of taxing those that are left as reduced
subjects; and the power of binding them slaves: and the single die
which determines this unparalleled event is, whether we support our
independence or she overturn it. This is coming to the point at once.
Here is the touchstone to try men by. He that is not a supporter of the
independent States of America in the same degree that his religious and
political principles would suffer him to support the government of any
other country, of which he called himself a subject, is, in the American
sense of the word, A TORY; and the instant that he endeavors to bring
his toryism into practice, he becomes A TRAITOR. The first can only be
detected by a general test, and the law hath already provided for the
latter.

It is unnatural and impolitic to admit men who would root up our
independence to have any share in our legislation, either as electors
or representatives; because the support of our independence rests, in
a great measure, on the vigor and purity of our public bodies. Would
Britain, even in time of peace, much less in war, suffer an election to
be carried by men who professed themselves to be not her subjects, or
allow such to sit in Parliament? Certainly not.

But there are a certain species of Tories with whom conscience or
principle has nothing to do, and who are so from avarice only. Some
of the first fortunes on the continent, on the part of the Whigs, are
staked on the issue of our present measures. And shall disaffection only
be rewarded with security? Can any thing be a greater inducement to a
miserly man, than the hope of making his Mammon safe? And though the
scheme be fraught with every character of folly, yet, so long as he
supposes, that by doing nothing materially criminal against America
on one part, and by expressing his private disapprobation against
independence, as palliative with the enemy, on the other part, he stands
in a safe line between both; while, I say, this ground be suffered to
remain, craft, and the spirit of avarice, will point it out, and men
will not be wanting to fill up this most contemptible of all characters.

These men, ashamed to own the sordid cause from whence their
disaffection springs, add thereby meanness to meanness, by endeavoring
to shelter themselves under the mask of hypocrisy; that is, they had
rather be thought to be Tories from some kind of principle, than Tories
by having no principle at all. But till such time as they can show
some real reason, natural, political, or conscientious, on which their
objections to independence are founded, we are not obliged to give them
credit for being Tories of the first stamp, but must set them down as
Tories of the last.

In the second number of the Crisis, I endeavored to show the
impossibility of the enemy's making any conquest of America, that
nothing was wanting on our part but patience and perseverance, and
that, with these virtues, our success, as far as human speculation could
discern, seemed as certain as fate. But as there are many among us, who,
influenced by others, have regularly gone back from the principles
they once held, in proportion as we have gone forward; and as it is the
unfortunate lot of many a good man to live within the neighborhood of
disaffected ones; I shall, therefore, for the sake of confirming the one
and recovering the other, endeavor, in the space of a page or two, to go
over some of the leading principles in support of independence. It is a
much pleasanter task to prevent vice than to punish it, and, however our
tempers may be gratified by resentment, or our national expenses eased
by forfeited estates, harmony and friendship is, nevertheless, the
happiest condition a country can be blessed with.

The principal arguments in support of independence may be comprehended
under the four following heads.

     1st, The natural right of the continent to independence.
     2d, Her interest in being independent.
     3d, The necessity,--and
     4th, The moral advantages arising therefrom.

I. The natural right of the continent to independence, is a point which
never yet was called in question. It will not even admit of a debate.
To deny such a right, would be a kind of atheism against nature: and the
best answer to such an objection would be, "The fool hath said in his
heart there is no God."

II. The interest of the continent in being independent is a point as
clearly right as the former. America, by her own internal industry,
and unknown to all the powers of Europe, was, at the beginning of the
dispute, arrived at a pitch of greatness, trade and population, beyond
which it was the interest of Britain not to suffer her to pass, lest she
should grow too powerful to be kept subordinate. She began to view
this country with the same uneasy malicious eye, with which a covetous
guardian would view his ward, whose estate he had been enriching himself
by for twenty years, and saw him just arriving at manhood. And America
owes no more to Britain for her present maturity, than the ward would
to the guardian for being twenty-one years of age. That America hath
flourished at the time she was under the government of Britain, is
true; but there is every natural reason to believe, that had she been an
independent country from the first settlement thereof, uncontrolled by
any foreign power, free to make her own laws, regulate and encourage her
own commerce, she had by this time been of much greater worth than now.
The case is simply this: the first settlers in the different colonies
were left to shift for themselves, unnoticed and unsupported by any
European government; but as the tyranny and persecution of the old world
daily drove numbers to the new, and as, by the favor of heaven on their
industry and perseverance, they grew into importance, so, in a like
degree, they became an object of profit to the greedy eyes of Europe.
It was impossible, in this state of infancy, however thriving and
promising, that they could resist the power of any armed invader that
should seek to bring them under his authority. In this situation,
Britain thought it worth her while to claim them, and the continent
received and acknowledged the claimer. It was, in reality, of no very
great importance who was her master, seeing, that from the force and
ambition of the different powers of Europe, she must, till she acquired
strength enough to assert her own right, acknowledge some one. As well,
perhaps, Britain as another; and it might have been as well to have been
under the states of Holland as any. The same hopes of engrossing and
profiting by her trade, by not oppressing it too much, would have
operated alike with any master, and produced to the colonies the same
effects. The clamor of protection, likewise, was all a farce; because,
in order to make that protection necessary, she must first, by her own
quarrels, create us enemies. Hard terms indeed!

To know whether it be the interest of the continent to be independent,
we need only ask this easy, simple question: Is it the interest of a man
to be a boy all his life? The answer to one will be the answer to both.
America hath been one continued scene of legislative contention from
the first king's representative to the last; and this was unavoidably
founded in the natural opposition of interest between the old country
and the new. A governor sent from England, or receiving his authority
therefrom, ought never to have been considered in any other light
than that of a genteel commissioned spy, whose private business was
information, and his public business a kind of civilized oppression. In
the first of these characters he was to watch the tempers, sentiments,
and disposition of the people, the growth of trade, and the increase of
private fortunes; and, in the latter, to suppress all such acts of the
assemblies, however beneficial to the people, which did not directly
or indirectly throw some increase of power or profit into the hands of
those that sent him.

America, till now, could never be called a free country, because her
legislation depended on the will of a man three thousand miles distant,
whose interest was in opposition to ours, and who, by a single "no,"
could forbid what law he pleased.

The freedom of trade, likewise, is, to a trading country, an article of
such importance, that the principal source of wealth depends upon it;
and it is impossible that any country can flourish, as it otherwise
might do, whose commerce is engrossed, cramped and fettered by the
laws and mandates of another--yet these evils, and more than I can here
enumerate, the continent has suffered by being under the government of
England. By an independence we clear the whole at once--put
an end to the business of unanswered petitions and fruitless
remonstrances--exchange Britain for Europe--shake hands with the
world--live at peace with the world--and trade to any market where we
can buy and sell.

III. The necessity, likewise, of being independent, even before it was
declared, became so evident and important, that the continent ran the
risk of being ruined every day that she delayed it. There was reason to
believe that Britain would endeavor to make an European matter of it,
and, rather than lose the whole, would dismember it, like Poland, and
dispose of her several claims to the highest bidder. Genoa, failing in
her attempts to reduce Corsica, made a sale of it to the French, and
such trafficks have been common in the old world. We had at that time no
ambassador in any part of Europe, to counteract her negotiations, and
by that means she had the range of every foreign court uncontradicted
on our part. We even knew nothing of the treaty for the Hessians till it
was concluded, and the troops ready to embark. Had we been independent
before, we had probably prevented her obtaining them. We had no credit
abroad, because of our rebellious dependency. Our ships could claim no
protection in foreign ports, because we afforded them no justifiable
reason for granting it to us. The calling ourselves subjects, and at
the same time fighting against the power which we acknowledged, was
a dangerous precedent to all Europe. If the grievances justified the
taking up arms, they justified our separation; if they did not justify
our separation, neither could they justify our taking up arms. All
Europe was interested in reducing us as rebels, and all Europe (or the
greatest part at least) is interested in supporting us as independent
States. At home our condition was still worse: our currency had no
foundation, and the fall of it would have ruined Whig and Tory alike. We
had no other law than a kind of moderated passion; no other civil
power than an honest mob; and no other protection than the temporary
attachment of one man to another. Had independence been delayed a few
months longer, this continent would have been plunged into irrecoverable
confusion: some violent for it, some against it, till, in the general
cabal, the rich would have been ruined, and the poor destroyed. It is to
independence that every Tory owes the present safety which he lives
in; for by that, and that only, we emerged from a state of dangerous
suspense, and became a regular people.

The necessity, likewise, of being independent, had there been no rupture
between Britain and America, would, in a little time, have brought one
on. The increasing importance of commerce, the weight and perplexity of
legislation, and the entangled state of European politics, would daily
have shown to the continent the impossibility of continuing subordinate;
for, after the coolest reflections on the matter, this must be allowed,
that Britain was too jealous of America to govern it justly; too
ignorant of it to govern it well; and too far distant from it to govern
it at all.

IV. But what weigh most with all men of serious reflection are, the
moral advantages arising from independence: war and desolation have
become the trade of the old world; and America neither could nor can be
under the government of Britain without becoming a sharer of her
guilt, and a partner in all the dismal commerce of death. The spirit
of duelling, extended on a national scale, is a proper character for
European wars. They have seldom any other motive than pride, or any
other object than fame. The conquerors and the conquered are generally
ruined alike, and the chief difference at last is, that the one marches
home with his honors, and the other without them. 'Tis the natural
temper of the English to fight for a feather, if they suppose that
feather to be an affront; and America, without the right of asking why,
must have abetted in every quarrel, and abided by its fate. It is a
shocking situation to live in, that one country must be brought into all
the wars of another, whether the measure be right or wrong, or whether
she will or not; yet this, in the fullest extent, was, and ever would
be, the unavoidable consequence of the connection. Surely the Quakers
forgot their own principles when, in their late Testimony, they called
this connection, with these military and miserable appendages hanging to
it--"the happy constitution."

Britain, for centuries past, has been nearly fifty years out of every
hundred at war with some power or other. It certainly ought to be a
conscientious as well political consideration with America, not to
dip her hands in the bloody work of Europe. Our situation affords us
a retreat from their cabals, and the present happy union of the states
bids fair for extirpating the future use of arms from one quarter of
the world; yet such have been the irreligious politics of the present
leaders of the Quakers, that, for the sake of they scarce know what,
they would cut off every hope of such a blessing by tying this continent
to Britain, like Hector to the chariot wheel of Achilles, to be dragged
through all the miseries of endless European wars.

The connection, viewed from this ground, is distressing to every man
who has the feelings of humanity. By having Britain for our master, we
became enemies to the greatest part of Europe, and they to us: and the
consequence was war inevitable. By being our own masters, independent of
any foreign one, we have Europe for our friends, and the prospect of an
endless peace among ourselves. Those who were advocates for the British
government over these colonies, were obliged to limit both their
arguments and their ideas to the period of an European peace only; the
moment Britain became plunged in war, every supposed convenience to us
vanished, and all we could hope for was not to be ruined. Could this be
a desirable condition for a young country to be in?

Had the French pursued their fortune immediately after the defeat of
Braddock last war, this city and province had then experienced the woful
calamities of being a British subject. A scene of the same kind might
happen again; for America, considered as a subject to the crown
of Britain, would ever have been the seat of war, and the bone of
contention between the two powers.

On the whole, if the future expulsion of arms from one quarter of the
world would be a desirable object to a peaceable man; if the freedom of
trade to every part of it can engage the attention of a man of business;
if the support or fall of millions of currency can affect our interests;
if the entire possession of estates, by cutting off the lordly claims
of Britain over the soil, deserves the regard of landed property; and if
the right of making our own laws, uncontrolled by royal or ministerial
spies or mandates, be worthy our care as freemen;--then are all men
interested in the support of independence; and may he that supports it
not, be driven from the blessing, and live unpitied beneath the servile
sufferings of scandalous subjection!

We have been amused with the tales of ancient wonders; we have read,
and wept over the histories of other nations: applauded, censured, or
pitied, as their cases affected us. The fortitude and patience of the
sufferers--the justness of their cause--the weight of their oppressions
and oppressors--the object to be saved or lost--with all the
consequences of a defeat or a conquest--have, in the hour of sympathy,
bewitched our hearts, and chained it to their fate: but where is the
power that ever made war upon petitioners? Or where is the war on which
a world was staked till now?

We may not, perhaps, be wise enough to make all the advantages we ought
of our independence; but they are, nevertheless, marked and presented
to us with every character of great and good, and worthy the hand of
him who sent them. I look through the present trouble to a time of
tranquillity, when we shall have it in our power to set an example of
peace to all the world. Were the Quakers really impressed and influenced
by the quiet principles they profess to hold, they would, however
they might disapprove the means, be the first of all men to approve of
independence, because, by separating ourselves from the cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never given to man before of
carrying their favourite principle of peace into general practice, by
establishing governments that shall hereafter exist without wars. O! ye
fallen, cringing, priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we
say of ye than that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a
political Quaker a real Jesuit.

Having thus gone over some of the principal points in support of
independence, I must now request the reader to return back with me to
the period when it first began to be a public doctrine, and to examine
the progress it has made among the various classes of men. The area I
mean to begin at, is the breaking out of hostilities, April 19th, 1775.
Until this event happened, the continent seemed to view the dispute as
a kind of law-suit for a matter of right, litigating between the old
country and the new; and she felt the same kind and degree of horror,
as if she had seen an oppressive plaintiff, at the head of a band of
ruffians, enter the court, while the cause was before it, and put the
judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel, to the sword. Perhaps a
more heart-felt convulsion never reached a country with the same
degree of power and rapidity before, and never may again. Pity for the
sufferers, mixed with indignation at the violence, and heightened with
apprehensions of undergoing the same fate, made the affair of Lexington
the affair of the continent. Every part of it felt the shock, and all
vibrated together. A general promotion of sentiment took place: those
who had drank deeply into Whiggish principles, that is, the right and
necessity not only of opposing, but wholly setting aside the power of
the crown as soon as it became practically dangerous (for in theory
it was always so), stepped into the first stage of independence; while
another class of Whigs, equally sound in principle, but not so sanguine
in enterprise, attached themselves the stronger to the cause, and fell
close in with the rear of the former; their partition was a mere point.
Numbers of the moderate men, whose chief fault, at that time, arose from
entertaining a better opinion of Britain than she deserved, convinced
now of their mistake, gave her up, and publicly declared themselves
good Whigs. While the Tories, seeing it was no longer a laughing matter,
either sank into silent obscurity, or contented themselves with coming
forth and abusing General Gage: not a single advocate appeared to
justify the action of that day; it seemed to appear to every one with
the same magnitude, struck every one with the same force, and created in
every one the same abhorrence. From this period we may date the growth
of independence.

If the many circumstances which happened at this memorable time, be
taken in one view, and compared with each other, they will justify a
conclusion which seems not to have been attended to, I mean a fixed
design in the king and ministry of driving America into arms, in order
that they might be furnished with a pretence for seizing the whole
continent, as the immediate property of the crown. A noble plunder for
hungry courtiers!

It ought to be remembered, that the first petition from the Congress
was at this time unanswered on the part of the British king. That the
motion, called Lord North's motion, of the 20th of February, 1775,
arrived in America the latter end of March. This motion was to be laid,
by the several governors then in being, before, the assembly of each
province; and the first assembly before which it was laid, was the
assembly of Pennsylvania, in May following. This being a just state of
the case, I then ask, why were hostilities commenced between the time
of passing the resolve in the House of Commons, of the 20th of February,
and the time of the assemblies meeting to deliberate upon it? Degrading
and famous as that motion was, there is nevertheless reason to believe
that the king and his adherents were afraid the colonies would agree
to it, and lest they should, took effectual care they should not, by
provoking them with hostilities in the interim. They had not the least
doubt at that time of conquering America at one blow; and what they
expected to get by a conquest being infinitely greater than any thing
they could hope to get either by taxation or accommodation, they seemed
determined to prevent even the possibility of hearing each other, lest
America should disappoint their greedy hopes of the whole, by listening
even to their own terms. On the one hand they refused to hear the
petition of the continent, and on the other hand took effectual care the
continent should not hear them.

That the motion of the 20th February and the orders for commencing
hostilities were both concerted by the same person or persons, and not
the latter by General Gage, as was falsely imagined at first, is evident
from an extract of a letter of his to the administration, read among
other papers in the House of Commons; in which he informs his masters,
"That though their idea of his disarming certain counties was a right
one, yet it required him to be master of the country, in order to enable
him to execute it." This was prior to the commencement of hostilities,
and consequently before the motion of the 20th February could be
deliberated on by the several assemblies.

Perhaps it may be asked, why was the motion passed, if there was at the
same time a plan to aggravate the Americans not to listen to it? Lord
North assigned one reason himself, which was a hope of dividing them.
This was publicly tempting them to reject it; that if, in case the
injury of arms should fail in provoking them sufficiently, the insult
of such a declaration might fill it up. But by passing the motion and
getting it afterwards rejected in America, it enabled them, in their
wicked idea of politics, among other things, to hold up the colonies to
foreign powers, with every possible mark of disobedience and rebellion.
They had applied to those powers not to supply the continent with arms,
ammunition, etc., and it was necessary they should incense them against
us, by assigning on their own part some seeming reputable reason why.
By dividing, it had a tendency to weaken the States, and likewise to
perplex the adherents of America in England. But the principal scheme,
and that which has marked their character in every part of their
conduct, was a design of precipitating the colonies into a state which
they might afterwards deem rebellion, and, under that pretence, put an
end to all future complaints, petitions and remonstrances, by seizing
the whole at once. They had ravaged one part of the globe, till it could
glut them no longer; their prodigality required new plunder, and through
the East India article tea they hoped to transfer their rapine from that
quarter of the world to this. Every designed quarrel had its pretence;
and the same barbarian avarice accompanied the plant to America, which
ruined the country that produced it.

That men never turn rogues without turning fools is a maxim, sooner or
later, universally true. The commencement of hostilities, being in the
beginning of April, was, of all times the worst chosen: the Congress
were to meet the tenth of May following, and the distress the continent
felt at this unparalleled outrage gave a stability to that body which
no other circumstance could have done. It suppressed too all inferior
debates, and bound them together by a necessitous affection, without
giving them time to differ upon trifles. The suffering likewise softened
the whole body of the people into a degree of pliability, which laid the
principal foundation-stone of union, order, and government; and which,
at any other time, might only have fretted and then faded away
unnoticed and unimproved. But Providence, who best knows how to time her
misfortunes as well as her immediate favors, chose this to be the time,
and who dare dispute it?

It did not seem the disposition of the people, at this crisis, to
heap petition upon petition, while the former remained unanswered. The
measure however was carried in Congress, and a second petition was sent;
of which I shall only remark that it was submissive even to a dangerous
fault, because the prayer of it appealed solely to what it called the
prerogative of the crown, while the matter in dispute was confessedly
constitutional. But even this petition, flattering as it was, was
still not so harmonious as the chink of cash, and consequently not
sufficiently grateful to the tyrant and his ministry. From every
circumstance it is evident, that it was the determination of the British
court to have nothing to do with America but to conquer her fully and
absolutely. They were certain of success, and the field of battle was
the only place of treaty. I am confident there are thousands and tens of
thousands in America who wonder now that they should ever have thought
otherwise; but the sin of that day was the sin of civility; yet it
operated against our present good in the same manner that a civil
opinion of the devil would against our future peace.

Independence was a doctrine scarce and rare, even towards the conclusion
of the year 1775; all our politics had been founded on the hope of
expectation of making the matter up--a hope, which, though general on
the side of America, had never entered the head or heart of the British
court. Their hope was conquest and confiscation. Good heavens! what
volumes of thanks does America owe to Britain? What infinite obligation
to the tool that fills, with paradoxical vacancy, the throne! Nothing
but the sharpest essence of villany, compounded with the strongest
distillation of folly, could have produced a menstruum that would have
effected a separation. The Congress in 1774 administered an abortive
medicine to independence, by prohibiting the importation of goods,
and the succeeding Congress rendered the dose still more dangerous by
continuing it. Had independence been a settled system with America, (as
Britain has advanced,) she ought to have doubled her importation, and
prohibited in some degree her exportation. And this single circumstance
is sufficient to acquit America before any jury of nations, of having
a continental plan of independence in view; a charge which, had it been
true, would have been honorable, but is so grossly false, that either
the amazing ignorance or the wilful dishonesty of the British court is
effectually proved by it.

The second petition, like the first, produced no answer; it was
scarcely acknowledged to have been received; the British court were too
determined in their villainy even to act it artfully, and in their rage
for conquest neglected the necessary subtleties for obtaining it. They
might have divided, distracted and played a thousand tricks with us, had
they been as cunning as they were cruel.

This last indignity gave a new spring to independence. Those who knew
the savage obstinacy of the king, and the jobbing, gambling spirit of
the court, predicted the fate of the petition, as soon as it was sent
from America; for the men being known, their measures were easily
foreseen. As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on
the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of
the person of whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool,
candor from a tyrant, or justice from a villain?

As every prospect of accommodation seemed now to fail fast, men began to
think seriously on the matter; and their reason being thus stripped of
the false hope which had long encompassed it, became approachable by
fair debate: yet still the bulk of the people hesitated; they startled
at the novelty of independence, without once considering that our
getting into arms at first was a more extraordinary novelty, and that
all other nations had gone through the work of independence before
us. They doubted likewise the ability of the continent to support
it, without reflecting that it required the same force to obtain an
accommodation by arms as an independence. If the one was acquirable, the
other was the same; because, to accomplish either, it was necessary that
our strength should be too great for Britain to subdue; and it was too
unreasonable to suppose, that with the power of being masters, we should
submit to be servants.* Their caution at this time was exceedingly
misplaced; for if they were able to defend their property and maintain
their rights by arms, they, consequently, were able to defend and
support their independence; and in proportion as these men saw the
necessity and correctness of the measure, they honestly and openly
declared and adopted it, and the part that they had acted since has done
them honor and fully established their characters. Error in opinion has
this peculiar advantage with it, that the foremost point of the contrary
ground may at any time be reached by the sudden exertion of a thought;
and it frequently happens in sentimental differences, that some striking
circumstance, or some forcible reason quickly conceived, will effect in
an instant what neither argument nor example could produce in an age.


     * In this state of political suspense the pamphlet Common Sense made
its appearance, and the success it met with does not become me to
mention. Dr. Franklin, Mr. Samuel and John Adams, were severally spoken
of as the supposed author. I had not, at that time, the pleasure either
of personally knowing or being known to the two last gentlemen. The
favor of Dr. Franklin's friendship I possessed in England, and my
introduction to this part of the world was through his patronage. I
happened, when a school-boy, to pick up a pleasing natural history of
Virginia, and my inclination from that day of seeing the western side
of the Atlantic never left me. In October, 1775, Dr. Franklin proposed
giving me such materials as were in his hands, towards completing a
history of the present transactions, and seemed desirous of having the
first volume out the next Spring. I had then formed the outlines of
Common Sense, and finished nearly the first part; and as I supposed the
doctor's design in getting out a history was to open the new year with
a new system, I expected to surprise him with a production on that
subject, much earlier than he thought of; and without informing him what
I was doing, got it ready for the press as fast as I conveniently could,
and sent him the first pamphlet that was printed off.

I find it impossible in the small compass I am limited to, to trace out
the progress which independence has made on the minds of the different
classes of men, and the several reasons by which they were moved. With
some, it was a passionate abhorrence against the king of England and his
ministry, as a set of savages and brutes; and these men, governed by
the agony of a wounded mind, were for trusting every thing to hope and
heaven, and bidding defiance at once. With others, it was a growing
conviction that the scheme of the British court was to create, ferment
and drive on a quarrel, for the sake of confiscated plunder: and men
of this class ripened into independence in proportion as the evidence
increased. While a third class conceived it was the true interest of
America, internally and externally, to be her own master, and gave their
support to independence, step by step, as they saw her abilities to
maintain it enlarge. With many, it was a compound of all these reasons;
while those who were too callous to be reached by either, remained, and
still remain Tories.

The legal necessity of being independent, with several collateral
reasons, is pointed out in an elegant masterly manner, in a charge to
the grand jury for the district of Charleston, by the Hon. William
Henry Drayton, chief justice of South Carolina, [April 23, 1776]. This
performance, and the address of the convention of New York, are pieces,
in my humble opinion, of the first rank in America.

The principal causes why independence has not been so universally
supported as it ought, are fear and indolence, and the causes why it
has been opposed, are, avarice, down-right villany, and lust of personal
power. There is not such a being in America as a Tory from conscience;
some secret defect or other is interwoven in the character of all those,
be they men or women, who can look with patience on the brutality,
luxury and debauchery of the British court, and the violations of their
army here. A woman's virtue must sit very lightly on her who can even
hint a favorable sentiment in their behalf. It is remarkable that the
whole race of prostitutes in New York were tories; and the schemes for
supporting the Tory cause in this city, for which several are now
in jail, and one hanged, were concerted and carried on in common
bawdy-houses, assisted by those who kept them.

The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for satire,
but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a
diamond. If a Quaker, in defence of his just rights, his property,
and the chastity of his house, takes up a musket, he is expelled the
meeting; but the present king of England, who seduced and took into
keeping a sister of their society, is reverenced and supported by
repeated Testimonies, while, the friendly noodle from whom she was taken
(and who is now in this city) continues a drudge in the service of his
rival, as if proud of being cuckolded by a creature called a king.

Our support and success depend on such a variety of men and
circumstances, that every one who does but wish well, is of some use:
there are men who have a strange aversion to arms, yet have hearts to
risk every shilling in the cause, or in support of those who have better
talents for defending it. Nature, in the arrangement of mankind, has
fitted some for every service in life: were all soldiers, all would
starve and go naked, and were none soldiers, all would be slaves. As
disaffection to independence is the badge of a Tory, so affection to
it is the mark of a Whig; and the different services of the Whigs, down
from those who nobly contribute every thing, to those who have nothing
to render but their wishes, tend all to the same center, though with
different degrees of merit and ability. The larger we make the circle,
the more we shall harmonize, and the stronger we shall be. All we want
to shut out is disaffection, and, that excluded, we must accept from
each other such duties as we are best fitted to bestow. A narrow system
of politics, like a narrow system of religion, is calculated only to
sour the temper, and be at variance with mankind.

All we want to know in America is simply this, who is for independence,
and who is not? Those who are for it, will support it, and the remainder
will undoubtedly see the reasonableness of paying the charges; while
those who oppose or seek to betray it, must expect the more rigid fate
of the jail and the gibbet. There is a bastard kind of generosity, which
being extended to all men, is as fatal to society, on one hand, as the
want of true generosity is on the other. A lax manner of administering
justice, falsely termed moderation, has a tendency both to dispirit
public virtue, and promote the growth of public evils. Had the late
committee of safety taken cognizance of the last Testimony of the
Quakers and proceeded against such delinquents as were concerned
therein, they had, probably, prevented the treasonable plans which
have been concerted since. When one villain is suffered to escape, it
encourages another to proceed, either from a hope of escaping likewise,
or an apprehension that we dare not punish. It has been a matter of
general surprise, that no notice was taken of the incendiary publication
of the Quakers, of the 20th of November last; a publication evidently
intended to promote sedition and treason, and encourage the enemy, who
were then within a day's march of this city, to proceed on and possess
it. I here present the reader with a memorial which was laid before the
board of safety a few days after the Testimony appeared. Not a member of
that board, that I conversed with, but expressed the highest detestation
of the perverted principles and conduct of the Quaker junto, and a wish
that the board would take the matter up; notwithstanding which, it was
suffered to pass away unnoticed, to the encouragement of new acts of
treason, the general danger of the cause, and the disgrace of the state.



        To the honorable the Council of Safety of the State of
                            Pennsylvania.

At a meeting of a reputable number of the inhabitants of the city of
Philadelphia, impressed with a proper sense of the justice of the cause
which this continent is engaged in, and animated with a generous fervor
for supporting the same, it was resolved, that the following be laid
before the board of safety:

"We profess liberality of sentiment to all men; with this distinction
only, that those who do not deserve it would become wise and seek
to deserve it. We hold the pure doctrines of universal liberty of
conscience, and conceive it our duty to endeavor to secure that sacred
right to others, as well as to defend it for ourselves; for we undertake
not to judge of the religious rectitude of tenets, but leave the whole
matter to Him who made us.

"We persecute no man, neither will we abet in the persecution of any
man for religion's sake; our common relation to others being that of
fellow-citizens and fellow-subjects of one single community; and in this
line of connection we hold out the right hand of fellowship to all men.
But we should conceive ourselves to be unworthy members of the free and
independent States of America, were we unconcernedly to see or to suffer
any treasonable wound, public or private, directly or indirectly, to be
given against the peace and safety of the same. We inquire not into the
rank of the offenders, nor into their religious persuasion; we have no
business with either, our part being only to find them out and exhibit
them to justice.

"A printed paper, dated the 20th of November, and signed 'John
Pemberton,' whom we suppose to be an inhabitant of this city, has lately
been dispersed abroad, a copy of which accompanies this. Had the framers
and publishers of that paper conceived it their duty to exhort the youth
and others of their society, to a patient submission under the present
trying visitations, and humbly to wait the event of heaven towards them,
they had therein shown a Christian temper, and we had been silent; but
the anger and political virulence with which their instructions are
given, and the abuse with which they stigmatize all ranks of men not
thinking like themselves, leave no doubt on our minds from what spirit
their publication proceeded: and it is disgraceful to the pure cause of
truth, that men can dally with words of the most sacred import, and play
them off as mechanically as if religion consisted only in contrivance.
We know of no instance in which the Quakers have been compelled to bear
arms, or to do any thing which might strain their conscience; wherefore
their advice, 'to withstand and refuse to submit to the arbitrary
instructions and ordinances of men,' appear to us a false alarm, and
could only be treasonably calculated to gain favor with our enemies,
when they are seemingly on the brink of invading this State, or, what
is still worse, to weaken the hands of our defence, that their entrance
into this city might be made practicable and easy.

"We disclaim all tumult and disorder in the punishment of offenders;
and wish to be governed, not by temper but by reason, in the manner of
treating them. We are sensible that our cause has suffered by the two
following errors: first, by ill-judged lenity to traitorous persons in
some cases; and, secondly, by only a passionate treatment of them in
others. For the future we disown both, and wish to be steady in our
proceedings, and serious in our punishments.

"Every State in America has, by the repeated voice of its inhabitants,
directed and authorized the Continental Congress to publish a formal
Declaration of Independence of, and separation from, the oppressive king
and Parliament of Great Britain; and we look on every man as an
enemy, who does not in some line or other, give his assistance towards
supporting the same; at the same time we consider the offence to be
heightened to a degree of unpardonable guilt, when such persons,
under the show of religion, endeavor, either by writing, speaking, or
otherwise, to subvert, overturn, or bring reproach upon the independence
of this continent as declared by Congress.

"The publishers of the paper signed 'John Pemberton,' have called in a
loud manner to their friends and connections, 'to withstand or refuse'
obedience to whatever 'instructions or ordinances' may be published, not
warranted by (what they call) 'that happy Constitution under which they
and others long enjoyed tranquillity and peace.' If this be not treason,
we know not what may properly be called by that name.

"To us it is a matter of surprise and astonishment, that men with the
word 'peace, peace,' continually on their lips, should be so fond of
living under and supporting a government, and at the same time calling
it 'happy,' which is never better pleased than when a war--that has
filled India with carnage and famine, Africa with slavery, and tampered
with Indians and negroes to cut the throats of the freemen of America.
We conceive it a disgrace to this State, to harbor or wink at such
palpable hypocrisy. But as we seek not to hurt the hair of any man's
head, when we can make ourselves safe without, we wish such persons to
restore peace to themselves and us, by removing themselves to some part
of the king of Great Britain's dominions, as by that means they may live
unmolested by us and we by them; for our fixed opinion is, that those
who do not deserve a place among us, ought not to have one.

"We conclude with requesting the Council of Safety to take into
consideration the paper signed 'John Pemberton,' and if it shall appear
to them to be of a dangerous tendency, or of a treasonable nature, that
they would commit the signer, together with such other persons as they
can discover were concerned therein, into custody, until such time as
some mode of trial shall ascertain the full degree of their guilt and
punishment; in the doing of which, we wish their judges, whoever
they may be, to disregard the man, his connections, interest, riches,
poverty, or principles of religion, and to attend to the nature of his
offence only."



The most cavilling sectarian cannot accuse the foregoing with containing
the least ingredient of persecution. The free spirit on which the
American cause is founded, disdains to mix with such an impurity, and
leaves it as rubbish fit only for narrow and suspicious minds to grovel
in. Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and
flourish together. Had the Quakers minded their religion and their
business, they might have lived through this dispute in enviable ease,
and none would have molested them. The common phrase with these people
is, 'Our principles are peace.' To which may be replied, and your
practices are the reverse; for never did the conduct of men oppose their
own doctrine more notoriously than the present race of the Quakers. They
have artfully changed themselves into a different sort of people to what
they used to be, and yet have the address to persuade each other that
they are not altered; like antiquated virgins, they see not the havoc
deformity has made upon them, but pleasantly mistaking wrinkles for
dimples, conceive themselves yet lovely and wonder at the stupid world
for not admiring them.

Did no injury arise to the public by this apostacy of the Quakers from
themselves, the public would have nothing to do with it; but as both the
design and consequences are pointed against a cause in which the whole
community are interested, it is therefore no longer a subject confined
to the cognizance of the meeting only, but comes, as a matter of
criminality, before the authority either of the particular State in
which it is acted, or of the continent against which it operates. Every
attempt, now, to support the authority of the king and Parliament of
Great Britain over America, is treason against every State; therefore
it is impossible that any one can pardon or screen from punishment an
offender against all.

But to proceed: while the infatuated Tories of this and other States
were last spring talking of commissioners, accommodation, making the
matter up, and the Lord knows what stuff and nonsense, their good king
and ministry were glutting themselves with the revenge of reducing
America to unconditional submission, and solacing each other with the
certainty of conquering it in one campaign. The following quotations are
from the parliamentary register of the debate's of the House of Lords,
March 5th, 1776:

"The Americans," says Lord Talbot,* "have been obstinate, undutiful, and
ungovernable from the very beginning, from their first early and infant
settlements; and I am every day more and more convinced that this people
never will be brought back to their duty, and the subordinate relation
they stand in to this country, till reduced to unconditional, effectual
submission; no concession on our part, no lenity, no endurance, will
have any other effect but that of increasing their insolence."


     * Steward of the king's household.

"The struggle," says Lord Townsend,* "is now a struggle for power; the
die is cast, and the only point which now remains to be determined is,
in what manner the war can be most effectually prosecuted and speedily
finished, in order to procure that unconditional submission, which has
been so ably stated by the noble Earl with the white staff" (meaning
Lord Talbot;) "and I have no reason to doubt that the measures now
pursuing will put an end to the war in the course of a single campaign.
Should it linger longer, we shall then have reason to expect that
some foreign power will interfere, and take advantage of our domestic
troubles and civil distractions."


     * Formerly General Townsend, at Quebec, and late lord-lieutenant of
Ireland.

Lord Littleton. "My sentiments are pretty well known. I shall only
observe now that lenient measures have had no other effect than to
produce insult after insult; that the more we conceded, the higher
America rose in her demands, and the more insolent she has grown. It
is for this reason that I am now for the most effective and decisive
measures; and am of opinion that no alternative is left us, but to
relinquish America for ever, or finally determine to compel her to
acknowledge the legislative authority of this country; and it is the
principle of an unconditional submission I would be for maintaining."

Can words be more expressive than these? Surely the Tories will believe
the Tory lords! The truth is, they do believe them and know as fully as
any Whig on the continent knows, that the king and ministry never had
the least design of an accommodation with America, but an absolute,
unconditional conquest. And the part which the Tories were to act, was,
by downright lying, to endeavor to put the continent off its guard, and
to divide and sow discontent in the minds of such Whigs as they might
gain an influence over. In short, to keep up a distraction here, that
the force sent from England might be able to conquer in "one campaign."
They and the ministry were, by a different game, playing into each
other's hands. The cry of the Tories in England was, "No reconciliation,
no accommodation," in order to obtain the greater military force;
while those in America were crying nothing but "reconciliation and
accommodation," that the force sent might conquer with the less
resistance.

But this "single campaign" is over, and America not conquered. The
whole work is yet to do, and the force much less to do it with. Their
condition is both despicable and deplorable: out of cash--out of heart,
and out of hope. A country furnished with arms and ammunition as America
now is, with three millions of inhabitants, and three thousand miles
distant from the nearest enemy that can approach her, is able to look
and laugh them in the face.

Howe appears to have two objects in view, either to go up the North
River, or come to Philadelphia.

By going up the North River, he secures a retreat for his army through
Canada, but the ships must return if they return at all, the same way
they went; as our army would be in the rear, the safety of their passage
down is a doubtful matter. By such a motion he shuts himself from all
supplies from Europe, but through Canada, and exposes his army and
navy to the danger of perishing. The idea of his cutting off the
communication between the eastern and southern states, by means of
the North River, is merely visionary. He cannot do it by his shipping;
because no ship can lay long at anchor in any river within reach of the
shore; a single gun would drive a first rate from such a station. This
was fully proved last October at Forts Washington and Lee, where one
gun only, on each side of the river, obliged two frigates to cut and
be towed off in an hour's time. Neither can he cut it off by his army;
because the several posts they must occupy would divide them almost
to nothing, and expose them to be picked up by ours like pebbles on a
river's bank; but admitting that he could, where is the injury? Because,
while his whole force is cantoned out, as sentries over the water, they
will be very innocently employed, and the moment they march into the
country the communication opens.

The most probable object is Philadelphia, and the reasons are many.
Howe's business is to conquer it, and in proportion as he finds himself
unable to the task, he will employ his strength to distress women and
weak minds, in order to accomplish through their fears what he cannot
accomplish by his own force. His coming or attempting to come to
Philadelphia is a circumstance that proves his weakness: for no general
that felt himself able to take the field and attack his antagonist would
think of bringing his army into a city in the summer time; and this mere
shifting the scene from place to place, without effecting any thing,
has feebleness and cowardice on the face of it, and holds him up in a
contemptible light to all who can reason justly and firmly. By several
informations from New York, it appears that their army in general, both
officers and men, have given up the expectation of conquering America;
their eye now is fixed upon the spoil. They suppose Philadelphia to be
rich with stores, and as they think to get more by robbing a town than
by attacking an army, their movement towards this city is probable. We
are not now contending against an army of soldiers, but against a band
of thieves, who had rather plunder than fight, and have no other hope of
conquest than by cruelty.

They expect to get a mighty booty, and strike another general panic, by
making a sudden movement and getting possession of this city; but unless
they can march out as well as in, or get the entire command of the
river, to remove off their plunder, they may probably be stopped with
the stolen goods upon them. They have never yet succeeded wherever they
have been opposed, but at Fort Washington. At Charleston their defeat
was effectual. At Ticonderoga they ran away. In every skirmish at
Kingsbridge and the White Plains they were obliged to retreat, and the
instant that our arms were turned upon them in the Jerseys, they turned
likewise, and those that turned not were taken.

The necessity of always fitting our internal police to the circumstances
of the times we live in, is something so strikingly obvious, that no
sufficient objection can be made against it. The safety of all
societies depends upon it; and where this point is not attended to,
the consequences will either be a general languor or a tumult. The
encouragement and protection of the good subjects of any state, and the
suppression and punishment of bad ones, are the principal objects for
which all authority is instituted, and the line in which it ought to
operate. We have in this city a strange variety of men and characters,
and the circumstances of the times require that they should be publicly
known; it is not the number of Tories that hurt us, so much as the not
finding out who they are; men must now take one side or the other, and
abide by the consequences: the Quakers, trusting to their short-sighted
sagacity, have, most unluckily for them, made their declaration in their
last Testimony, and we ought now to take them at their word. They have
involuntarily read themselves out of the continental meeting, and cannot
hope to be restored to it again but by payment and penitence. Men whose
political principles are founded on avarice, are beyond the reach
of reason, and the only cure of Toryism of this cast is to tax it.
A substantial good drawn from a real evil, is of the same benefit to
society, as if drawn from a virtue; and where men have not public spirit
to render themselves serviceable, it ought to be the study of government
to draw the best use possible from their vices. When the governing
passion of any man, or set of men, is once known, the method of managing
them is easy; for even misers, whom no public virtue can impress, would
become generous, could a heavy tax be laid upon covetousness.

The Tories have endeavored to insure their property with the enemy, by
forfeiting their reputation with us; from which may be justly inferred,
that their governing passion is avarice. Make them as much afraid of
losing on one side as on the other, and you stagger their Toryism; make
them more so, and you reclaim them; for their principle is to worship
the power which they are most afraid of.

This method of considering men and things together, opens into a large
field for speculation, and affords me an opportunity of offering some
observations on the state of our currency, so as to make the support
of it go hand in hand with the suppression of disaffection and the
encouragement of public spirit.

The thing which first presents itself in inspecting the state of the
currency, is, that we have too much of it, and that there is a necessity
of reducing the quantity, in order to increase the value. Men are daily
growing poor by the very means that they take to get rich; for in the
same proportion that the prices of all goods on hand are raised, the
value of all money laid by is reduced. A simple case will make this
clear; let a man have 100 L. in cash, and as many goods on hand as will
to-day sell for 20 L.; but not content with the present market price,
he raises them to 40 L. and by so doing obliges others, in their own
defence, to raise cent. per cent. likewise; in this case it is evident
that his hundred pounds laid by, is reduced fifty pounds in value;
whereas, had the market lowered cent. per cent., his goods would have
sold but for ten, but his hundred pounds would have risen in value to
two hundred; because it would then purchase as many goods again, or
support his family as long again as before. And, strange as it may seem,
he is one hundred and fifty pounds the poorer for raising his goods, to
what he would have been had he lowered them; because the forty pounds
which his goods sold for, is, by the general raise of the market cent.
per cent., rendered of no more value than the ten pounds would be had
the market fallen in the same proportion; and, consequently, the whole
difference of gain or loss is on the difference in value of the hundred
pounds laid by, viz. from fifty to two hundred. This rage for raising
goods is for several reasons much more the fault of the Tories than the
Whigs; and yet the Tories (to their shame and confusion ought they to
be told of it) are by far the most noisy and discontented. The greatest
part of the Whigs, by being now either in the army or employed in some
public service, are buyers only and not sellers, and as this evil has
its origin in trade, it cannot be charged on those who are out of it.

But the grievance has now become too general to be remedied by partial
methods, and the only effectual cure is to reduce the quantity of money:
with half the quantity we should be richer than we are now, because
the value of it would be doubled, and consequently our attachment to it
increased; for it is not the number of dollars that a man has, but how
far they will go, that makes him either rich or poor. These two points
being admitted, viz. that the quantity of money is too great, and that
the prices of goods can only be effectually reduced by, reducing the
quantity of the money, the next point to be considered is, the method
how to reduce it.

The circumstances of the times, as before observed, require that the
public characters of all men should now be fully understood, and the
only general method of ascertaining it is by an oath or affirmation,
renouncing all allegiance to the king of Great Britain, and to support
the independence of the United States, as declared by Congress. Let, at
the same time, a tax of ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent. per annum, to
be collected quarterly, be levied on all property. These alternatives,
by being perfectly voluntary, will take in all sorts of people. Here
is the test; here is the tax. He who takes the former, conscientiously
proves his affection to the cause, and binds himself to pay his quota
by the best services in his power, and is thereby justly exempt from the
latter; and those who choose the latter, pay their quota in money, to be
excused from the former, or rather, it is the price paid to us for their
supposed, though mistaken, insurance with the enemy.

But this is only a part of the advantage which would arise by knowing
the different characters of men. The Whigs stake everything on the issue
of their arms, while the Tories, by their disaffection, are sapping and
undermining their strength; and, of consequence, the property of the
Whigs is the more exposed thereby; and whatever injury their estates
may sustain by the movements of the enemy, must either be borne by
themselves, who have done everything which has yet been done, or by the
Tories, who have not only done nothing, but have, by their disaffection,
invited the enemy on.

In the present crisis we ought to know, square by square and house by
house, who are in real allegiance with the United Independent States,
and who are not. Let but the line be made clear and distinct, and all
men will then know what they are to trust to. It would not only be
good policy but strict justice, to raise fifty or one hundred thousand
pounds, or more, if it is necessary, out of the estates and property
of the king of England's votaries, resident in Philadelphia, to be
distributed, as a reward to those inhabitants of the city and State, who
should turn out and repulse the enemy, should they attempt to march this
way; and likewise, to bind the property of all such persons to make
good the damages which that of the Whigs might sustain. In the
undistinguishable mode of conducting a war, we frequently make reprisals
at sea, on the vessels of persons in England, who are friends to our
cause compared with the resident Tories among us.

In every former publication of mine, from Common Sense down to the last
Crisis, I have generally gone on the charitable supposition, that the
Tories were rather a mistaken than a criminal people, and have applied
argument after argument, with all the candor and temper which I was
capable of, in order to set every part of the case clearly and fairly
before them, and if possible to reclaim them from ruin to reason. I have
done my duty by them and have now done with that doctrine, taking it for
granted, that those who yet hold their disaffection are either a set
of avaricious miscreants, who would sacrifice the continent to save
themselves, or a banditti of hungry traitors, who are hoping for
a division of the spoil. To which may be added, a list of crown or
proprietary dependants, who, rather than go without a portion of power,
would be content to share it with the devil. Of such men there is no
hope; and their obedience will only be according to the danger set
before them, and the power that is exercised over them.

A time will shortly arrive, in which, by ascertaining the characters of
persons now, we shall be guarded against their mischiefs then; for in
proportion as the enemy despair of conquest, they will be trying the
arts of seduction and the force of fear by all the mischiefs which they
can inflict. But in war we may be certain of these two things, viz. that
cruelty in an enemy, and motions made with more than usual parade, are
always signs of weakness. He that can conquer, finds his mind too free
and pleasant to be brutish; and he that intends to conquer, never makes
too much show of his strength.

We now know the enemy we have to do with. While drunk with the
certainty of victory, they disdained to be civil; and in proportion as
disappointment makes them sober, and their apprehensions of an European
war alarm them, they will become cringing and artful; honest they cannot
be. But our answer to them, in either condition they may be in, is short
and full--"As free and independent States we are willing to make peace
with you to-morrow, but we neither can hear nor reply in any other
character."

If Britain cannot conquer us, it proves that she is neither able to
govern nor protect us, and our particular situation now is such, that
any connection with her would be unwisely exchanging a half-defeated
enemy for two powerful ones. Europe, by every appearance, is now on the
eve, nay, on the morning twilight of a war, and any alliance with George
the Third brings France and Spain upon our backs; a separation from him
attaches them to our side; therefore, the only road to peace, honor and
commerce is Independence.

Written this fourth year of the UNION, which God preserve.

                                            COMMON SENSE.

    PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1777.




THE CRISIS IV. (THOSE WHO EXPECT TO REAP THE BLESSINGS OF FREEDOM)


THOSE who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men,
undergo the fatigues of supporting it. The event of yesterday was one
of those kind of alarms which is just sufficient to rouse us to duty,
without being of consequence enough to depress our fortitude. It is not
a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending,
and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the
consequences will be the same.

Look back at the events of last winter and the present year, there you
will find that the enemy's successes always contributed to reduce them.
What they have gained in ground, they paid so dearly for in numbers,
that their victories have in the end amounted to defeats. We have always
been masters at the last push, and always shall be while we do our duty.
Howe has been once on the banks of the Delaware, and from thence driven
back with loss and disgrace: and why not be again driven from the
Schuylkill? His condition and ours are very different. He has everybody
to fight, we have only his one army to cope with, and which wastes away
at every engagement: we can not only reinforce, but can redouble our
numbers; he is cut off from all supplies, and must sooner or later
inevitably fall into our hands.

Shall a band of ten or twelve thousand robbers, who are this day fifteen
hundred or two thousand men less in strength than they were yesterday,
conquer America, or subdue even a single state? The thing cannot be,
unless we sit down and suffer them to do it. Another such a brush,
notwithstanding we lost the ground, would, by still reducing the enemy,
put them in a condition to be afterwards totally defeated. Could our
whole army have come up to the attack at one time, the consequences
had probably been otherwise; but our having different parts of
the Brandywine creek to guard, and the uncertainty which road to
Philadelphia the enemy would attempt to take, naturally afforded them an
opportunity of passing with their main body at a place where only a
part of ours could be posted; for it must strike every thinking man with
conviction, that it requires a much greater force to oppose an enemy in
several places, than is sufficient to defeat him in any one place.

Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel concern
at every circumstance which seems to make against them; it is the
natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments, and the
want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a moment; they
soon rise out of it with additional vigor; the glow of hope, courage and
fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the place of every inferior
passion, and kindle the whole heart into heroism.

There is a mystery in the countenance of some causes, which we have not
always present judgment enough to explain. It is distressing to see an
enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can
beat them, and in which we have always beaten them, whenever they made
the attempt. The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer
it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together,
and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.

There are many men who will do their duty when it is not wanted; but a
genuine public spirit always appears most when there is most occasion
for it. Thank God! our army, though fatigued, is yet entire. The attack
made by us yesterday, was under many disadvantages, naturally arising
from the uncertainty of knowing which route the enemy would take; and,
from that circumstance, the whole of our force could not be brought
up together time enough to engage all at once. Our strength is yet
reserved; and it is evident that Howe does not think himself a gainer by
the affair, otherwise he would this morning have moved down and attacked
General Washington.

Gentlemen of the city and country, it is in your power, by a spirited
improvement of the present circumstance, to turn it to a real advantage.
Howe is now weaker than before, and every shot will contribute to reduce
him. You are more immediately interested than any other part of the
continent: your all is at stake; it is not so with the general cause;
you are devoted by the enemy to plunder and destruction: it is the
encouragement which Howe, the chief of plunderers, has promised his
army. Thus circumstanced, you may save yourselves by a manly resistance,
but you can have no hope in any other conduct. I never yet knew our
brave general, or any part of the army, officers or men, out of heart,
and I have seen them in circumstances a thousand times more trying than
the present. It is only those that are not in action, that feel languor
and heaviness, and the best way to rub it off is to turn out, and make
sure work of it.

Our army must undoubtedly feel fatigue, and want a reinforcement of rest
though not of valor. Our own interest and happiness call upon us to
give them every support in our power, and make the burden of the day, on
which the safety of this city depends, as light as possible. Remember,
gentlemen, that we have forces both to the northward and southward of
Philadelphia, and if the enemy be but stopped till those can arrive,
this city will be saved, and the enemy finally routed. You have too much
at stake to hesitate. You ought not to think an hour upon the matter,
but to spring to action at once. Other states have been invaded, have
likewise driven off the invaders. Now our time and turn is come, and
perhaps the finishing stroke is reserved for us. When we look back on
the dangers we have been saved from, and reflect on the success we have
been blessed with, it would be sinful either to be idle or to despair.

I close this paper with a short address to General Howe. You, sir, are
only lingering out the period that shall bring with it your defeat.
You have yet scarce began upon the war, and the further you enter, the
faster will your troubles thicken. What you now enjoy is only a respite
from ruin; an invitation to destruction; something that will lead on to
our deliverance at your expense. We know the cause which we are engaged
in, and though a passionate fondness for it may make us grieve at every
injury which threatens it, yet, when the moment of concern is over, the
determination to duty returns. We are not moved by the gloomy smile of a
worthless king, but by the ardent glow of generous patriotism. We fight
not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the
earth for honest men to live in. In such a case we are sure that we are
right; and we leave to you the despairing reflection of being the tool
of a miserable tyrant.

                                           COMMON SENSE.

    PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12, 1777.




THE CRISIS. V. TO GEN. SIR WILLIAM HOWE.


TO argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason,
and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like
administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist
by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting.
It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you these honors,
in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master.

As the generosity of this country rewarded your brother's services
in the last war, with an elegant monument in Westminster Abbey, it is
consistent that she should bestow some mark of distinction upon you. You
certainly deserve her notice, and a conspicuous place in the catalogue
of extraordinary persons. Yet it would be a pity to pass you from the
world in state, and consign you to magnificent oblivion among the tombs,
without telling the future beholder why. Judas is as much known as John,
yet history ascribes their fame to very different actions.

Sir William has undoubtedly merited a monument; but of what kind, or
with what inscription, where placed or how embellished, is a question
that would puzzle all the heralds of St. James's in the profoundest mood
of historical deliberation. We are at no loss, sir, to ascertain your
real character, but somewhat perplexed how to perpetuate its identity,
and preserve it uninjured from the transformations of time or mistake.
A statuary may give a false expression to your bust, or decorate it with
some equivocal emblems, by which you may happen to steal into reputation
and impose upon the hereafter traditionary world. Ill nature or ridicule
may conspire, or a variety of accidents combine to lessen, enlarge, or
change Sir William's fame; and no doubt but he who has taken so much
pains to be singular in his conduct, would choose to be just as singular
in his exit, his monument and his epitaph.

The usual honors of the dead, to be sure, are not sufficiently sublime
to escort a character like you to the republic of dust and ashes; for
however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or of government here,
the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic. Death is not the monarch
of the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses
a subject, and, like the foolish king you serve, will, in the end, war
himself out of all his dominions.

As a proper preliminary towards the arrangement of your funeral honors,
we readily admit of your new rank of knighthood. The title is perfectly
in character, and is your own, more by merit than creation. There are
knights of various orders, from the knight of the windmill to the knight
of the post. The former is your patron for exploits, and the latter will
assist you in settling your accounts. No honorary title could be more
happily applied! The ingenuity is sublime! And your royal master has
discovered more genius in fitting you therewith, than in generating the
most finished figure for a button, or descanting on the properties of a
button mould.

But how, sir, shall we dispose of you? The invention of a statuary is
exhausted, and Sir William is yet unprovided with a monument. America is
anxious to bestow her funeral favors upon you, and wishes to do it in
a manner that shall distinguish you from all the deceased heroes of the
last war. The Egyptian method of embalming is not known to the
present age, and hieroglyphical pageantry hath outlived the science
of deciphering it. Some other method, therefore, must be thought of to
immortalize the new knight of the windmill and post. Sir William, thanks
to his stars, is not oppressed with very delicate ideas. He has no
ambition of being wrapped up and handed about in myrrh, aloes and
cassia. Less expensive odors will suffice; and it fortunately happens
that the simple genius of America has discovered the art of preserving
bodies, and embellishing them too, with much greater frugality than
the ancients. In balmage, sir, of humble tar, you will be as secure
as Pharaoh, and in a hieroglyphic of feathers, rival in finery all the
mummies of Egypt.

As you have already made your exit from the moral world, and by
numberless acts both of passionate and deliberate injustice engraved an
"here lieth" on your deceased honor, it must be mere affectation in you
to pretend concern at the humors or opinions of mankind respecting you.
What remains of you may expire at any time. The sooner the better. For
he who survives his reputation, lives out of despite of himself, like a
man listening to his own reproach.

Thus entombed and ornamented, I leave you to the inspection of the
curious, and return to the history of your yet surviving actions. The
character of Sir William has undergone some extraordinary revolutions.
since his arrival in America. It is now fixed and known; and we
have nothing to hope from your candor or to fear from your capacity.
Indolence and inability have too large a share in your composition, ever
to suffer you to be anything more than the hero of little villainies and
unfinished adventures. That, which to some persons appeared moderation
in you at first, was not produced by any real virtue of your own, but
by a contrast of passions, dividing and holding you in perpetual
irresolution. One vice will frequently expel another, without the least
merit in the man; as powers in contrary directions reduce each other to
rest.

It became you to have supported a dignified solemnity of character;
to have shown a superior liberality of soul; to have won respect by an
obstinate perseverance in maintaining order, and to have exhibited on
all occasions such an unchangeable graciousness of conduct, that while
we beheld in you the resolution of an enemy, we might admire in you the
sincerity of a man. You came to America under the high sounding titles
of commander and commissioner; not only to suppress what you call
rebellion, by arms, but to shame it out of countenance by the excellence
of your example. Instead of which, you have been the patron of low and
vulgar frauds, the encourager of Indian cruelties; and have imported a
cargo of vices blacker than those which you pretend to suppress.

Mankind are not universally agreed in their determination of right and
wrong; but there are certain actions which the consent of all nations
and individuals has branded with the unchangeable name of meanness. In
the list of human vices we find some of such a refined constitution,
they cannot be carried into practice without seducing some virtue to
their assistance; but meanness has neither alliance nor apology. It is
generated in the dust and sweepings of other vices, and is of such a
hateful figure that all the rest conspire to disown it. Sir William, the
commissioner of George the Third, has at last vouchsafed to give it
rank and pedigree. He has placed the fugitive at the council board, and
dubbed it companion of the order of knighthood.

The particular act of meanness which I allude to in this description, is
forgery. You, sir, have abetted and patronized the forging and uttering
counterfeit continental bills. In the same New York newspapers in which
your own proclamation under your master's authority was published,
offering, or pretending to offer, pardon and protection to these states,
there were repeated advertisements of counterfeit money for sale, and
persons who have come officially from you, and under the sanction of
your flag, have been taken up in attempting to put them off.

A conduct so basely mean in a public character is without precedent or
pretence. Every nation on earth, whether friends or enemies, will unite
in despising you. 'Tis an incendiary war upon society, which nothing can
excuse or palliate,--an improvement upon beggarly villany--and shows an
inbred wretchedness of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a
serpent and the spiteful imbecility of an inferior reptile.

The laws of any civilized country would condemn you to the gibbet
without regard to your rank or titles, because it is an action foreign
to the usage and custom of war; and should you fall into our hands,
which pray God you may, it will be a doubtful matter whether we are to
consider you as a military prisoner or a prisoner for felony.

Besides, it is exceedingly unwise and impolitic in you, or any other
persons in the English service, to promote or even encourage, or wink
at the crime of forgery, in any case whatever. Because, as the riches of
England, as a nation, are chiefly in paper, and the far greater part of
trade among individuals is carried on by the same medium, that is, by
notes and drafts on one another, they, therefore, of all people in the
world, ought to endeavor to keep forgery out of sight, and, if possible,
not to revive the idea of it. It is dangerous to make men familiar with
a crime which they may afterwards practise to much greater advantage
against those who first taught them. Several officers in the English
army have made their exit at the gallows for forgery on their agents;
for we all know, who know any thing of England, that there is not a more
necessitous body of men, taking them generally, than what the English
officers are. They contrive to make a show at the expense of the
tailors, and appear clean at the charge of the washer-women.

England, has at this time, nearly two hundred million pounds sterling
of public money in paper, for which she has no real property: besides a
large circulation of bank notes, bank post bills, and promissory notes
and drafts of private bankers, merchants and tradesmen. She has the
greatest quantity of paper currency and the least quantity of gold and
silver of any nation in Europe; the real specie, which is about sixteen
millions sterling, serves only as change in large sums, which are always
made in paper, or for payment in small ones. Thus circumstanced, the
nation is put to its wit's end, and obliged to be severe almost to
criminality, to prevent the practice and growth of forgery. Scarcely
a session passes at the Old Bailey, or an execution at Tyburn, but
witnesses this truth, yet you, sir, regardless of the policy which her
necessity obliges her to adopt, have made your whole army intimate with
the crime. And as all armies at the conclusion of a war, are too apt to
carry into practice the vices of the campaign, it will probably happen,
that England will hereafter abound in forgeries, to which art the
practitioners were first initiated under your authority in America. You,
sir, have the honor of adding a new vice to the military catalogue; and
the reason, perhaps, why the invention was reserved for you, is, because
no general before was mean enough even to think of it.

That a man whose soul is absorbed in the low traffic of vulgar vice, is
incapable of moving in any superior region, is clearly shown in you by
the event of every campaign. Your military exploits have been without
plan, object or decision. Can it be possible that you or your employers
suppose that the possession of Philadelphia will be any ways equal
to the expense or expectation of the nation which supports you? What
advantages does England derive from any achievements of yours? To her it
is perfectly indifferent what place you are in, so long as the business
of conquest is unperformed and the charge of maintaining you remains the
same.

If the principal events of the three campaigns be attended to, the
balance will appear against you at the close of each; but the last, in
point of importance to us, has exceeded the former two. It is pleasant
to look back on dangers past, and equally as pleasant to meditate on
present ones when the way out begins to appear. That period is now
arrived, and the long doubtful winter of war is changing to the sweeter
prospects of victory and joy. At the close of the campaign, in 1775, you
were obliged to retreat from Boston. In the summer of 1776, you appeared
with a numerous fleet and army in the harbor of New York. By what
miracle the continent was preserved in that season of danger is a
subject of admiration! If instead of wasting your time against Long
Island you had run up the North River, and landed any where above
New York, the consequence must have been, that either you would have
compelled General Washington to fight you with very unequal numbers, or
he must have suddenly evacuated the city with the loss of nearly all
the stores of his army, or have surrendered for want of provisions; the
situation of the place naturally producing one or the other of these
events.

The preparations made to defend New York were, nevertheless, wise and
military; because your forces were then at sea, their numbers uncertain;
storms, sickness, or a variety of accidents might have disabled their
coming, or so diminished them on their passage, that those which
survived would have been incapable of opening the campaign with
any prospect of success; in which case the defence would have been
sufficient and the place preserved; for cities that have been raised
from nothing with an infinitude of labor and expense, are not to be
thrown away on the bare probability of their being taken. On these
grounds the preparations made to maintain New York were as judicious
as the retreat afterwards. While you, in the interim, let slip the very
opportunity which seemed to put conquest in your power.

Through the whole of that campaign you had nearly double the forces
which General Washington immediately commanded. The principal plan at
that time, on our part, was to wear away the season with as little loss
as possible, and to raise the army for the next year. Long Island, New
York, Forts Washington and Lee were not defended after your superior
force was known under any expectation of their being finally maintained,
but as a range of outworks, in the attacking of which your time might be
wasted, your numbers reduced, and your vanity amused by possessing them
on our retreat. It was intended to have withdrawn the garrison from Fort
Washington after it had answered the former of those purposes, but
the fate of that day put a prize into your hands without much honor to
yourselves.

Your progress through the Jerseys was accidental; you had it not even
in contemplation, or you would not have sent a principal part of your
forces to Rhode Island beforehand. The utmost hope of America in the
year 1776, reached no higher than that she might not then be conquered.
She had no expectation of defeating you in that campaign. Even the
most cowardly Tory allowed, that, could she withstand the shock of that
summer, her independence would be past a doubt. You had then greatly
the advantage of her. You were formidable. Your military knowledge
was supposed to be complete. Your fleets and forces arrived without an
accident. You had neither experience nor reinforcements to wait for.
You had nothing to do but to begin, and your chance lay in the first
vigorous onset.

America was young and unskilled. She was obliged to trust her defence to
time and practice; and has, by mere dint of perseverance, maintained her
cause, and brought the enemy to a condition, in which she is now capable
of meeting him on any grounds.

It is remarkable that in the campaign of 1776 you gained no more,
notwithstanding your great force, than what was given you by consent of
evacuation, except Fort Washington; while every advantage obtained by
us was by fair and hard fighting. The defeat of Sir Peter Parker was
complete. The conquest of the Hessians at Trenton, by the remains of a
retreating army, which but a few days before you affected to despise, is
an instance of their heroic perseverance very seldom to be met with.
And the victory over the British troops at Princeton, by a harassed and
wearied party, who had been engaged the day before and marched all night
without refreshment, is attended with such a scene of circumstances and
superiority of generalship, as will ever give it a place in the first
rank in the history of great actions.

When I look back on the gloomy days of last winter, and see America
suspended by a thread, I feel a triumph of joy at the recollection of
her delivery, and a reverence for the characters which snatched her
from destruction. To doubt now would be a species of infidelity, and to
forget the instruments which saved us then would be ingratitude.

The close of that campaign left us with the spirit of conquerors. The
northern districts were relieved by the retreat of General Carleton over
the lakes. The army under your command were hunted back and had their
bounds prescribed. The continent began to feel its military importance,
and the winter passed pleasantly away in preparations for the next
campaign.

However confident you might be on your first arrival, the result of the
year 1776 gave you some idea of the difficulty, if not impossibility of
conquest. To this reason I ascribe your delay in opening the campaign of
1777. The face of matters, on the close of the former year, gave you
no encouragement to pursue a discretionary war as soon as the spring
admitted the taking the field; for though conquest, in that case, would
have given you a double portion of fame, yet the experiment was too
hazardous. The ministry, had you failed, would have shifted the whole
blame upon you, charged you with having acted without orders, and
condemned at once both your plan and execution.

To avoid the misfortunes, which might have involved you and your money
accounts in perplexity and suspicion, you prudently waited the arrival
of a plan of operations from England, which was that you should proceed
for Philadelphia by way of the Chesapeake, and that Burgoyne, after
reducing Ticonderoga, should take his route by Albany, and, if
necessary, join you.

The splendid laurels of the last campaign have flourished in the north.
In that quarter America has surprised the world, and laid the foundation
of this year's glory. The conquest of Ticonderoga, (if it may be called
a conquest) has, like all your other victories, led on to ruin. Even the
provisions taken in that fortress (which by General Burgoyne's return
was sufficient in bread and flour for nearly 5000 men for ten weeks, and
in beef and pork for the same number of men for one month) served only
to hasten his overthrow, by enabling him to proceed to Saratoga, the
place of his destruction. A short review of the operations of the last
campaign will show the condition of affairs on both sides.

You have taken Ticonderoga and marched into Philadelphia. These are all
the events which the year has produced on your part. A trifling campaign
indeed, compared with the expenses of England and the conquest of the
continent. On the other side, a considerable part of your northern force
has been routed by the New York militia under General Herkemer. Fort
Stanwix has bravely survived a compound attack of soldiers and savages,
and the besiegers have fled. The Battle of Bennington has put a thousand
prisoners into our hands, with all their arms, stores, artillery and
baggage. General Burgoyne, in two engagements, has been defeated;
himself, his army, and all that were his and theirs are now ours.
Ticonderoga and Independence [forts] are retaken, and not the shadow of
an enemy remains in all the northern districts. At this instant we
have upwards of eleven thousand prisoners, between sixty and seventy
[captured] pieces of brass ordnance, besides small arms, tents, stores,
etc.

In order to know the real value of those advantages, we must reverse
the scene, and suppose General Gates and the force he commanded to be at
your mercy as prisoners, and General Burgoyne, with his army of soldiers
and savages, to be already joined to you in Pennsylvania. So dismal a
picture can scarcely be looked at. It has all the tracings and colorings
of horror and despair; and excites the most swelling emotions of
gratitude by exhibiting the miseries we are so graciously preserved
from.

I admire the distribution of laurels around the continent. It is the
earnest of future union. South Carolina has had her day of sufferings
and of fame; and the other southern States have exerted themselves in
proportion to the force that invaded or insulted them. Towards the close
of the campaign, in 1776, these middle States were called upon and did
their duty nobly. They were witnesses to the almost expiring flame of
human freedom. It was the close struggle of life and death, the line of
invisible division; and on which the unabated fortitude of a Washington
prevailed, and saved the spark that has since blazed in the north with
unrivalled lustre.

Let me ask, sir, what great exploits have you performed? Through all the
variety of changes and opportunities which the war has produced, I know
no one action of yours that can be styled masterly. You have moved in
and out, backward and forward, round and round, as if valor consisted in
a military jig. The history and figure of your movements would be truly
ridiculous could they be justly delineated. They resemble the labors of
a puppy pursuing his tail; the end is still at the same distance, and
all the turnings round must be done over again.

The first appearance of affairs at Ticonderoga wore such an unpromising
aspect, that it was necessary, in July, to detach a part of the forces
to the support of that quarter, which were otherwise destined or
intended to act against you; and this, perhaps, has been the means of
postponing your downfall to another campaign. The destruction of one
army at a time is work enough. We know, sir, what we are about, what we
have to do, and how to do it.

Your progress from the Chesapeake, was marked by no capital stroke of
policy or heroism. Your principal aim was to get General Washington
between the Delaware and Schuylkill, and between Philadelphia and your
army. In that situation, with a river on each of his flanks, which
united about five miles below the city, and your army above him, you
could have intercepted his reinforcements and supplies, cut off all
his communication with the country, and, if necessary, have despatched
assistance to open a passage for General Burgoyne. This scheme was too
visible to succeed: for had General Washington suffered you to command
the open country above him, I think it a very reasonable conjecture that
the conquest of Burgoyne would not have taken place, because you could,
in that case, have relieved him. It was therefore necessary, while that
important victory was in suspense, to trepan you into a situation in
which you could only be on the defensive, without the power of
affording him assistance. The manoeuvre had its effect, and Burgoyne was
conquered.

There has been something unmilitary and passive in you from the time of
your passing the Schuylkill and getting possession of Philadelphia,
to the close of the campaign. You mistook a trap for a conquest, the
probability of which had been made known to Europe, and the edge of your
triumph taken off by our own information long before.

Having got you into this situation, a scheme for a general attack upon
you at Germantown was carried into execution on the 4th of October, and
though the success was not equal to the excellence of the plan, yet the
attempting it proved the genius of America to be on the rise, and her
power approaching to superiority. The obscurity of the morning was your
best friend, for a fog is always favorable to a hunted enemy. Some weeks
after this you likewise planned an attack on General Washington while
at Whitemarsh. You marched out with infinite parade, but on finding him
preparing to attack you next morning, you prudently turned about, and
retreated to Philadelphia with all the precipitation of a man conquered
in imagination.

Immediately after the battle of Germantown, the probability of
Burgoyne's defeat gave a new policy to affairs in Pennsylvania, and it
was judged most consistent with the general safety of America, to wait
the issue of the northern campaign. Slow and sure is sound work. The
news of that victory arrived in our camp on the 18th of October, and
no sooner did that shout of joy, and the report of the thirteen cannon
reach your ears, than you resolved upon a retreat, and the next day,
that is, on the 19th, you withdrew your drooping army into Philadelphia.
This movement was evidently dictated by fear; and carried with it a
positive confession that you dreaded a second attack. It was hiding
yourself among women and children, and sleeping away the choicest part
of the campaign in expensive inactivity. An army in a city can never
be a conquering army. The situation admits only of defence. It is mere
shelter: and every military power in Europe will conclude you to be
eventually defeated.

The time when you made this retreat was the very time you ought to have
fought a battle, in order to put yourself in condition of recovering in
Pennsylvania what you had lost in Saratoga. And the reason why you did
not, must be either prudence or cowardice; the former supposes your
inability, and the latter needs no explanation. I draw no conclusions,
sir, but such as are naturally deduced from known and visible facts,
and such as will always have a being while the facts which produced them
remain unaltered.

After this retreat a new difficulty arose which exhibited the power of
Britain in a very contemptible light; which was the attack and defence
of Mud Island. For several weeks did that little unfinished fortress
stand out against all the attempts of Admiral and General Howe. It was
the fable of Bender realized on the Delaware. Scheme after scheme, and
force upon force were tried and defeated. The garrison, with scarce
anything to cover them but their bravery, survived in the midst of mud,
shot and shells, and were at last obliged to give it up more to the
powers of time and gunpowder than to military superiority of the
besiegers.

It is my sincere opinion that matters are in much worse condition with
you than what is generally known. Your master's speech at the opening of
Parliament, is like a soliloquy on ill luck. It shows him to be coming
a little to his reason, for sense of pain is the first symptom of
recovery, in profound stupefaction. His condition is deplorable. He is
obliged to submit to all the insults of France and Spain, without daring
to know or resent them; and thankful for the most trivial evasions to
the most humble remonstrances. The time was when he could not deign an
answer to a petition from America, and the time now is when he dare not
give an answer to an affront from France. The capture of Burgoyne's army
will sink his consequence as much in Europe as in America. In his speech
he expresses his suspicions at the warlike preparations of France and
Spain, and as he has only the one army which you command to support his
character in the world with, it remains very uncertain when, or in what
quarter it will be most wanted, or can be best employed; and this will
partly account for the great care you take to keep it from action and
attacks, for should Burgoyne's fate be yours, which it probably will,
England may take her endless farewell not only of all America but of all
the West Indies.

Never did a nation invite destruction upon itself with the eagerness and
the ignorance with which Britain has done. Bent upon the ruin of a
young and unoffending country, she has drawn the sword that has wounded
herself to the heart, and in the agony of her resentment has applied a
poison for a cure. Her conduct towards America is a compound of rage and
lunacy; she aims at the government of it, yet preserves neither dignity
nor character in her methods to obtain it. Were government a mere
manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial by whom it should be made
or sold, we might as well employ her as another, but when we consider
it as the fountain from whence the general manners and morality of a
country take their rise, that the persons entrusted with the execution
thereof are by their serious example an authority to support these
principles, how abominably absurd is the idea of being hereafter
governed by a set of men who have been guilty of forgery, perjury,
treachery, theft and every species of villany which the lowest wretches
on earth could practise or invent. What greater public curse can befall
any country than to be under such authority, and what greater blessing
than to be delivered therefrom. The soul of any man of sentiment would
rise in brave rebellion against them, and spurn them from the earth.

The malignant and venomous tempered General Vaughan has amused his
savage fancy in burning the whole town of Kingston, in York government,
and the late governor of that state, Mr. Tryon, in his letter to General
Parsons, has endeavored to justify it and declared his wish to burn the
houses of every committeeman in the country. Such a confession from
one who was once intrusted with the powers of civil government, is a
reproach to the character. But it is the wish and the declaration of a
man whom anguish and disappointment have driven to despair, and who is
daily decaying into the grave with constitutional rottenness.

There is not in the compass of language a sufficiency of words to
express the baseness of your king, his ministry and his army. They
have refined upon villany till it wants a name. To the fiercer vices of
former ages they have added the dregs and scummings of the most finished
rascality, and are so completely sunk in serpentine deceit, that there
is not left among them one generous enemy.

From such men and such masters, may the gracious hand of Heaven preserve
America! And though the sufferings she now endures are heavy, and
severe, they are like straws in the wind compared to the weight of evils
she would feel under the government of your king, and his pensioned
Parliament.

There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment
that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart
to the highest agony of human hatred; Britain has filled up both these
characters till no addition can be made, and has not reputation left
with us to obtain credit for the slightest promise. The will of God has
parted us, and the deed is registered for eternity. When she shall be
a spot scarcely visible among the nations, America shall flourish the
favorite of heaven, and the friend of mankind.

For the domestic happiness of Britain and the peace of the world, I
wish she had not a foot of land but what is circumscribed within her own
island. Extent of dominion has been her ruin, and instead of civilizing
others has brutalized herself. Her late reduction of India, under Clive
and his successors, was not so properly a conquest as an extermination
of mankind. She is the only power who could practise the prodigal
barbarity of tying men to mouths of loaded cannon and blowing them away.
It happens that General Burgoyne, who made the report of that horrid
transaction, in the House of Commons, is now a prisoner with us,
and though an enemy, I can appeal to him for the truth of it, being
confident that he neither can nor will deny it. Yet Clive received the
approbation of the last Parliament.

When we take a survey of mankind, we cannot help cursing the wretch,
who, to the unavoidable misfortunes of nature, shall wilfully add the
calamities of war. One would think there were evils enough in the world
without studying to increase them, and that life is sufficiently short
without shaking the sand that measures it. The histories of Alexander,
and Charles of Sweden, are the histories of human devils; a good man
cannot think of their actions without abhorrence, nor of their deaths
without rejoicing. To see the bounties of heaven destroyed, the
beautiful face of nature laid waste, and the choicest works of creation
and art tumbled into ruin, would fetch a curse from the soul of piety
itself. But in this country the aggravation is heightened by a new
combination of affecting circumstances. America was young, and, compared
with other countries, was virtuous. None but a Herod of uncommon malice
would have made war upon infancy and innocence: and none but a people
of the most finished fortitude, dared under those circumstances, have
resisted the tyranny. The natives, or their ancestors, had fled from the
former oppressions of England, and with the industry of bees had changed
a wilderness into a habitable world. To Britain they were indebted for
nothing. The country was the gift of heaven, and God alone is their Lord
and Sovereign.

The time, sir, will come when you, in a melancholy hour, shall reckon up
your miseries by your murders in America. Life, with you, begins to wear
a clouded aspect. The vision of pleasurable delusion is wearing away,
and changing to the barren wild of age and sorrow. The poor reflection
of having served your king will yield you no consolation in your
parting moments. He will crumble to the same undistinguished ashes with
yourself, and have sins enough of his own to answer for. It is not the
farcical benedictions of a bishop, nor the cringing hypocrisy of a court
of chaplains, nor the formality of an act of Parliament, that can change
guilt into innocence, or make the punishment one pang the less. You may,
perhaps, be unwilling to be serious, but this destruction of the goods
of Providence, this havoc of the human race, and this sowing the world
with mischief, must be accounted for to him who made and governs it.
To us they are only present sufferings, but to him they are deep
rebellions.

If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and
offensive war. Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow limits,
that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very general extension,
and many kinds of sins have only a mental existence from which no
infection arises; but he who is the author of a war, lets loose the
whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
We leave it to England and Indians to boast of these honors; we feel no
thirst for such savage glory; a nobler flame, a purer spirit animates
America. She has taken up the sword of virtuous defence; she has bravely
put herself between Tyranny and Freedom, between a curse and a blessing,
determined to expel the one and protect the other.

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was
ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is
now engaged. She invaded no land of yours. She hired no mercenaries to
burn your towns, nor Indians to massacre their inhabitants. She
wanted nothing from you, and was indebted for nothing to you: and thus
circumstanced, her defence is honorable and her prosperity is certain.

Yet it is not on the justice only, but likewise on the importance of
this cause that I ground my seeming enthusiastical confidence of our
success. The vast extension of America makes her of too much value in
the scale of Providence, to be cast like a pearl before swine, at the
feet of an European island; and of much less consequence would it be
that Britain were sunk in the sea than that America should miscarry.
There has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the discovery of
this country at first, in the peopling and planting it afterwards, in
the rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in the protection
of it through the present war, that no man can doubt, but Providence
has some nobler end to accomplish than the gratification of the petty
elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and insignificant king of Britain.

As the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Christian church,
so the political persecutions of England will and have already enriched
America with industry, experience, union, and importance. Before the
present era she was a mere chaos of uncemented colonies, individually
exposed to the ravages of the Indians and the invasion of any power that
Britain should be at war with. She had nothing that she could call her
own. Her felicity depended upon accident. The convulsions of Europe
might have thrown her from one conqueror to another, till she had been
the slave of all, and ruined by every one; for until she had spirit
enough to become her own master, there was no knowing to which master
she should belong. That period, thank God, is past, and she is no longer
the dependent, disunited colonies of Britain, but the independent and
United States of America, knowing no master but heaven and herself. You,
or your king, may call this "delusion," "rebellion," or what name you
please. To us it is perfectly indifferent. The issue will determine the
character, and time will give it a name as lasting as his own.

You have now, sir, tried the fate of three campaigns, and can fully
declare to England, that nothing is to be got on your part, but blows
and broken bones, and nothing on hers but waste of trade and credit, and
an increase of poverty and taxes. You are now only where you might have
been two years ago, without the loss of a single ship, and yet not a
step more forward towards the conquest of the continent; because, as I
have already hinted, "an army in a city can never be a conquering army."
The full amount of your losses, since the beginning of the war, exceeds
twenty thousand men, besides millions of treasure, for which you have
nothing in exchange. Our expenses, though great, are circulated within
ourselves. Yours is a direct sinking of money, and that from both ends
at once; first, in hiring troops out of the nation, and in paying them
afterwards, because the money in neither case can return to Britain. We
are already in possession of the prize, you only in pursuit of it. To
us it is a real treasure, to you it would be only an empty triumph. Our
expenses will repay themselves with tenfold interest, while yours entail
upon you everlasting poverty.

Take a review, sir, of the ground which you have gone over, and let
it teach you policy, if it cannot honesty. You stand but on a very
tottering foundation. A change of the ministry in England may probably
bring your measures into question, and your head to the block. Clive,
with all his successes, had some difficulty in escaping, and yours being
all a war of losses, will afford you less pretensions, and your enemies
more grounds for impeachment.

Go home, sir, and endeavor to save the remains of your ruined country,
by a just representation of the madness of her measures. A few moments,
well applied, may yet preserve her from political destruction. I am not
one of those who wish to see Europe in a flame, because I am persuaded
that such an event will not shorten the war. The rupture, at present,
is confined between the two powers of America and England. England finds
that she cannot conquer America, and America has no wish to conquer
England. You are fighting for what you can never obtain, and we
defending what we never mean to part with. A few words, therefore,
settle the bargain. Let England mind her own business and we will mind
ours. Govern yourselves, and we will govern ourselves. You may then
trade where you please unmolested by us, and we will trade where we
please unmolested by you; and such articles as we can purchase of each
other better than elsewhere may be mutually done. If it were possible
that you could carry on the war for twenty years you must still come to
this point at last, or worse, and the sooner you think of it the better
it will be for you.

My official situation enables me to know the repeated insults which
Britain is obliged to put up with from foreign powers, and the wretched
shifts that she is driven to, to gloss them over. Her reduced strength
and exhausted coffers in a three years' war with America, has given a
powerful superiority to France and Spain. She is not now a match
for them. But if neither councils can prevail on her to think, nor
sufferings awaken her to reason, she must e'en go on, till the honor of
England becomes a proverb of contempt, and Europe dub her the Land of
Fools.

I am, Sir, with every wish for an honorable peace,

            Your friend, enemy, and countryman,

                                       COMMON SENSE.



                    TO THE INHABITANTS OF AMERICA.

WITH all the pleasure with which a man exchanges bad company for good,
I take my leave of Sir William and return to you. It is now nearly three
years since the tyranny of Britain received its first repulse by the
arms of America. A period which has given birth to a new world, and
erected a monument to the folly of the old.

I cannot help being sometimes surprised at the complimentary references
which I have seen and heard made to ancient histories and transactions.
The wisdom, civil governments, and sense of honor of the states of
Greece and Rome, are frequently held up as objects of excellence and
imitation. Mankind have lived to very little purpose, if, at this period
of the world, they must go two or three thousand years back for lessons
and examples. We do great injustice to ourselves by placing them in such
a superior line. We have no just authority for it, neither can we tell
why it is that we should suppose ourselves inferior.

Could the mist of antiquity be cleared away, and men and things be
viewed as they really were, it is more than probable that they would
admire us, rather than we them. America has surmounted a greater variety
and combination of difficulties, than, I believe, ever fell to the share
of any one people, in the same space of time, and has replenished the
world with more useful knowledge and sounder maxims of civil government
than were ever produced in any age before. Had it not been for America,
there had been no such thing as freedom left throughout the whole
universe. England has lost hers in a long chain of right reasoning from
wrong principles, and it is from this country, now, that she must learn
the resolution to redress herself, and the wisdom how to accomplish it.

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty
but not the principle, for at the time that they were determined not to
be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of
mankind. But this distinguished era is blotted by no one misanthropical
vice. In short, if the principle on which the cause is founded, the
universal blessings that are to arise from it, the difficulties that
accompanied it, the wisdom with which it has been debated, the fortitude
by which it has been supported, the strength of the power which we had
to oppose, and the condition in which we undertook it, be all taken
in one view, we may justly style it the most virtuous and illustrious
revolution that ever graced the history of mankind.

A good opinion of ourselves is exceedingly necessary in private life,
but absolutely necessary in public life, and of the utmost importance in
supporting national character. I have no notion of yielding the palm of
the United States to any Grecians or Romans that were ever born. We
have equalled the bravest in times of danger, and excelled the wisest in
construction of civil governments.

From this agreeable eminence let us take a review of present affairs.
The spirit of corruption is so inseparably interwoven with British
politics, that their ministry suppose all mankind are governed by the
same motives. They have no idea of a people submitting even to temporary
inconvenience from an attachment to rights and privileges. Their plans
of business are calculated by the hour and for the hour, and are uniform
in nothing but the corruption which gives them birth. They never had,
neither have they at this time, any regular plan for the conquest of
America by arms. They know not how to go about it, neither have they
power to effect it if they did know. The thing is not within the compass
of human practicability, for America is too extensive either to be fully
conquered or passively defended. But she may be actively defended by
defeating or making prisoners of the army that invades her. And this is
the only system of defence that can be effectual in a large country.

There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it differ
in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who conducts it
cannot tell whether the ground he gains be for him, or against him, when
he first obtains it. In the winter of 1776, General Howe marched with
an air of victory through the Jerseys, the consequence of which was his
defeat; and General Burgoyne at Saratoga experienced the same fate from
the same cause. The Spaniards, about two years ago, were defeated by
the Algerines in the same manner, that is, their first triumphs became
a trap in which they were totally routed. And whoever will attend to
the circumstances and events of a war carried on by invasion, will find,
that any invader, in order to be finally conquered must first begin to
conquer.

I confess myself one of those who believe the loss of Philadelphia to
be attended with more advantages than injuries. The case stood thus:
The enemy imagined Philadelphia to be of more importance to us than it
really was; for we all know that it had long ceased to be a port: not a
cargo of goods had been brought into it for near a twelvemonth, nor any
fixed manufactories, nor even ship-building, carried on in it; yet as
the enemy believed the conquest of it to be practicable, and to that
belief added the absurd idea that the soul of all America was centred
there, and would be conquered there, it naturally follows that their
possession of it, by not answering the end proposed, must break up the
plans they had so foolishly gone upon, and either oblige them to form a
new one, for which their present strength is not sufficient, or to give
over the attempt.

We never had so small an army to fight against, nor so fair an
opportunity of final success as now. The death wound is already given.
The day is ours if we follow it up. The enemy, by his situation, is
within our reach, and by his reduced strength is within our power. The
ministers of Britain may rage as they please, but our part is to conquer
their armies. Let them wrangle and welcome, but let, it not draw our
attention from the one thing needful. Here, in this spot is our own
business to be accomplished, our felicity secured. What we have now to
do is as clear as light, and the way to do it is as straight as a
line. It needs not to be commented upon, yet, in order to be perfectly
understood I will put a case that cannot admit of a mistake.

Had the armies under Generals Howe and Burgoyne been united, and taken
post at Germantown, and had the northern army under General Gates been
joined to that under General Washington, at Whitemarsh, the consequence
would have been a general action; and if in that action we had killed
and taken the same number of officers and men, that is, between nine and
ten thousand, with the same quantity of artillery, arms, stores, etc.,
as have been taken at the northward, and obliged General Howe with the
remains of his army, that is, with the same number he now commands, to
take shelter in Philadelphia, we should certainly have thought ourselves
the greatest heroes in the world; and should, as soon as the season
permitted, have collected together all the force of the continent and
laid siege to the city, for it requires a much greater force to besiege
an enemy in a town than to defeat him in the field. The case now is just
the same as if it had been produced by the means I have here supposed.
Between nine and ten thousand have been killed and taken, all their
stores are in our possession, and General Howe, in consequence of that
victory, has thrown himself for shelter into Philadelphia. He, or his
trifling friend Galloway, may form what pretences they please, yet no
just reason can be given for their going into winter quarters so early
as the 19th of October, but their apprehensions of a defeat if they
continued out, or their conscious inability of keeping the field with
safety. I see no advantage which can arise to America by hunting the
enemy from state to state. It is a triumph without a prize, and wholly
unworthy the attention of a people determined to conquer. Neither can
any state promise itself security while the enemy remains in a condition
to transport themselves from one part of the continent to another. Howe,
likewise, cannot conquer where we have no army to oppose, therefore any
such removals in him are mean and cowardly, and reduces Britain to a
common pilferer. If he retreats from Philadelphia, he will be despised;
if he stays, he may be shut up and starved out, and the country, if he
advances into it, may become his Saratoga. He has his choice of evils
and we of opportunities. If he moves early, it is not only a sign but a
proof that he expects no reinforcement, and his delay will prove that he
either waits for the arrival of a plan to go upon, or force to execute
it, or both; in which case our strength will increase more than his,
therefore in any case we cannot be wrong if we do but proceed.

The particular condition of Pennsylvania deserves the attention of all
the other States. Her military strength must not be estimated by
the number of inhabitants. Here are men of all nations, characters,
professions and interests. Here are the firmest Whigs, surviving,
like sparks in the ocean, unquenched and uncooled in the midst of
discouragement and disaffection. Here are men losing their all with
cheerfulness, and collecting fire and fortitude from the flames of their
own estates. Here are others skulking in secret, many making a market
of the times, and numbers who are changing to Whig or Tory with the
circumstances of every day.

It is by a mere dint of fortitude and perseverance that the Whigs of
this State have been able to maintain so good a countenance, and do even
what they have done. We want help, and the sooner it can arrive the more
effectual it will be. The invaded State, be it which it may, will always
feel an additional burden upon its back, and be hard set to support its
civil power with sufficient authority; and this difficulty will rise or
fall, in proportion as the other states throw in their assistance to the
common cause.

The enemy will most probably make many manoeuvres at the opening of this
campaign, to amuse and draw off the attention of the several States from
the one thing needful. We may expect to hear of alarms and pretended
expeditions to this place and that place, to the southward, the
eastward, and the northward, all intended to prevent our forming
into one formidable body. The less the enemy's strength is, the more
subtleties of this kind will they make use of. Their existence depends
upon it, because the force of America, when collected, is sufficient
to swallow their present army up. It is therefore our business to make
short work of it, by bending our whole attention to this one principal
point, for the instant that the main body under General Howe is
defeated, all the inferior alarms throughout the continent, like so many
shadows, will follow his downfall.

The only way to finish a war with the least possible bloodshed, or
perhaps without any, is to collect an army, against the power of which
the enemy shall have no chance. By not doing this, we prolong the war,
and double both the calamities and expenses of it. What a rich and happy
country would America be, were she, by a vigorous exertion, to reduce
Howe as she has reduced Burgoyne. Her currency would rise to millions
beyond its present value. Every man would be rich, and every man would
have it in his power to be happy. And why not do these things? What
is there to hinder? America is her own mistress and can do what she
pleases.

If we had not at this time a man in the field, we could, nevertheless,
raise an army in a few weeks sufficient to overwhelm all the force
which General Howe at present commands. Vigor and determination will do
anything and everything. We began the war with this kind of spirit, why
not end it with the same? Here, gentlemen, is the enemy. Here is the
army. The interest, the happiness of all America, is centred in this
half ruined spot. Come and help us. Here are laurels, come and share
them. Here are Tories, come and help us to expel them. Here are Whigs
that will make you welcome, and enemies that dread your coming.

The worst of all policies is that of doing things by halves. Penny-wise
and pound-foolish, has been the ruin of thousands. The present spring,
if rightly improved, will free us from our troubles, and save us
the expense of millions. We have now only one army to cope with. No
opportunity can be fairer; no prospect more promising. I shall conclude
this paper with a few outlines of a plan, either for filling up the
battalions with expedition, or for raising an additional force, for any
limited time, on any sudden emergency.

That in which every man is interested, is every man's duty to support.
And any burden which falls equally on all men, and from which every
man is to receive an equal benefit, is consistent with the most perfect
ideas of liberty. I would wish to revive something of that virtuous
ambition which first called America into the field. Then every man was
eager to do his part, and perhaps the principal reason why we have in
any degree fallen therefrom, is because we did not set a right value by
it at first, but left it to blaze out of itself, instead of regulating
and preserving it by just proportions of rest and service.

Suppose any State whose number of effective inhabitants was 80,000,
should be required to furnish 3,200 men towards the defence of the
continent on any sudden emergency.

1st, Let the whole number of effective inhabitants be divided into
hundreds; then if each of those hundreds turn out four men, the whole
number of 3,200 will be had.

2d, Let the name of each hundred men be entered in a book, and let four
dollars be collected from each man, with as much more as any of the
gentlemen, whose abilities can afford it, shall please to throw in,
which gifts likewise shall be entered against the names of the donors.

3d, Let the sums so collected be offered as a present, over and above
the bounty of twenty dollars, to any four who may be inclined to propose
themselves as volunteers: if more than four offer, the majority of the
subscribers present shall determine which; if none offer, then four out
of the hundred shall be taken by lot, who shall be entitled to the said
sums, and shall either go, or provide others that will, in the space of
six days.

4th, As it will always happen that in the space of ground on which a
hundred men shall live, there will be always a number of persons who, by
age and infirmity, are incapable of doing personal service, and as such
persons are generally possessed of the greatest part of property in any
country, their portion of service, therefore, will be to furnish each
man with a blanket, which will make a regimental coat, jacket, and
breeches, or clothes in lieu thereof, and another for a watch cloak,
and two pair of shoes; for however choice people may be of these things
matters not in cases of this kind; those who live always in houses can
find many ways to keep themselves warm, but it is a shame and a sin to
suffer a soldier in the field to want a blanket while there is one in
the country.

Should the clothing not be wanted, the superannuated or infirm persons
possessing property, may, in lieu thereof, throw in their money
subscriptions towards increasing the bounty; for though age will
naturally exempt a person from personal service, it cannot exempt him
from his share of the charge, because the men are raised for the defence
of property and liberty jointly.

There never was a scheme against which objections might not be raised.
But this alone is not a sufficient reason for rejection. The only line
to judge truly upon is to draw out and admit all the objections which
can fairly be made, and place against them all the contrary qualities,
conveniences and advantages, then by striking a balance you come at the
true character of any scheme, principle or position.

The most material advantages of the plan here proposed are, ease,
expedition, and cheapness; yet the men so raised get a much larger
bounty than is any where at present given; because all the expenses,
extravagance, and consequent idleness of recruiting are saved or
prevented. The country incurs no new debt nor interest thereon; the
whole matter being all settled at once and entirely done with. It is
a subscription answering all the purposes of a tax, without either the
charge or trouble of collecting. The men are ready for the field with
the greatest possible expedition, because it becomes the duty of the
inhabitants themselves, in every part of the country, to find their
proportion of men instead of leaving it to a recruiting sergeant, who,
be he ever so industrious, cannot know always where to apply.

I do not propose this as a regular digested plan, neither will the
limits of this paper admit of any further remarks upon it. I believe it
to be a hint capable of much improvement, and as such submit it to the
public.

                                       COMMON SENSE.

LANCASTER, March 21, 1778.




THE CRISIS VI. (TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE AND GENERAL CLINTON)


            TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE, GENERAL CLINTON, AND
              WILLIAM EDEN, ESQ., BRITISH COMMISSIONERS
                             AT NEW YORK.


THERE is a dignity in the warm passions of a Whig, which is never to be
found in the cold malice of a Tory. In the one nature is only heated--in
the other she is poisoned. The instant the former has it in his power to
punish, he feels a disposition to forgive; but the canine venom of the
latter knows no relief but revenge. This general distinction will, I
believe, apply in all cases, and suits as well the meridian of England
as America.

As I presume your last proclamation will undergo the strictures of other
pens, I shall confine my remarks to only a few parts thereof. All that
you have said might have been comprised in half the compass. It is
tedious and unmeaning, and only a repetition of your former follies,
with here and there an offensive aggravation. Your cargo of pardons will
have no market. It is unfashionable to look at them--even speculation
is at an end. They have become a perfect drug, and no way calculated for
the climate.

In the course of your proclamation you say, "The policy as well as the
benevolence of Great Britain have thus far checked the extremes of war,
when they tended to distress a people still considered as their fellow
subjects, and to desolate a country shortly to become again a source of
mutual advantage." What you mean by "the benevolence of Great Britain"
is to me inconceivable. To put a plain question; do you consider
yourselves men or devils? For until this point is settled, no
determinate sense can be put upon the expression. You have already
equalled and in many cases excelled, the savages of either Indies; and
if you have yet a cruelty in store you must have imported it, unmixed
with every human material, from the original warehouse of hell.

To the interposition of Providence, and her blessings on our endeavors,
and not to British benevolence are we indebted for the short chain that
limits your ravages. Remember you do not, at this time, command a foot
of land on the continent of America. Staten Island, York Island, a small
part of Long Island, and Rhode Island, circumscribe your power; and even
those you hold at the expense of the West Indies. To avoid a defeat, or
prevent a desertion of your troops, you have taken up your quarters in
holes and corners of inaccessible security; and in order to conceal what
every one can perceive, you now endeavor to impose your weakness upon
us for an act of mercy. If you think to succeed by such shadowy devices,
you are but infants in the political world; you have the A, B, C, of
stratagem yet to learn, and are wholly ignorant of the people you have
to contend with. Like men in a state of intoxication, you forget that
the rest of the world have eyes, and that the same stupidity which
conceals you from yourselves exposes you to their satire and contempt.

The paragraph which I have quoted, stands as an introduction to the
following: "But when that country [America] professes the unnatural
design, not only of estranging herself from us, but of mortgaging
herself and her resources to our enemies, the whole contest is changed:
and the question is how far Great Britain may, by every means in her
power, destroy or render useless, a connection contrived for her ruin,
and the aggrandizement of France. Under such circumstances, the laws
of self-preservation must direct the conduct of Britain, and, if the
British colonies are to become an accession to France, will direct her
to render that accession of as little avail as possible to her enemy."

I consider you in this declaration, like madmen biting in the hour of
death. It contains likewise a fraudulent meanness; for, in order to
justify a barbarous conclusion, you have advanced a false position. The
treaty we have formed with France is open, noble, and generous. It is
true policy, founded on sound philosophy, and neither a surrender
or mortgage, as you would scandalously insinuate. I have seen every
article, and speak from positive knowledge. In France, we have found an
affectionate friend and faithful ally; in Britain, we have found nothing
but tyranny, cruelty, and infidelity.

But the happiness is, that the mischief you threaten, is not in your
power to execute; and if it were, the punishment would return upon you
in a ten-fold degree. The humanity of America has hitherto restrained
her from acts of retaliation, and the affection she retains for
many individuals in England, who have fed, clothed and comforted her
prisoners, has, to the present day, warded off her resentment, and
operated as a screen to the whole. But even these considerations
must cease, when national objects interfere and oppose them. Repeated
aggravations will provoke a retort, and policy justify the measure. We
mean now to take you seriously up upon your own ground and principle,
and as you do, so shall you be done by.

You ought to know, gentlemen, that England and Scotland, are far more
exposed to incendiary desolation than America, in her present state, can
possibly be. We occupy a country, with but few towns, and whose riches
consist in land and annual produce. The two last can suffer but little,
and that only within a very limited compass. In Britain it is otherwise.
Her wealth lies chiefly in cities and large towns, the depositories
of manufactures and fleets of merchantmen. There is not a nobleman's
country seat but may be laid in ashes by a single person. Your own
may probably contribute to the proof: in short, there is no evil which
cannot be returned when you come to incendiary mischief. The ships in
the Thames, may certainly be as easily set on fire, as the temporary
bridge was a few years ago; yet of that affair no discovery was ever
made; and the loss you would sustain by such an event, executed at a
proper season, is infinitely greater than any you can inflict. The East
India House and the Bank, neither are nor can be secure from this sort
of destruction, and, as Dr. Price justly observes, a fire at the latter
would bankrupt the nation. It has never been the custom of France and
England when at war, to make those havocs on each other, because the
ease with which they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each
had destroyed his own.

But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our
invention fails us. We can much easier accomplish such a point than any
nation in Europe. We talk the same language, dress in the same habit,
and appear with the same manners as yourselves. We can pass from
one part of England to another unsuspected; many of us are as well
acquainted with the country as you are, and should you impolitically
provoke us, you will most assuredly lament the effects of it. Mischiefs
of this kind require no army to execute them. The means are obvious, and
the opportunities unguardable. I hold up a warning to our senses, if you
have any left, and "to the unhappy people likewise, whose affairs are
committed to you."* I call not with the rancor of an enemy, but the
earnestness of a friend, on the deluded people of England, lest, between
your blunders and theirs, they sink beneath the evils contrived for us.


     * General [Sir H.] Clinton's letter to Congress.

"He who lives in a glass house," says a Spanish proverb, "should never
begin throwing stones." This, gentlemen, is exactly your case, and you
must be the most ignorant of mankind, or suppose us so, not to see on
which side the balance of accounts will fall. There are many other modes
of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not to mention. But
be assured of this, that the instant you put your threat into execution,
a counter-blow will follow it. If you openly profess yourselves savages,
it is high time we should treat you as such, and if nothing but distress
can recover you to reason, to punish will become an office of charity.

While your fleet lay last winter in the Delaware, I offered my service
to the Pennsylvania Navy Board then at Trenton, as one who would make
a party with them, or any four or five gentlemen, on an expedition down
the river to set fire to it, and though it was not then accepted, nor
the thing personally attempted, it is more than probable that your own
folly will provoke a much more ruinous act. Say not when mischief is
done, that you had not warning, and remember that we do not begin it,
but mean to repay it. Thus much for your savage and impolitic threat.

In another part of your proclamation you say, "But if the honors of
a military life are become the object of the Americans, let them seek
those honors under the banners of their rightful sovereign, and in
fighting the battles of the united British Empire, against our late
mutual and natural enemies." Surely! the union of absurdity with madness
was never marked in more distinguishable lines than these. Your rightful
sovereign, as you call him, may do well enough for you, who dare not
inquire into the humble capacities of the man; but we, who estimate
persons and things by their real worth, cannot suffer our judgments to
be so imposed upon; and unless it is your wish to see him exposed, it
ought to be your endeavor to keep him out of sight. The less you have
to say about him the better. We have done with him, and that ought to
be answer enough. You have been often told so. Strange! that the answer
must be so often repeated. You go a-begging with your king as with a
brat, or with some unsaleable commodity you were tired of; and though
every body tells you no, no, still you keep hawking him about. But
there is one that will have him in a little time, and as we have no
inclination to disappoint you of a customer, we bid nothing for him.

The impertinent folly of the paragraph that I have just quoted, deserves
no other notice than to be laughed at and thrown by, but the principle
on which it is founded is detestable. We are invited to submit to a man
who has attempted by every cruelty to destroy us, and to join him in
making war against France, who is already at war against him for our
support.

Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish
request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they
would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom
and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal affront to the rank which
man holds in the creation, and an indignity to him who placed him
there. It supposes him made up without a spark of honor, and under no
obligation to God or man.

What sort of men or Christians must you suppose the Americans to be,
who, after seeing their most humble petitions insultingly rejected;
the most grievous laws passed to distress them in every quarter; an
undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and negroes invited to
the slaughter; who, after seeing their kinsmen murdered, their fellow
citizens starved to death in prisons, and their houses and property
destroyed and burned; who, after the most serious appeals to heaven, the
most solemn abjuration by oath of all government connected with you, and
the most heart-felt pledges and protestations of faith to each other;
and who, after soliciting the friendship, and entering into alliances
with other nations, should at last break through all these obligations,
civil and divine, by complying with your horrid and infernal proposal.
Ought we ever after to be considered as a part of the human race? Or
ought we not rather to be blotted from the society of mankind, and
become a spectacle of misery to the world? But there is something in
corruption, which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself
to the object it looks upon, and sees every thing stained and impure;
for unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never
have supposed such a character in us. The offer fixes your infamy. It
exhibits you as a nation without faith; with whom oaths and treaties
are considered as trifles, and the breaking them as the breaking of a
bubble. Regard to decency, or to rank, might have taught you better; or
pride inspired you, though virtue could not. There is not left a step in
the degradation of character to which you can now descend; you have put
your foot on the ground floor, and the key of the dungeon is turned upon
you.

That the invitation may want nothing of being a complete monster,
you have thought proper to finish it with an assertion which has no
foundation, either in fact or philosophy; and as Mr. Ferguson, your
secretary, is a man of letters, and has made civil society his study,
and published a treatise on that subject, I address this part to him.

In the close of the paragraph which I last quoted, France is styled the
"natural enemy" of England, and by way of lugging us into some strange
idea, she is styled "the late mutual and natural enemy" of both
countries. I deny that she ever was the natural enemy of either; and
that there does not exist in nature such a principle. The expression
is an unmeaning barbarism, and wholly unphilosophical, when applied to
beings of the same species, let their station in the creation be what
it may. We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the
devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It
admits, neither of peace, truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare is
eternal, and therefore it is natural. But man with man cannot arrange
in the same opposition. Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally
created. They become friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the
cast of interest inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute
them the natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of
beings so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two
nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature
but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser.
England is as truly the natural enemy of France, as France is of
England, and perhaps more so. Separated from the rest of Europe, she
has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in others the
jealousy she creates in herself. Never long satisfied with peace,
she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up with her own
importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at. The expression
has been often used, and always with a fraudulent design; for when the
idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents all other inquiries,
and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in the universality of the
conceit. Men start at the notion of a natural enemy, and ask no other
question. The cry obtains credit like the alarm of a mad dog, and is
one of those kind of tricks, which, by operating on the common passions,
secures their interest through their folly.

But we, sir, are not to be thus imposed upon. We live in a large world,
and have extended our ideas beyond the limits and prejudices of an
island. We hold out the right hand of friendship to all the universe,
and we conceive that there is a sociality in the manners of France,
which is much better disposed to peace and negotiation than that of
England, and until the latter becomes more civilized, she cannot expect
to live long at peace with any power. Her common language is vulgar
and offensive, and children suck in with their milk the rudiments of
insult--"The arm of Britain! The mighty arm of Britain! Britain that
shakes the earth to its center and its poles! The scourge of France! The
terror of the world! That governs with a nod, and pours down vengeance
like a God." This language neither makes a nation great or little; but
it shows a savageness of manners, and has a tendency to keep national
animosity alive. The entertainments of the stage are calculated to the
same end, and almost every public exhibition is tinctured with insult.
Yet England is always in dread of France,--terrified at the apprehension
of an invasion, suspicious of being outwitted in a treaty, and privately
cringing though she is publicly offending. Let her, therefore, reform
her manners and do justice, and she will find the idea of a natural
enemy to be only a phantom of her own imagination.

Little did I think, at this period of the war, to see a proclamation
which could promise you no one useful purpose whatever, and tend only
to expose you. One would think that you were just awakened from a four
years' dream, and knew nothing of what had passed in the interval.
Is this a time to be offering pardons, or renewing the long forgotten
subjects of charters and taxation? Is it worth your while, after every
force has failed you, to retreat under the shelter of argument and
persuasion? Or can you think that we, with nearly half your army
prisoners, and in alliance with France, are to be begged or threatened
into submission by a piece of paper? But as commissioners at a hundred
pounds sterling a week each, you conceive yourselves bound to do
something, and the genius of ill-fortune told you, that you must write.

For my own part, I have not put pen to paper these several months.
Convinced of our superiority by the issue of every campaign, I was
inclined to hope, that that which all the rest of the world now see,
would become visible to you, and therefore felt unwilling to ruffle your
temper by fretting you with repetitions and discoveries. There have been
intervals of hesitation in your conduct, from which it seemed a pity to
disturb you, and a charity to leave you to yourselves. You have often
stopped, as if you intended to think, but your thoughts have ever been
too early or too late.

There was a time when Britain disdained to answer, or even hear
a petition from America. That time is past and she in her turn is
petitioning our acceptance. We now stand on higher ground, and offer
her peace; and the time will come when she, perhaps in vain, will ask
it from us. The latter case is as probable as the former ever was. She
cannot refuse to acknowledge our independence with greater obstinacy
than she before refused to repeal her laws; and if America alone could
bring her to the one, united with France she will reduce her to the
other. There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other
passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either breaks like
iron, or crumbles sulkily away like a fractured arch. Most other
passions have their periods of fatigue and rest; their suffering and
their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is
mortal. You have already begun to give it up, and you will, from the
natural construction of the vice, find yourselves both obliged and
inclined to do so.

If you look back you see nothing but loss and disgrace. If you look
forward the same scene continues, and the close is an impenetrable
gloom. You may plan and execute little mischiefs, but are they worth the
expense they cost you, or will such partial evils have any effect on the
general cause? Your expedition to Egg Harbor, will be felt at a distance
like an attack upon a hen-roost, and expose you in Europe, with a sort
of childish frenzy. Is it worth while to keep an army to protect you
in writing proclamations, or to get once a year into winter quarters?
Possessing yourselves of towns is not conquest, but convenience, and
in which you will one day or other be trepanned. Your retreat from
Philadelphia, was only a timely escape, and your next expedition may be
less fortunate.

It would puzzle all the politicians in the universe to conceive what you
stay for, or why you should have stayed so long. You are prosecuting
a war in which you confess you have neither object nor hope, and that
conquest, could it be effected, would not repay the charges: in the mean
while the rest of your affairs are running to ruin, and a European war
kindling against you. In such a situation, there is neither doubt nor
difficulty; the first rudiments of reason will determine the choice, for
if peace can be procured with more advantages than even a conquest can
be obtained, he must be an idiot indeed that hesitates.

But you are probably buoyed up by a set of wretched mortals, who, having
deceived themselves, are cringing, with the duplicity of a spaniel, for
a little temporary bread. Those men will tell you just what you
please. It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen out their
protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that very purpose;
and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and grow callous to
their complaints, they will stretch into improbability, and season their
flattery the higher. Characters like these are to be found in every
country, and every country will despise them.

                                            COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 20, 1778.




THE CRISIS VII. TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.


THERE are stages in the business of serious life in which to amuse is
cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in
the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of
mutual consent, to the impositions of each other. That England has long
been under the influence of delusion or mistake, needs no other proof
than the unexpected and wretched situation that she is now involved in:
and so powerful has been the influence, that no provision was ever made
or thought of against the misfortune, because the possibility of its
happening was never conceived.

The general and successful resistance of America, the conquest of
Burgoyne, and a war in France, were treated in parliament as the dreams
of a discontented opposition, or a distempered imagination. They were
beheld as objects unworthy of a serious thought, and the bare intimation
of them afforded the ministry a triumph of laughter. Short triumph
indeed! For everything which has been predicted has happened, and all
that was promised has failed. A long series of politics so remarkably
distinguished by a succession of misfortunes, without one alleviating
turn, must certainly have something in it systematically wrong. It is
sufficient to awaken the most credulous into suspicion, and the most
obstinate into thought. Either the means in your power are insufficient,
or the measures ill planned; either the execution has been bad, or the
thing attempted impracticable; or, to speak more emphatically, either
you are not able or heaven is not willing. For, why is it that you have
not conquered us? Who, or what has prevented you? You have had every
opportunity that you could desire, and succeeded to your utmost wish in
every preparatory means. Your fleets and armies have arrived in America
without an accident. No uncommon fortune has intervened. No foreign
nation has interfered until the time which you had allotted for victory
was passed. The opposition, either in or out of parliament, neither
disconcerted your measures, retarded or diminished your force. They only
foretold your fate. Every ministerial scheme was carried with as high a
hand as if the whole nation had been unanimous. Every thing wanted was
asked for, and every thing asked for was granted.

A greater force was not within the compass of your abilities to send,
and the time you sent it was of all others the most favorable. You were
then at rest with the whole world beside. You had the range of every
court in Europe uncontradicted by us. You amused us with a tale of
commissioners of peace, and under that disguise collected a numerous
army and came almost unexpectedly upon us. The force was much greater
than we looked for; and that which we had to oppose it with, was unequal
in numbers, badly armed, and poorly disciplined; beside which, it was
embodied only for a short time, and expired within a few months after
your arrival. We had governments to form; measures to concert; an
army to train, and every necessary article to import or to create. Our
non-importation scheme had exhausted our stores, and your command by sea
intercepted our supplies. We were a people unknown, and unconnected with
the political world, and strangers to the disposition of foreign
powers. Could you possibly wish for a more favorable conjunction of
circumstances? Yet all these have happened and passed away, and, as
it were, left you with a laugh. There are likewise, events of such an
original nativity as can never happen again, unless a new world should
arise from the ocean.

If any thing can be a lesson to presumption, surely the circumstances
of this war will have their effect. Had Britain been defeated by
any European power, her pride would have drawn consolation from the
importance of her conquerors; but in the present case, she is excelled
by those that she affected to despise, and her own opinions retorting
upon herself, become an aggravation of her disgrace. Misfortune and
experience are lost upon mankind, when they produce neither reflection
nor reformation. Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are
diseases which no other remedy can reach. It has been the crime and
folly of England to suppose herself invincible, and that, without
acknowledging or perceiving that a full third of her strength was drawn
from the country she is now at war with. The arm of Britain has been
spoken of as the arm of the Almighty, and she has lived of late as if
she thought the whole world created for her diversion. Her politics,
instead of civilizing, has tended to brutalize mankind, and under the
vain, unmeaning title of "Defender of the Faith," she has made war like
an Indian against the religion of humanity. Her cruelties in the East
Indies will never be forgotten, and it is somewhat remarkable that the
produce of that ruined country, transported to America, should there
kindle up a war to punish the destroyer. The chain is continued,
though with a mysterious kind of uniformity both in the crime and the
punishment. The latter runs parallel with the former, and time and fate
will give it a perfect illustration.

When information is withheld, ignorance becomes a reasonable excuse; and
one would charitably hope that the people of England do not encourage
cruelty from choice but from mistake. Their recluse situation,
surrounded by the sea, preserves them from the calamities of war, and
keeps them in the dark as to the conduct of their own armies. They see
not, therefore they feel not. They tell the tale that is told them and
believe it, and accustomed to no other news than their own, they receive
it, stripped of its horrors and prepared for the palate of the nation,
through the channel of the London Gazette. They are made to believe that
their generals and armies differ from those of other nations, and have
nothing of rudeness or barbarity in them. They suppose them what
they wish them to be. They feel a disgrace in thinking otherwise, and
naturally encourage the belief from a partiality to themselves. There
was a time when I felt the same prejudices, and reasoned from the
same errors; but experience, sad and painful experience, has taught me
better. What the conduct of former armies was, I know not, but what the
conduct of the present is, I well know. It is low, cruel, indolent and
profligate; and had the people of America no other cause for separation
than what the army has occasioned, that alone is cause sufficient.

The field of politics in England is far more extensive than that of
news. Men have a right to reason for themselves, and though they cannot
contradict the intelligence in the London Gazette, they may frame upon
it what sentiments they please. But the misfortune is, that a general
ignorance has prevailed over the whole nation respecting America. The
ministry and the minority have both been wrong. The former was always
so, the latter only lately so. Politics, to be executively right, must
have a unity of means and time, and a defect in either overthrows the
whole. The ministry rejected the plans of the minority while they were
practicable, and joined in them when they became impracticable. From
wrong measures they got into wrong time, and have now completed the
circle of absurdity by closing it upon themselves.

I happened to come to America a few months before the breaking out of
hostilities. I found the disposition of the people such, that they might
have been led by a thread and governed by a reed. Their suspicion was
quick and penetrating, but their attachment to Britain was obstinate,
and it was at that time a kind of treason to speak against it. They
disliked the ministry, but they esteemed the nation. Their idea of
grievance operated without resentment, and their single object was
reconciliation. Bad as I believed the ministry to be, I never conceived
them capable of a measure so rash and wicked as the commencing of
hostilities; much less did I imagine the nation would encourage it.
I viewed the dispute as a kind of law-suit, in which I supposed the
parties would find a way either to decide or settle it. I had no
thoughts of independence or of arms. The world could not then have
persuaded me that I should be either a soldier or an author. If I had
any talents for either, they were buried in me, and might ever have
continued so, had not the necessity of the times dragged and driven them
into action. I had formed my plan of life, and conceiving myself happy,
wished every body else so. But when the country, into which I had just
set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It
was time for every man to stir. Those who had been long settled had
something to defend; those who had just come had something to pursue;
and the call and the concern was equal and universal. For in a country
where all men were once adventurers, the difference of a few years in
their arrival could make none in their right.

The breaking out of hostilities opened a new suspicion in the politics
of America, which, though at that time very rare, has since been proved
to be very right. What I allude to is, "a secret and fixed determination
in the British Cabinet to annex America to the crown of England as a
conquered country." If this be taken as the object, then the whole
line of conduct pursued by the ministry, though rash in its origin and
ruinous in its consequences, is nevertheless uniform and consistent in
its parts. It applies to every case and resolves every difficulty.
But if taxation, or any thing else, be taken in its room, there is no
proportion between the object and the charge. Nothing but the whole
soil and property of the country can be placed as a possible equivalent
against the millions which the ministry expended. No taxes raised in
America could possibly repay it. A revenue of two millions sterling a
year would not discharge the sum and interest accumulated thereon, in
twenty years.

Reconciliation never appears to have been the wish or the object of the
administration; they looked on conquest as certain and infallible, and,
under that persuasion, sought to drive the Americans into what they
might style a general rebellion, and then, crushing them with arms
in their hands, reap the rich harvest of a general confiscation, and
silence them for ever. The dependents at court were too numerous to be
provided for in England. The market for plunder in the East Indies was
over; and the profligacy of government required that a new mine should
be opened, and that mine could be no other than America, conquered
and forfeited. They had no where else to go. Every other channel was
drained; and extravagance, with the thirst of a drunkard, was gaping for
supplies.

If the ministry deny this to have been their plan, it becomes them to
explain what was their plan. For either they have abused us in coveting
property they never labored for, or they have abused you in expending an
amazing sum upon an incompetent object. Taxation, as I mentioned before,
could never be worth the charge of obtaining it by arms; and any kind of
formal obedience which America could have made, would have weighed with
the lightness of a laugh against such a load of expense. It is therefore
most probable that the ministry will at last justify their policy by
their dishonesty, and openly declare, that their original design was
conquest: and, in this case, it well becomes the people of England to
consider how far the nation would have been benefited by the success.

In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of
making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be
worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war
upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their
duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and
from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable. But to return
to the case in question--

When conquests are made of foreign countries, it is supposed that the
commerce and dominion of the country which made them are extended. But
this could neither be the object nor the consequence of the present
war. You enjoyed the whole commerce before. It could receive no possible
addition by a conquest, but on the contrary, must diminish as the
inhabitants were reduced in numbers and wealth. You had the same
dominion over the country which you used to have, and had no complaint
to make against her for breach of any part of the contract between
you or her, or contending against any established custom, commercial,
political or territorial. The country and commerce were both your own
when you began to conquer, in the same manner and form as they had been
your own a hundred years before. Nations have sometimes been induced to
make conquests for the sake of reducing the power of their enemies, or
bringing it to a balance with their own. But this could be no part of
your plan. No foreign authority was claimed here, neither was any such
authority suspected by you, or acknowledged or imagined by us. What
then, in the name of heaven, could you go to war for? Or what chance
could you possibly have in the event, but either to hold the same
country which you held before, and that in a much worse condition, or
to lose, with an amazing expense, what you might have retained without a
farthing of charges?

War never can be the interest of a trading nation, any more than
quarrelling can be profitable to a man in business. But to make war with
those who trade with us, is like setting a bull-dog upon a customer at
the shop-door. The least degree of common sense shows the madness of
the latter, and it will apply with the same force of conviction to the
former. Piratical nations, having neither commerce or commodities of
their own to lose, may make war upon all the world, and lucratively
find their account in it; but it is quite otherwise with Britain: for,
besides the stoppage of trade in time of war, she exposes more of her
own property to be lost, than she has the chance of taking from others.
Some ministerial gentlemen in parliament have mentioned the greatness of
her trade as an apology for the greatness of her loss. This is miserable
politics indeed! Because it ought to have been given as a reason for her
not engaging in a war at first. The coast of America commands the West
India trade almost as effectually as the coast of Africa does that of
the Straits; and England can no more carry on the former without the
consent of America, than she can the latter without a Mediterranean
pass.

In whatever light the war with America is considered upon commercial
principles, it is evidently the interest of the people of England not to
support it; and why it has been supported so long, against the clearest
demonstrations of truth and national advantage, is, to me, and must be
to all the reasonable world, a matter of astonishment. Perhaps it may
be said that I live in America, and write this from interest. To this
I reply, that my principle is universal. My attachment is to all the
world, and not to any particular part, and if what I advance is right,
no matter where or who it comes from. We have given the proclamation of
your commissioners a currency in our newspapers, and I have no doubt you
will give this a place in yours. To oblige and be obliged is fair.

Before I dismiss this part of my address, I shall mention one more
circumstance in which I think the people of England have been equally
mistaken: and then proceed to other matters.

There is such an idea existing in the world, as that of national honor,
and this, falsely understood, is oftentimes the cause of war. In a
Christian and philosophical sense, mankind seem to have stood still
at individual civilization, and to retain as nations all the original
rudeness of nature. Peace by treaty is only a cessation of violence for
a reformation of sentiment. It is a substitute for a principle that
is wanting and ever will be wanting till the idea of national honor be
rightly understood. As individuals we profess ourselves Christians, but
as nations we are heathens, Romans, and what not. I remember the late
Admiral Saunders declaring in the House of Commons, and that in the time
of peace, "That the city of Madrid laid in ashes was not a sufficient
atonement for the Spaniards taking off the rudder of an English sloop
of war." I do not ask whether this is Christianity or morality, I ask
whether it is decency? whether it is proper language for a nation to
use? In private life we call it by the plain name of bullying, and
the elevation of rank cannot alter its character. It is, I think,
exceedingly easy to define what ought to be understood by national
honor; for that which is the best character for an individual is the
best character for a nation; and wherever the latter exceeds or
falls beneath the former, there is a departure from the line of true
greatness.

I have thrown out this observation with a design of applying it to Great
Britain. Her ideas of national honor seem devoid of that benevolence of
heart, that universal expansion of philanthropy, and that triumph over
the rage of vulgar prejudice, without which man is inferior to himself,
and a companion of common animals. To know who she shall regard or
dislike, she asks what country they are of, what religion they profess,
and what property they enjoy. Her idea of national honor seems to
consist in national insult, and that to be a great people, is to be
neither a Christian, a philosopher, or a gentleman, but to threaten with
the rudeness of a bear, and to devour with the ferocity of a lion. This
perhaps may sound harsh and uncourtly, but it is too true, and the more
is the pity.

I mention this only as her general character. But towards America she
has observed no character at all; and destroyed by her conduct what she
assumed in her title. She set out with the title of parent, or mother
country. The association of ideas which naturally accompany this
expression, are filled with everything that is fond, tender and
forbearing. They have an energy peculiar to themselves, and, overlooking
the accidental attachment of common affections, apply with infinite
softness to the first feelings of the heart. It is a political term
which every mother can feel the force of, and every child can judge of.
It needs no painting of mine to set it off, for nature only can do it
justice.

But has any part of your conduct to America corresponded with the title
you set up? If in your general national character you are unpolished and
severe, in this you are inconsistent and unnatural, and you must have
exceeding false notions of national honor to suppose that the world can
admire a want of humanity or that national honor depends on the
violence of resentment, the inflexibility of temper, or the vengeance of
execution.

I would willingly convince you, and that with as much temper as the
times will suffer me to do, that as you opposed your own interest by
quarrelling with us, so likewise your national honor, rightly conceived
and understood, was no ways called upon to enter into a war with
America; had you studied true greatness of heart, the first and fairest
ornament of mankind, you would have acted directly contrary to all that
you have done, and the world would have ascribed it to a generous cause.
Besides which, you had (though with the assistance of this country)
secured a powerful name by the last war. You were known and dreaded
abroad; and it would have been wise in you to have suffered the world to
have slept undisturbed under that idea. It was to you a force existing
without expense. It produced to you all the advantages of real power;
and you were stronger through the universality of that charm, than any
future fleets and armies may probably make you. Your greatness was so
secured and interwoven with your silence that you ought never to have
awakened mankind, and had nothing to do but to be quiet. Had you been
true politicians you would have seen all this, and continued to draw
from the magic of a name, the force and authority of a nation.

Unwise as you were in breaking the charm, you were still more unwise
in the manner of doing it. Samson only told the secret, but you have
performed the operation; you have shaven your own head, and wantonly
thrown away the locks. America was the hair from which the charm was
drawn that infatuated the world. You ought to have quarrelled with no
power; but with her upon no account. You had nothing to fear from any
condescension you might make. You might have humored her, even if there
had been no justice in her claims, without any risk to your reputation;
for Europe, fascinated by your fame, would have ascribed it to your
benevolence, and America, intoxicated by the grant, would have slumbered
in her fetters.

But this method of studying the progress of the passions, in order to
ascertain the probable conduct of mankind, is a philosophy in politics
which those who preside at St. James's have no conception of. They know
no other influence than corruption and reckon all their probabilities
from precedent. A new case is to them a new world, and while they are
seeking for a parallel they get lost. The talents of Lord Mansfield can
be estimated at best no higher than those of a sophist. He understands
the subtleties but not the elegance of nature; and by continually
viewing mankind through the cold medium of the law, never thinks of
penetrating into the warmer region of the mind. As for Lord North, it
is his happiness to have in him more philosophy than sentiment, for he
bears flogging like a top, and sleeps the better for it. His punishment
becomes his support, for while he suffers the lash for his sins,
he keeps himself up by twirling about. In politics, he is a good
arithmetician, and in every thing else nothing at all.

There is one circumstance which comes so much within Lord North's
province as a financier, that I am surprised it should escape him,
which is, the different abilities of the two countries in supporting the
expense; for, strange as it may seem, England is not a match for America
in this particular. By a curious kind of revolution in accounts, the
people of England seem to mistake their poverty for their riches; that
is, they reckon their national debt as a part of their national wealth.
They make the same kind of error which a man would do, who after
mortgaging his estate, should add the money borrowed, to the full value
of the estate, in order to count up his worth, and in this case he would
conceive that he got rich by running into debt. Just thus it is with
England. The government owed at the beginning of this war one hundred
and thirty-five millions sterling, and though the individuals to whom it
was due had a right to reckon their shares as so much private property,
yet to the nation collectively it was so much poverty. There are as
effectual limits to public debts as to private ones, for when once the
money borrowed is so great as to require the whole yearly revenue to
discharge the interest thereon, there is an end to further borrowing;
in the same manner as when the interest of a man's debts amounts to
the yearly income of his estate, there is an end to his credit. This is
nearly the case with England, the interest of her present debt being
at least equal to one half of her yearly revenue, so that out of ten
millions annually collected by taxes, she has but five that she can call
her own.

The very reverse of this was the case with America; she began the war
without any debt upon her, and in order to carry it on, she neither
raised money by taxes, nor borrowed it upon interest, but created it;
and her situation at this time continues so much the reverse of yours
that taxing would make her rich, whereas it would make you poor. When we
shall have sunk the sum which we have created, we shall then be out of
debt, be just as rich as when we began, and all the while we are doing
it shall feel no difference, because the value will rise as the quantity
decreases.

There was not a country in the world so capable of bearing the expense
of a war as America; not only because she was not in debt when she
began, but because the country is young and capable of infinite
improvement, and has an almost boundless tract of new lands in store;
whereas England has got to her extent of age and growth, and has not
unoccupied land or property in reserve. The one is like a young heir
coming to a large improvable estate; the other like an old man whose
chances are over, and his estate mortgaged for half its worth.

In the second number of the Crisis, which I find has been republished
in England, I endeavored to set forth the impracticability of conquering
America. I stated every case, that I conceived could possibly happen,
and ventured to predict its consequences. As my conclusions were drawn
not artfully, but naturally, they have all proved to be true. I was upon
the spot; knew the politics of America, her strength and resources, and
by a train of services, the best in my power to render, was honored with
the friendship of the congress, the army and the people. I considered
the cause a just one. I know and feel it a just one, and under that
confidence never made my own profit or loss an object. My endeavor was
to have the matter well understood on both sides, and I conceived
myself tendering a general service, by setting forth to the one the
impossibility of being conquered, and to the other the impossibility
of conquering. Most of the arguments made use of by the ministry for
supporting the war, are the very arguments that ought to have been used
against supporting it; and the plans, by which they thought to conquer,
are the very plans in which they were sure to be defeated. They have
taken every thing up at the wrong end. Their ignorance is astonishing,
and were you in my situation you would see it. They may, perhaps,
have your confidence, but I am persuaded that they would make very
indifferent members of Congress. I know what England is, and what
America is, and from the compound of knowledge, am better enabled to
judge of the issue than what the king or any of his ministers can be.

In this number I have endeavored to show the ill policy and
disadvantages of the war. I believe many of my remarks are new. Those
which are not so, I have studied to improve and place in a manner that
may be clear and striking. Your failure is, I am persuaded, as certain
as fate. America is above your reach. She is at least your equal in the
world, and her independence neither rests upon your consent, nor can it
be prevented by your arms. In short, you spend your substance in vain,
and impoverish yourselves without a hope.

But suppose you had conquered America, what advantages, collectively or
individually, as merchants, manufacturers, or conquerors, could you
have looked for? This is an object you seemed never to have attended to.
Listening for the sound of victory, and led away by the frenzy of arms,
you neglected to reckon either the cost or the consequences. You must
all pay towards the expense; the poorest among you must bear his share,
and it is both your right and your duty to weigh seriously the matter.
Had America been conquered, she might have been parcelled out in grants
to the favorites at court, but no share of it would have fallen to you.
Your taxes would not have been lessened, because she would have been
in no condition to have paid any towards your relief. We are rich by
contrivance of our own, which would have ceased as soon as you became
masters. Our paper money will be of no use in England, and silver and
gold we have none. In the last war you made many conquests, but were any
of your taxes lessened thereby? On the contrary, were you not taxed to
pay for the charge of making them, and has not the same been the case in
every war?

To the Parliament I wish to address myself in a more particular manner.
They appear to have supposed themselves partners in the chase, and to
have hunted with the lion from an expectation of a right in the booty;
but in this it is most probable they would, as legislators, have
been disappointed. The case is quite a new one, and many unforeseen
difficulties would have arisen thereon. The Parliament claimed a
legislative right over America, and the war originated from that
pretence. But the army is supposed to belong to the crown, and if
America had been conquered through their means, the claim of the
legislature would have been suffocated in the conquest. Ceded, or
conquered, countries are supposed to be out of the authority of
Parliament. Taxation is exercised over them by prerogative and not by
law. It was attempted to be done in the Grenadas a few years ago, and
the only reason why it was not done was because the crown had made a
prior relinquishment of its claim. Therefore, Parliament have been all
this while supporting measures for the establishment of their authority,
in the issue of which, they would have been triumphed over by the
prerogative. This might have opened a new and interesting opposition
between the Parliament and the crown. The crown would have said that it
conquered for itself, and that to conquer for Parliament was an unknown
case. The Parliament might have replied, that America not being a
foreign country, but a country in rebellion, could not be said to be
conquered, but reduced; and thus continued their claim by disowning
the term. The crown might have rejoined, that however America might
be considered at first, she became foreign at last by a declaration of
independence, and a treaty with France; and that her case being, by that
treaty, put within the law of nations, was out of the law of Parliament,
who might have maintained, that as their claim over America had never
been surrendered, so neither could it be taken away. The crown might
have insisted, that though the claim of Parliament could not be taken
away, yet, being an inferior, it might be superseded; and that, whether
the claim was withdrawn from the object, or the object taken from the
claim, the same separation ensued; and that America being subdued after
a treaty with France, was to all intents and purposes a regal conquest,
and of course the sole property of the king. The Parliament, as the
legal delegates of the people, might have contended against the term
"inferior," and rested the case upon the antiquity of power, and this
would have brought on a set of very interesting and rational questions.

  1st, What is the original fountain of power and honor in any country?
  2d, Whether the prerogative does not belong to the people?
  3d, Whether there is any such thing as the English constitution?
  4th, Of what use is the crown to the people?
  5th, Whether he who invented a crown was not an enemy to mankind?
  6th, Whether it is not a shame for a man to spend a million a year
  and do no good for it, and whether the money might not be better
  applied? 7th, Whether such a man is not better dead than alive?
  8th, Whether a Congress, constituted like that of America, is not the
  most happy and consistent form of government in the world?--With a
  number of others of the same import.

In short, the contention about the dividend might have distracted the
nation; for nothing is more common than to agree in the conquest and
quarrel for the prize; therefore it is, perhaps, a happy circumstance,
that our successes have prevented the dispute.

If the Parliament had been thrown out in their claim, which it is most
probable they would, the nation likewise would have been thrown out in
their expectation; for as the taxes would have been laid on by the crown
without the Parliament, the revenue arising therefrom, if any could
have arisen, would not have gone into the exchequer, but into the privy
purse, and so far from lessening the taxes, would not even have been
added to them, but served only as pocket money to the crown. The more I
reflect on this matter, the more I am satisfied at the blindness and
ill policy of my countrymen, whose wisdom seems to operate without
discernment, and their strength without an object.

To the great bulwark of the nation, I mean the mercantile and
manufacturing part thereof, I likewise present my address. It is your
interest to see America an independent, and not a conquered country. If
conquered, she is ruined; and if ruined, poor; consequently the
trade will be a trifle, and her credit doubtful. If independent, she
flourishes, and from her flourishing must your profits arise. It
matters nothing to you who governs America, if your manufactures find
a consumption there. Some articles will consequently be obtained from
other places, and it is right that they should; but the demand for
others will increase, by the great influx of inhabitants which a state
of independence and peace will occasion, and in the final event you may
be enriched. The commerce of America is perfectly free, and ever will
be so. She will consign away no part of it to any nation. She has not
to her friends, and certainly will not to her enemies; though it is
probable that your narrow-minded politicians, thinking to please you
thereby, may some time or other unnecessarily make such a proposal.
Trade flourishes best when it is free, and it is weak policy to attempt
to fetter it. Her treaty with France is on the most liberal and generous
principles, and the French, in their conduct towards her, have proved
themselves to be philosophers, politicians, and gentlemen.

To the ministry I likewise address myself. You, gentlemen, have studied
the ruin of your country, from which it is not within your abilities to
rescue her. Your attempts to recover her are as ridiculous as your plans
which involved her are detestable. The commissioners, being about to
depart, will probably bring you this, and with it my sixth number,
addressed to them; and in so doing they carry back more Common Sense
than they brought, and you likewise will have more than when you sent
them.

Having thus addressed you severally, I conclude by addressing you
collectively. It is a long lane that has no turning. A period of sixteen
years of misconduct and misfortune, is certainly long enough for any one
nation to suffer under; and upon a supposition that war is not declared
between France and you, I beg to place a line of conduct before you
that will easily lead you out of all your troubles. It has been hinted
before, and cannot be too much attended to.

Suppose America had remained unknown to Europe till the present year,
and that Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, in another voyage round the world,
had made the first discovery of her, in the same condition that she is
now in, of arts, arms, numbers, and civilization. What, I ask, in that
case, would have been your conduct towards her? For that will point out
what it ought to be now. The problems and their solutions are equal,
and the right line of the one is the parallel of the other. The question
takes in every circumstance that can possibly arise. It reduces politics
to a simple thought, and is moreover a mode of investigation, in which,
while you are studying your interest the simplicity of the case will
cheat you into good temper. You have nothing to do but to suppose that
you have found America, and she appears found to your hand, and while
in the joy of your heart you stand still to admire her, the path of
politics rises straight before you.

Were I disposed to paint a contrast, I could easily set off what you
have done in the present case, against what you would have done in that
case, and by justly opposing them, conclude a picture that would make
you blush. But, as, when any of the prouder passions are hurt, it is
much better philosophy to let a man slip into a good temper than to
attack him in a bad one, for that reason, therefore, I only state the
case, and leave you to reflect upon it.

To go a little back into politics, it will be found that the true
interest of Britain lay in proposing and promoting the independence of
America immediately after the last peace; for the expense which Britain
had then incurred by defending America as her own dominions, ought to
have shown her the policy and necessity of changing the style of the
country, as the best probable method of preventing future wars and
expense, and the only method by which she could hold the commerce
without the charge of sovereignty. Besides which, the title which she
assumed, of parent country, led to, and pointed out the propriety,
wisdom and advantage of a separation; for, as in private life, children
grow into men, and by setting up for themselves, extend and secure the
interest of the whole family, so in the settlement of colonies large
enough to admit of maturity, the same policy should be pursued, and the
same consequences would follow. Nothing hurts the affections both of
parents and children so much, as living too closely connected, and
keeping up the distinction too long. Domineering will not do over those,
who, by a progress in life, have become equal in rank to their parents,
that is, when they have families of their own; and though they may
conceive themselves the subjects of their advice, will not suppose them
the objects of their government. I do not, by drawing this parallel,
mean to admit the title of parent country, because, if it is due any
where, it is due to Europe collectively, and the first settlers from
England were driven here by persecution. I mean only to introduce the
term for the sake of policy and to show from your title the line of your
interest.

When you saw the state of strength and opulence, and that by her own
industry, which America arrived at, you ought to have advised her to set
up for herself, and proposed an alliance of interest with her, and in
so doing you would have drawn, and that at her own expense, more real
advantage, and more military supplies and assistance, both of ships and
men, than from any weak and wrangling government that you could exercise
over her. In short, had you studied only the domestic politics of a
family, you would have learned how to govern the state; but, instead of
this easy and natural line, you flew out into every thing which was
wild and outrageous, till, by following the passion and stupidity of the
pilot, you wrecked the vessel within sight of the shore.

Having shown what you ought to have done, I now proceed to show why it
was not done. The caterpillar circle of the court had an interest
to pursue, distinct from, and opposed to yours; for though by the
independence of America and an alliance therewith, the trade would have
continued, if not increased, as in many articles neither country can go
to a better market, and though by defending and protecting herself,
she would have been no expense to you, and consequently your
national charges would have decreased, and your taxes might have been
proportionably lessened thereby; yet the striking off so many places
from the court calendar was put in opposition to the interest of the
nation. The loss of thirteen government ships, with their appendages,
here and in England, is a shocking sound in the ear of a hungry
courtier. Your present king and ministry will be the ruin of you; and
you had better risk a revolution and call a Congress, than be thus led
on from madness to despair, and from despair to ruin. America has set
you the example, and you may follow it and be free.

I now come to the last part, a war with France. This is what no man in
his senses will advise you to, and all good men would wish to prevent.
Whether France will declare war against you, is not for me in this place
to mention, or to hint, even if I knew it; but it must be madness in you
to do it first. The matter is come now to a full crisis, and peace is
easy if willingly set about. Whatever you may think, France has behaved
handsomely to you. She would have been unjust to herself to have acted
otherwise than she did; and having accepted our offer of alliance she
gave you genteel notice of it. There was nothing in her conduct reserved
or indelicate, and while she announced her determination to support her
treaty, she left you to give the first offence. America, on her part,
has exhibited a character of firmness to the world. Unprepared and
unarmed, without form or government, she, singly opposed a nation
that domineered over half the globe. The greatness of the deed demands
respect; and though you may feel resentment, you are compelled both to
wonder and admire.

Here I rest my arguments and finish my address. Such as it is, it is a
gift, and you are welcome. It was always my design to dedicate a Crisis
to you, when the time should come that would properly make it a Crisis;
and when, likewise, I should catch myself in a temper to write it, and
suppose you in a condition to read it. That time has now arrived, and
with it the opportunity for conveyance. For the commissioners--poor
commissioners! having proclaimed, that "yet forty days and Nineveh shall
be overthrown," have waited out the date, and, discontented with their
God, are returning to their gourd. And all the harm I wish them is, that
it may not wither about their ears, and that they may not make their
exit in the belly of a whale.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 21, 1778.

P.S.--Though in the tranquillity of my mind I have concluded with a
laugh, yet I have something to mention to the commissioners, which, to
them, is serious and worthy their attention. Their authority is derived
from an Act of Parliament, which likewise describes and limits their
official powers. Their commission, therefore, is only a recital, and
personal investiture, of those powers, or a nomination and description
of the persons who are to execute them. Had it contained any thing
contrary to, or gone beyond the line of, the written law from which
it is derived, and by which it is bound, it would, by the English
constitution, have been treason in the crown, and the king been subject
to an impeachment. He dared not, therefore, put in his commission what
you have put in your proclamation, that is, he dared not have authorised
you in that commission to burn and destroy any thing in America. You are
both in the act and in the commission styled commissioners for restoring
peace, and the methods for doing it are there pointed out. Your last
proclamation is signed by you as commissioners under that act. You
make Parliament the patron of its contents. Yet, in the body of it, you
insert matters contrary both to the spirit and letter of the act, and
what likewise your king dared not have put in his commission to you. The
state of things in England, gentlemen, is too ticklish for you to run
hazards. You are accountable to Parliament for the execution of that act
according to the letter of it. Your heads may pay for breaking it, for
you certainly have broke it by exceeding it. And as a friend, who would
wish you to escape the paw of the lion, as well as the belly of the
whale, I civilly hint to you, to keep within compass.

Sir Harry Clinton, strictly speaking, is as accountable as the rest; for
though a general, he is likewise a commissioner, acting under a superior
authority. His first obedience is due to the act; and his plea of being
a general, will not and cannot clear him as a commissioner, for that
would suppose the crown, in its single capacity, to have a power of
dispensing with an Act of Parliament. Your situation, gentlemen, is nice
and critical, and the more so because England is unsettled. Take heed!
Remember the times of Charles the First! For Laud and Stafford fell by
trusting to a hope like yours.

Having thus shown you the danger of your proclamation, I now show you
the folly of it. The means contradict your design: you threaten to lay
waste, in order to render America a useless acquisition of alliance to
France. I reply, that the more destruction you commit (if you could do
it) the more valuable to France you make that alliance. You can destroy
only houses and goods; and by so doing you increase our demand upon her
for materials and merchandise; for the wants of one nation, provided it
has freedom and credit, naturally produce riches to the other; and,
as you can neither ruin the land nor prevent the vegetation, you would
increase the exportation of our produce in payment, which would be to
her a new fund of wealth. In short, had you cast about for a plan on
purpose to enrich your enemies, you could not have hit upon a better.

                                           C. S.




THE CRISIS VIII. ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.


"TRUSTING (says the king of England in his speech of November last,)
in the divine providence, and in the justice of my cause, I am firmly
resolved to prosecute the war with vigor, and to make every exertion
in order to compel our enemies to equitable terms of peace and
accommodation." To this declaration the United States of America, and
the confederated powers of Europe will reply, if Britain will have war,
she shall have enough of it.

Five years have nearly elapsed since the commencement of hostilities,
and every campaign, by a gradual decay, has lessened your ability to
conquer, without producing a serious thought on your condition or your
fate. Like a prodigal lingering in an habitual consumption, you feel
the relics of life, and mistake them for recovery. New schemes, like
new medicines, have administered fresh hopes, and prolonged the disease
instead of curing it. A change of generals, like a change of physicians,
served only to keep the flattery alive, and furnish new pretences for
new extravagance.

"Can Britain fail?"* has been proudly asked at the undertaking of every
enterprise; and that "whatever she wills is fate,"*(2) has been given
with the solemnity of prophetic confidence; and though the question
has been constantly replied to by disappointment, and the prediction
falsified by misfortune, yet still the insult continued, and your
catalogue of national evils increased therewith. Eager to persuade
the world of her power, she considered destruction as the minister of
greatness, and conceived that the glory of a nation like that of an
[American] Indian, lay in the number of its scalps and the miseries
which it inflicts.


     * Whitehead's New Year's ode for 1776.
*(2) Ode at the installation of Lord North, for Chancellor of the
University of Oxford.

Fire, sword and want, as far as the arms of Britain could extend them,
have been spread with wanton cruelty along the coast of America; and
while you, remote from the scene of suffering, had nothing to lose
and as little to dread, the information reached you like a tale of
antiquity, in which the distance of time defaces the conception, and
changes the severest sorrows into conversable amusement.

This makes the second paper, addressed perhaps in vain, to the people
of England. That advice should be taken wherever example has failed,
or precept be regarded where warning is ridiculed, is like a picture
of hope resting on despair: but when time shall stamp with universal
currency the facts you have long encountered with a laugh, and the
irresistible evidence of accumulated losses, like the handwriting on
the wall, shall add terror to distress, you will then, in a conflict of
suffering, learn to sympathize with others by feeling for yourselves.

The triumphant appearance of the combined fleets in the channel and at
your harbor's mouth, and the expedition of Captain Paul Jones, on the
western and eastern coasts of England and Scotland, will, by placing
you in the condition of an endangered country, read to you a stronger
lecture on the calamities of invasion, and bring to your minds a truer
picture of promiscuous distress, than the most finished rhetoric can
describe or the keenest imagination conceive.

Hitherto you have experienced the expenses, but nothing of the miseries
of war. Your disappointments have been accompanied with no immediate
suffering, and your losses came to you only by intelligence. Like fire
at a distance you heard not even the cry; you felt not the danger, you
saw not the confusion. To you every thing has been foreign but the taxes
to support it. You knew not what it was to be alarmed at midnight with
an armed enemy in the streets. You were strangers to the distressing
scene of a family in flight, and to the thousand restless cares and
tender sorrows that incessantly arose. To see women and children
wandering in the severity of winter, with the broken remains of a well
furnished house, and seeking shelter in every crib and hut, were matters
that you had no conception of. You knew not what it was to stand by and
see your goods chopped for fuel, and your beds ripped to pieces to make
packages for plunder. The misery of others, like a tempestuous night,
added to the pleasures of your own security. You even enjoyed the storm,
by contemplating the difference of conditions, and that which carried
sorrow into the breasts of thousands served but to heighten in you a
species of tranquil pride. Yet these are but the fainter sufferings
of war, when compared with carnage and slaughter, the miseries of a
military hospital, or a town in flames.

The people of America, by anticipating distress, had fortified their
minds against every species you could inflict. They had resolved to
abandon their homes, to resign them to destruction, and to seek new
settlements rather than submit. Thus familiarized to misfortune, before
it arrived, they bore their portion with the less regret: the justness
of their cause was a continual source of consolation, and the hope of
final victory, which never left them, served to lighten the load and
sweeten the cup allotted them to drink.

But when their troubles shall become yours, and invasion be transferred
upon the invaders, you will have neither their extended wilderness
to fly to, their cause to comfort you, nor their hope to rest upon.
Distress with them was sharpened by no self-reflection. They had not
brought it on themselves. On the contrary, they had by every proceeding
endeavored to avoid it, and had descended even below the mark of
congressional character, to prevent a war. The national honor or the
advantages of independence were matters which, at the commencement of
the dispute, they had never studied, and it was only at the last moment
that the measure was resolved on. Thus circumstanced, they naturally
and conscientiously felt a dependence upon providence. They had a clear
pretension to it, and had they failed therein, infidelity had gained a
triumph.

But your condition is the reverse of theirs. Every thing you suffer you
have sought: nay, had you created mischiefs on purpose to inherit
them, you could not have secured your title by a firmer deed. The world
awakens with no pity it your complaints. You felt none for others; you
deserve none for yourselves. Nature does not interest herself in cases
like yours, but, on the contrary, turns from them with dislike, and
abandons them to punishment. You may now present memorials to what court
you please, but so far as America is the object, none will listen.
The policy of Europe, and the propensity there in every mind to curb
insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to judgment, are unitedly against
you; and where nature and interest reinforce with each other, the
compact is too intimate to be dissolved.

Make but the case of others your own, and your own theirs, and you
will then have a clear idea of the whole. Had France acted towards her
colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every epithet
of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a struggling
people, all Europe must have echoed with your own applauses. But
entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as you ought, and
form opinions thereon which suit with no interest but your own. You
wonder that America does not rise in union with you to impose on herself
a portion of your taxes and reduce herself to unconditional submission.
You are amazed that the southern powers of Europe do not assist you
in conquering a country which is afterwards to be turned against
themselves; and that the northern ones do not contribute to reinstate
you in America who already enjoy the market for naval stores by the
separation. You seem surprised that Holland does not pour in her succors
to maintain you mistress of the seas, when her own commerce is suffering
by your act of navigation; or that any country should study her own
interest while yours is on the carpet.

Such excesses of passionate folly, and unjust as well as unwise
resentment, have driven you on, like Pharaoh, to unpitied miseries, and
while the importance of the quarrel shall perpetuate your disgrace, the
flag of America will carry it round the world. The natural feelings of
every rational being will be against you, and wherever the story shall
be told, you will have neither excuse nor consolation left. With an
unsparing hand, and an insatiable mind, you have desolated the world,
to gain dominion and to lose it; and while, in a frenzy of avarice and
ambition, the east and the west are doomed to tributary bondage, you
rapidly earned destruction as the wages of a nation.

At the thoughts of a war at home, every man amongst you ought to
tremble. The prospect is far more dreadful there than in America. Here
the party that was against the measures of the continent were in general
composed of a kind of neutrals, who added strength to neither army.
There does not exist a being so devoid of sense and sentiment as to
covet "unconditional submission," and therefore no man in America could
be with you in principle. Several might from a cowardice of mind, prefer
it to the hardships and dangers of opposing it; but the same disposition
that gave them such a choice, unfitted them to act either for or against
us. But England is rent into parties, with equal shares of resolution.
The principle which produced the war divides the nation. Their
animosities are in the highest state of fermentation, and both sides, by
a call of the militia, are in arms. No human foresight can discern, no
conclusion can be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on
foot by an invasion. She is not now in a fit disposition to make a
common cause of her own affairs, and having no conquests to hope for
abroad, and nothing but expenses arising at home, her everything is
staked upon a defensive combat, and the further she goes the worse she
is off.

There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war,
abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or
wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost without
it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the situation
of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no security can
be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a peace, the case
becomes reversed, and such now is the situation of England.

That America is beyond the reach of conquest, is a fact which experience
has shown and time confirmed, and this admitted, what, I ask, is now the
object of contention? If there be any honor in pursuing self-destruction
with inflexible passion--if national suicide be the perfection of
national glory, you may, with all the pride of criminal happiness,
expire unenvied and unrivalled. But when the tumult of war shall cease,
and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or
when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy
of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to
discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for
the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter
the remembrance of former follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no
pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the
sure consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment,
no relish for resentment; and though, like a man in a fit, you feel
not the injury of the struggle, nor distinguish between strength and
disease, the weakness will nevertheless be proportioned to the violence,
and the sense of pain increase with the recovery.

To what persons or to whose system of politics you owe your present
state of wretchedness, is a matter of total indifference to America.
They have contributed, however unwillingly, to set her above themselves,
and she, in the tranquillity of conquest, resigns the inquiry. The case
now is not so properly who began the war, as who continues it. That
there are men in all countries to whom a state of war is a mine of
wealth, is a fact never to be doubted. Characters like these naturally
breed in the putrefaction of distempered times, and after fattening
on the disease, they perish with it, or, impregnated with the stench,
retreat into obscurity.

But there are several erroneous notions to which you likewise owe a
share of your misfortunes, and which, if continued, will only increase
your trouble and your losses. An opinion hangs about the gentlemen
of the minority, that America would relish measures under their
administration, which she would not from the present cabinet. On this
rock Lord Chatham would have split had he gained the helm, and several
of his survivors are steering the same course. Such distinctions in
the infancy of the argument had some degree of foundation, but they now
serve no other purpose than to lengthen out a war, in which the limits
of a dispute, being fixed by the fate of arms, and guaranteed by
treaties, are not to be changed or altered by trivial circumstances.

The ministry, and many of the minority, sacrifice their time in
disputing on a question with which they have nothing to do, namely,
whether America shall be independent or not. Whereas the only question
that can come under their determination is, whether they will accede to
it or not. They confound a military question with a political one, and
undertake to supply by a vote what they lost by a battle. Say she shall
not be independent, and it will signify as much as if they voted
against a decree of fate, or say that she shall, and she will be no more
independent than before. Questions which, when determined, cannot be
executed, serve only to show the folly of dispute and the weakness of
disputants.

From a long habit of calling America your own, you suppose her governed
by the same prejudices and conceits which govern yourselves. Because you
have set up a particular denomination of religion to the exclusion of
all others, you imagine she must do the same, and because you, with an
unsociable narrowness of mind, have cherished enmity against France and
Spain, you suppose her alliance must be defective in friendship.
Copying her notions of the world from you, she formerly thought as you
instructed, but now feeling herself free, and the prejudice removed, she
thinks and acts upon a different system. It frequently happens that
in proportion as we are taught to dislike persons and countries, not
knowing why, we feel an ardor of esteem upon the removal of the mistake:
it seems as if something was to be made amends for, and we eagerly give
in to every office of friendship, to atone for the injury of the error.
But, perhaps, there is something in the extent of countries, which,
among the generality of people, insensibly communicates extension of the
mind. The soul of an islander, in its native state, seems bounded by
the foggy confines of the water's edge, and all beyond affords to him
matters only for profit or curiosity, not for friendship. His island
is to him his world, and fixed to that, his every thing centers in it;
while those who are inhabitants of a continent, by casting their eye
over a larger field, take in likewise a larger intellectual circuit,
and thus approaching nearer to an acquaintance with the universe, their
atmosphere of thought is extended, and their liberality fills a wider
space. In short, our minds seem to be measured by countries when we are
men, as they are by places when we are children, and until something
happens to disentangle us from the prejudice, we serve under it without
perceiving it.

In addition to this, it may be remarked, that men who study any
universal science, the principles of which are universally known, or
admitted, and applied without distinction to the common benefit of all
countries, obtain thereby a larger share of philanthropy than those
who only study national arts and improvements. Natural philosophy,
mathematics and astronomy, carry the mind from the country to the
creation, and give it a fitness suited to the extent. It was not
Newton's honor, neither could it be his pride, that he was an
Englishman, but that he was a philosopher, the heavens had liberated him
from the prejudices of an island, and science had expanded his soul as
boundless as his studies.

                                          COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, March, 1780.




THE CRISIS IX. (HAD AMERICA PURSUED HER ADVANTAGES)


HAD America pursued her advantages with half the spirit that she
resisted her misfortunes, she would, before now, have been a conquering
and a peaceful people; but lulled in the lap of soft tranquillity, she
rested on her hopes, and adversity only has convulsed her into action.
Whether subtlety or sincerity at the close of the last year induced the
enemy to an appearance for peace, is a point not material to know; it is
sufficient that we see the effects it has had on our politics, and that
we sternly rise to resent the delusion.

The war, on the part of America, has been a war of natural feelings.
Brave in distress; serene in conquest; drowsy while at rest; and in
every situation generously disposed to peace; a dangerous calm, and
a most heightened zeal have, as circumstances varied, succeeded each
other. Every passion but that of despair has been called to a tour
of duty; and so mistaken has been the enemy, of our abilities
and disposition, that when she supposed us conquered, we rose the
conquerors. The extensiveness of the United States, and the variety of
their resources; the universality of their cause, the quick operation of
their feelings, and the similarity of their sentiments, have, in every
trying situation, produced a something, which, favored by providence,
and pursued with ardor, has accomplished in an instant the business of
a campaign. We have never deliberately sought victory, but snatched it;
and bravely undone in an hour the blotted operations of a season.

The reported fate of Charleston, like the misfortunes of 1776, has at
last called forth a spirit, and kindled up a flame, which perhaps
no other event could have produced. If the enemy has circulated a
falsehood, they have unwisely aggravated us into life, and if they have
told us the truth, they have unintentionally done us a service. We were
returning with folded arms from the fatigues of war, and thinking and
sitting leisurely down to enjoy repose. The dependence that has been
put upon Charleston threw a drowsiness over America. We looked on the
business done--the conflict over--the matter settled--or that all which
remained unfinished would follow of itself. In this state of dangerous
relaxation, exposed to the poisonous infusions of the enemy, and having
no common danger to attract our attention, we were extinguishing, by
stages, the ardor we began with, and surrendering by piece-meal the
virtue that defended us.

Afflicting as the loss of Charleston may be, yet if it universally rouse
us from the slumber of twelve months past, and renew in us the spirit of
former days, it will produce an advantage more important than its loss.
America ever is what she thinks herself to be. Governed by sentiment,
and acting her own mind, she becomes, as she pleases, the victor or the
victim.

It is not the conquest of towns, nor the accidental capture of
garrisons, that can reduce a country so extensive as this. The
sufferings of one part can never be relieved by the exertions of
another, and there is no situation the enemy can be placed in that does
not afford to us the same advantages which he seeks himself. By dividing
his force, he leaves every post attackable. It is a mode of war that
carries with it a confession of weakness, and goes on the principle of
distress rather than conquest.

The decline of the enemy is visible, not only in their operations, but
in their plans; Charleston originally made but a secondary object in the
system of attack, and it is now become their principal one, because
they have not been able to succeed elsewhere. It would have carried a
cowardly appearance in Europe had they formed their grand expedition, in
1776, against a part of the continent where there was no army, or not
a sufficient one to oppose them; but failing year after year in their
impressions here, and to the eastward and northward, they deserted their
capital design, and prudently contenting themselves with what they can
get, give a flourish of honor to conceal disgrace.

But this piece-meal work is not conquering the continent. It is a
discredit in them to attempt it, and in us to suffer it. It is now full
time to put an end to a war of aggravations, which, on one side, has
no possible object, and on the other has every inducement which honor,
interest, safety and happiness can inspire. If we suffer them much
longer to remain among us, we shall become as bad as themselves.
An association of vice will reduce us more than the sword. A nation
hardened in the practice of iniquity knows better how to profit by it,
than a young country newly corrupted. We are not a match for them in the
line of advantageous guilt, nor they for us on the principles which we
bravely set out with. Our first days were our days of honor. They have
marked the character of America wherever the story of her wars are told;
and convinced of this, we have nothing to do but wisely and unitedly to
tread the well known track. The progress of a war is often as ruinous
to individuals, as the issue of it is to a nation; and it is not only
necessary that our forces be such that we be conquerors in the end,
but that by timely exertions we be secure in the interim. The present
campaign will afford an opportunity which has never presented itself
before, and the preparations for it are equally necessary, whether
Charleston stand or fall. Suppose the first, it is in that case only
a failure of the enemy, not a defeat. All the conquest that a besieged
town can hope for, is, not to be conquered; and compelling an enemy
to raise the siege, is to the besieged a victory. But there must be
a probability amounting almost to a certainty, that would justify a
garrison marching out to attack a retreat. Therefore should Charleston
not be taken, and the enemy abandon the siege, every other part of the
continent should prepare to meet them; and, on the contrary, should it
be taken, the same preparations are necessary to balance the loss, and
put ourselves in a position to co-operate with our allies, immediately
on their arrival.

We are not now fighting our battles alone, as we were in 1776; England,
from a malicious disposition to America, has not only not declared war
against France and Spain, but, the better to prosecute her passions
here, has afforded those powers no military object, and avoids them,
to distress us. She will suffer her West India islands to be overrun by
France, and her southern settlements to be taken by Spain, rather than
quit the object that gratifies her revenge. This conduct, on the part
of Britain, has pointed out the propriety of France sending a naval and
land force to co-operate with America on the spot. Their arrival cannot
be very distant, nor the ravages of the enemy long. The recruiting the
army, and procuring the supplies, are the two things most necessary to
be accomplished, and a capture of either of the enemy's divisions will
restore to America peace and plenty.

At a crisis, big, like the present, with expectation and events, the
whole country is called to unanimity and exertion. Not an ability ought
now to sleep, that can produce but a mite to the general good, nor even
a whisper to pass that militates against it. The necessity of the case,
and the importance of the consequences, admit no delay from a friend,
no apology from an enemy. To spare now, would be the height of
extravagance, and to consult present ease, would be to sacrifice it
perhaps forever.

America, rich in patriotism and produce, can want neither men nor
supplies, when a serious necessity calls them forth. The slow
operation of taxes, owing to the extensiveness of collection, and their
depreciated value before they arrived in the treasury, have, in many
instances, thrown a burden upon government, which has been artfully
interpreted by the enemy into a general decline throughout the
country. Yet this, inconvenient as it may at first appear, is not only
remediable, but may be turned to an immediate advantage; for it makes no
real difference, whether a certain number of men, or company of militia
(and in this country every man is a militia-man), are directed by law
to send a recruit at their own expense, or whether a tax is laid on them
for that purpose, and the man hired by government afterwards. The first,
if there is any difference, is both cheapest and best, because it saves
the expense which would attend collecting it as a tax, and brings the
man sooner into the field than the modes of recruiting formerly used;
and, on this principle, a law has been passed in this state, for
recruiting two men from each company of militia, which will add upwards
of a thousand to the force of the country.

But the flame which has broken forth in this city since the report from
New York, of the loss of Charleston, not only does honor to the place,
but, like the blaze of 1776, will kindle into action the scattered
sparks throughout America. The valor of a country may be learned by the
bravery of its soldiery, and the general cast of its inhabitants, but
confidence of success is best discovered by the active measures pursued
by men of property; and when the spirit of enterprise becomes so
universal as to act at once on all ranks of men, a war may then, and not
till then, be styled truly popular.

In 1776, the ardor of the enterprising part was considerably checked by
the real revolt of some, and the coolness of others. But in the present
case, there is a firmness in the substance and property of the country
to the public cause. An association has been entered into by
the merchants, tradesmen, and principal inhabitants of the city
[Philadelphia], to receive and support the new state money at the value
of gold and silver; a measure which, while it does them honor, will
likewise contribute to their interest, by rendering the operations of
the campaign convenient and effectual.

Nor has the spirit of exertion stopped here. A voluntary subscription is
likewise begun, to raise a fund of hard money, to be given as bounties,
to fill up the full quota of the Pennsylvania line. It has been the
remark of the enemy, that every thing in America has been done by the
force of government; but when she sees individuals throwing in their
voluntary aid, and facilitating the public measures in concert with the
established powers of the country, it will convince her that the cause
of America stands not on the will of a few but on the broad foundation
of property and popularity.

Thus aided and thus supported, disaffection will decline, and the
withered head of tyranny expire in America. The ravages of the enemy
will be short and limited, and like all their former ones, will produce
a victory over themselves.

                                       COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, June 9, 1780.

P. S. At the time of writing this number of the Crisis, the loss of
Charleston, though believed by some, was more confidently disbelieved
by others. But there ought to be no longer a doubt upon the matter.
Charleston is gone, and I believe for the want of a sufficient supply of
provisions. The man that does not now feel for the honor of the best
and noblest cause that ever a country engaged in, and exert himself
accordingly, is no longer worthy of a peaceable residence among a people
determined to be free.

                                             C. S.

                       THE CRISIS EXTRAORDINARY

                      ON THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION.

IT IS impossible to sit down and think seriously on the affairs of
America, but the original principles upon which she resisted, and
the glow and ardor which they inspired, will occur like the undefaced
remembrance of a lovely scene. To trace over in imagination the purity
of the cause, the voluntary sacrifices that were made to support it,
and all the various turnings of the war in its defence, is at once both
paying and receiving respect. The principles deserve to be remembered,
and to remember them rightly is repossessing them. In this indulgence
of generous recollection, we become gainers by what we seem to give, and
the more we bestow the richer we become.

So extensively right was the ground on which America proceeded, that it
not only took in every just and liberal sentiment which could impress
the heart, but made it the direct interest of every class and order
of men to defend the country. The war, on the part of Britain, was
originally a war of covetousness. The sordid and not the splendid
passions gave it being. The fertile fields and prosperous infancy of
America appeared to her as mines for tributary wealth. She viewed the
hive, and disregarding the industry that had enriched it, thirsted for
the honey. But in the present stage of her affairs, the violence of
temper is added to the rage of avarice; and therefore, that which at
the first setting out proceeded from purity of principle and public
interest, is now heightened by all the obligations of necessity; for it
requires but little knowledge of human nature to discern what would
be the consequence, were America again reduced to the subjection of
Britain. Uncontrolled power, in the hands of an incensed, imperious, and
rapacious conqueror, is an engine of dreadful execution, and woe be to
that country over which it can be exercised. The names of Whig and Tory
would then be sunk in the general term of rebel, and the oppression,
whatever it might be, would, with very few instances of exception, light
equally on all.

Britain did not go to war with America for the sake of dominion, because
she was then in possession; neither was it for the extension of trade
and commerce, because she had monopolized the whole, and the country
had yielded to it; neither was it to extinguish what she might call
rebellion, because before she began no resistance existed. It could then
be from no other motive than avarice, or a design of establishing, in
the first instance, the same taxes in America as are paid in England
(which, as I shall presently show, are above eleven times heavier than
the taxes we now pay for the present year, 1780) or, in the second
instance, to confiscate the whole property of America, in case of
resistance and conquest of the latter, of which she had then no doubt.

I shall now proceed to show what the taxes in England are, and what
the yearly expense of the present war is to her--what the taxes of
this country amount to, and what the annual expense of defending it
effectually will be to us; and shall endeavor concisely to point out
the cause of our difficulties, and the advantages on one side, and the
consequences on the other, in case we do, or do not, put ourselves in
an effectual state of defence. I mean to be open, candid, and sincere.
I see a universal wish to expel the enemy from the country, a murmuring
because the war is not carried on with more vigor, and my intention is
to show, as shortly as possible, both the reason and the remedy.

The number of souls in England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland) is
seven millions,* and the number of souls in America is three millions.


     * This is taking the highest number that the people of England have
been, or can be rated at.

The amount of taxes in England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland)
was, before the present war commenced, eleven millions six hundred and
forty-two thousand six hundred and fifty-three pounds sterling; which,
on an average, is no less a sum than one pound thirteen shillings and
three-pence sterling per head per annum, men, women, and children;
besides county taxes, taxes for the support of the poor, and a tenth of
all the produce of the earth for the support of the bishops and clergy.*
Nearly five millions of this sum went annually to pay the interest of
the national debt, contracted by former wars, and the remaining sum of
six millions six hundred and forty-two thousand six hundred pounds
was applied to defray the yearly expense of government, the peace
establishment of the army and navy, placemen, pensioners, etc.;
consequently the whole of the enormous taxes being thus appropriated,
she had nothing to spare out of them towards defraying the expenses
of the present war or any other. Yet had she not been in debt at the
beginning of the war, as we were not, and, like us, had only a land and
not a naval war to carry on, her then revenue of eleven millions and a
half pounds sterling would have defrayed all her annual expenses of
war and government within each year. * The following is taken from Dr.
Price's state of the taxes of England.

An account of the money drawn from the public by taxes, annually, being
the medium of three years before the year 1776.

    Amount of customs in England                         2,528,275 L.
    Amount of the excise in England                      4,649,892
    Land tax at 3s.                                      1,300,000
    Land tax at 1s. in the pound                           450,000
    Salt duties                                            218,739
    Duties on stamps, cards, dice, advertisements,
      bonds, leases, indentures, newspapers,
      almanacks, etc.                                      280,788
    Duties on houses and windows                           385,369
    Post office, seizures, wine licences, hackney
      coaches, etc.                                        250,000
    Annual profits from lotteries                          150,000
    Expense of collecting the excise in England            297,887
    Expense of collecting the customs in England           468,703
    Interest of loans on the land tax at 4s. expenses
      of collection, militia, etc.                         250,000
    Perquisites, etc. to custom-house officers, &c.
      supposed                                             250,000
    Expense of collecting the salt duties in England
      10 1/2 per cent.                                      27,000
    Bounties on fish exported                               18,000
    Expense of collecting the duties on stamps, cards,
      advertisements, etc. at 5 and 1/4 per cent.           18,000

                                                  Total 11,642,653 L.

But this not being the case with her, she is obliged to borrow about ten
millions pounds sterling, yearly, to prosecute the war that she is now
engaged in, (this year she borrowed twelve) and lay on new taxes to
discharge the interest; allowing that the present war has cost her only
fifty millions sterling, the interest thereon, at five per cent., will
be two millions and an half; therefore the amount of her taxes now
must be fourteen millions, which on an average is no less than forty
shillings sterling, per head, men, women and children, throughout the
nation. Now as this expense of fifty millions was borrowed on the hopes
of conquering America, and as it was avarice which first induced her to
commence the war, how truly wretched and deplorable would the condition
of this country be, were she, by her own remissness, to suffer an
enemy of such a disposition, and so circumstanced, to reduce her to
subjection.

I now proceed to the revenues of America.

I have already stated the number of souls in America to be three
millions, and by a calculation that I have made, which I have every
reason to believe is sufficiently correct, the whole expense of the
war, and the support of the several governments, may be defrayed for
two million pounds sterling annually; which, on an average, is thirteen
shillings and four pence per head, men, women, and children, and the
peace establishment at the end of the war will be but three quarters of
a million, or five shillings sterling per head. Now, throwing out of
the question everything of honor, principle, happiness, freedom, and
reputation in the world, and taking it up on the simple ground of
interest, I put the following case:

Suppose Britain was to conquer America, and, as a conqueror, was to lay
her under no other conditions than to pay the same proportion towards
her annual revenue which the people of England pay: our share, in that
case, would be six million pounds sterling yearly. Can it then be
a question, whether it is best to raise two millions to defend the
country, and govern it ourselves, and only three quarters of a million
afterwards, or pay six millions to have it conquered, and let the enemy
govern it?

Can it be supposed that conquerors would choose to put themselves in a
worse condition than what they granted to the conquered? In England, the
tax on rum is five shillings and one penny sterling per gallon, which is
one silver dollar and fourteen coppers. Now would it not be laughable to
imagine, that after the expense they have been at, they would let either
Whig or Tory drink it cheaper than themselves? Coffee, which is so
inconsiderable an article of consumption and support here, is there
loaded with a duty which makes the price between five and six shillings
per pound, and a penalty of fifty pounds sterling on any person detected
in roasting it in his own house. There is scarcely a necessary of life
that you can eat, drink, wear, or enjoy, that is not there loaded with
a tax; even the light from heaven is only permitted to shine into their
dwellings by paying eighteen pence sterling per window annually; and the
humblest drink of life, small beer, cannot there be purchased without a
tax of nearly two coppers per gallon, besides a heavy tax upon the malt,
and another on the hops before it is brewed, exclusive of a land-tax on
the earth which produces them. In short, the condition of that country,
in point of taxation, is so oppressive, the number of her poor so great,
and the extravagance and rapaciousness of the court so enormous, that,
were they to effect a conquest of America, it is then only that the
distresses of America would begin. Neither would it signify anything
to a man whether he be Whig or Tory. The people of England, and the
ministry of that country, know us by no such distinctions. What they
want is clear, solid revenue, and the modes which they would take to
procure it, would operate alike on all. Their manner of reasoning would
be short, because they would naturally infer, that if we were able to
carry on a war of five or six years against them, we were able to pay
the same taxes which they do.

I have already stated that the expense of conducting the present war,
and the government of the several states, may be done for two millions
sterling, and the establishment in the time of peace, for three quarters
of a million.*


     * I have made the calculations in sterling, because it is a rate
generally known in all the states, and because, likewise, it admits of
an easy comparison between our expenses to support the war, and those
of the enemy. Four silver dollars and a half is one pound sterling, and
three pence over.

As to navy matters, they flourish so well, and are so well attended to
by individuals, that I think it consistent on every principle of real
use and economy, to turn the navy into hard money (keeping only three or
four packets) and apply it to the service of the army. We shall not have
a ship the less; the use of them, and the benefit from them, will be
greatly increased, and their expense saved. We are now allied with a
formidable naval power, from whom we derive the assistance of a navy.
And the line in which we can prosecute the war, so as to reduce the
common enemy and benefit the alliance most effectually, will be by
attending closely to the land service.

I estimate the charge of keeping up and maintaining an army, officering
them, and all expenses included, sufficient for the defence of the
country, to be equal to the expense of forty thousand men at thirty
pounds sterling per head, which is one million two hundred thousand
pounds.

I likewise allow four hundred thousand pounds for continental expenses
at home and abroad.

And four hundred thousand pounds for the support of the several state
governments--the amount will then be:

    For the army                                         1,200,000 L.
    Continental expenses at home and abroad                400,000
    Government of the several states                       400,000

                                                   Total 2,000,000 L.

I take the proportion of this state, Pennsylvania, to be an eighth part
of the thirteen United States; the quota then for us to raise will be
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; two hundred thousand
of which will be our share for the support and pay of the army, and
continental expenses at home and abroad, and fifty thousand pounds for
the support of the state government.

In order to gain an idea of the proportion in which the raising such a
sum will fall, I make the following calculation:

Pennsylvania contains three hundred and seventy-five thousand
inhabitants, men, women and children; which is likewise an eighth of the
number of inhabitants of the whole United States: therefore, two hundred
and fifty thousand pounds sterling to be raised among three hundred and
seventy-five thousand persons, is, on an average, thirteen shillings
and four pence per head, per annum, or something more than one shilling
sterling per month. And our proportion of three quarters of a
million for the government of the country, in time of peace, will be
ninety-three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds sterling; fifty
thousand of which will be for the government expenses of the state,
and forty-three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds for continental
expenses at home and abroad.

The peace establishment then will, on an average, be five shillings
sterling per head. Whereas, was England now to stop, and the war cease,
her peace establishment would continue the same as it is now, viz. forty
shillings per head; therefore was our taxes necessary for carrying on
the war, as much per head as hers now is, and the difference to be
only whether we should, at the end of the war, pay at the rate of five
shillings per head, or forty shillings per head, the case needs no
thinking of. But as we can securely defend and keep the country for
one third less than what our burden would be if it was conquered, and
support the governments afterwards for one eighth of what Britain would
levy on us, and could I find a miser whose heart never felt the emotion
of a spark of principle, even that man, uninfluenced by every love but
the love of money, and capable of no attachment but to his interest,
would and must, from the frugality which governs him, contribute to the
defence of the country, or he ceases to be a miser and becomes an idiot.
But when we take in with it every thing that can ornament mankind; when
the line of our interest becomes the line of our happiness; when all
that can cheer and animate the heart, when a sense of honor, fame,
character, at home and abroad, are interwoven not only with the security
but the increase of property, there exists not a man in America, unless
he be an hired emissary, who does not see that his good is connected
with keeping up a sufficient defence.

I do not imagine that an instance can be produced in the world, of a
country putting herself to such an amazing charge to conquer and enslave
another, as Britain has done. The sum is too great for her to think of
with any tolerable degree of temper; and when we consider the burden
she sustains, as well as the disposition she has shown, it would be the
height of folly in us to suppose that she would not reimburse herself by
the most rapid means, had she America once more within her power. With
such an oppression of expense, what would an empty conquest be to her!
What relief under such circumstances could she derive from a victory
without a prize? It was money, it was revenue she first went to war for,
and nothing but that would satisfy her. It is not the nature of avarice
to be satisfied with any thing else. Every passion that acts upon
mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary
and fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a
fixed, uniform passion. It neither abates of its vigor nor changes its
object; and the reason why it does not, is founded in the nature of
things, for wealth has not a rival where avarice is a ruling passion.
One beauty may excel another, and extinguish from the mind of man the
pictured remembrance of a former one: but wealth is the phoenix of
avarice, and therefore it cannot seek a new object, because there is not
another in the world.

I now pass on to show the value of the present taxes, and compare them
with the annual expense; but this I shall preface with a few explanatory
remarks.

There are two distinct things which make the payment of taxes difficult;
the one is the large and real value of the sum to be paid, and the other
is the scarcity of the thing in which the payment is to be made; and
although these appear to be one and the same, they are in several
instances riot only different, but the difficulty springs from different
causes.

Suppose a tax to be laid equal to one half of what a man's yearly income
is, such a tax could not be paid, because the property could not be
spared; and on the other hand, suppose a very trifling tax was laid, to
be collected in pearls, such a tax likewise could not be paid, because
they could not be had. Now any person may see that these are distinct
cases, and the latter of them is a representation of our own.

That the difficulty cannot proceed from the former, that is, from the
real value or weight of the tax, is evident at the first view to any
person who will consider it.

The amount of the quota of taxes for this State for the year, 1780, (and
so in proportion for every other State,) is twenty millions of dollars,
which at seventy for one, is but sixty-four thousand two hundred and
eighty pounds three shillings sterling, and on an average, is no more
than three shillings and five pence sterling per head, per annum, per
man, woman and child, or threepence two-fifths per head per month. Now
here is a clear, positive fact, that cannot be contradicted, and which
proves that the difficulty cannot be in the weight of the tax, for in
itself it is a trifle, and far from being adequate to our quota of the
expense of the war. The quit-rents of one penny sterling per acre on
only one half of the state, come to upwards of fifty thousand pounds,
which is almost as much as all the taxes of the present year, and
as those quit-rents made no part of the taxes then paid, and are now
discontinued, the quantity of money drawn for public-service this year,
exclusive of the militia fines, which I shall take notice of in the
process of this work, is less than what was paid and payable in any year
preceding the revolution, and since the last war; what I mean is, that
the quit-rents and taxes taken together came to a larger sum then, than
the present taxes without the quit-rents do now.

My intention by these arguments and calculations is to place the
difficulty to the right cause, and show that it does not proceed from
the weight or worth of the tax, but from the scarcity of the medium in
which it is paid; and to illustrate this point still further, I shall
now show, that if the tax of twenty millions of dollars was of four
times the real value it now is, or nearly so, which would be about two
hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling, and would be our full quota,
this sum would have been raised with more ease, and have been less felt,
than the present sum of only sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty
pounds.

The convenience or inconvenience of paying a tax in money arises from
the quantity of money that can be spared out of trade.

When the emissions stopped, the continent was left in possession of
two hundred millions of dollars, perhaps as equally dispersed as it was
possible for trade to do it. And as no more was to be issued, the rise
or fall of prices could neither increase nor diminish the quantity. It
therefore remained the same through all the fluctuations of trade and
exchange.

Now had the exchange stood at twenty for one, which was the rate
Congress calculated upon when they arranged the quota of the several
states, the latter end of last year, trade would have been carried on
for nearly four times less money than it is now, and consequently the
twenty millions would have been spared with much greater ease, and when
collected would have been of almost four times the value that they now
are. And on the other hand, was the depreciation to be ninety or one
hundred for one, the quantity required for trade would be more than at
sixty or seventy for one, and though the value of them would be less,
the difficulty of sparing the money out of trade would be greater. And
on these facts and arguments I rest the matter, to prove that it is
not the want of property, but the scarcity of the medium by which the
proportion of property for taxation is to be measured out, that makes
the embarrassment which we lie under. There is not money enough, and,
what is equally as true, the people will not let there be money enough.

While I am on the subject of the currency, I shall offer one remark
which will appear true to everybody, and can be accounted for by nobody,
which is, that the better the times were, the worse the money grew;
and the worse the times were, the better the money stood. It never
depreciated by any advantage obtained by the enemy. The troubles of
1776, and the loss of Philadelphia in 1777, made no sensible impression
on it, and every one knows that the surrender of Charleston did not
produce the least alteration in the rate of exchange, which, for long
before, and for more than three months after, stood at sixty for one. It
seems as if the certainty of its being our own, made us careless of its
value, and that the most distant thoughts of losing it made us hug
it the closer, like something we were loth to part with; or that we
depreciate it for our pastime, which, when called to seriousness by the
enemy, we leave off to renew again at our leisure. In short, our good
luck seems to break us, and our bad makes us whole.

Passing on from this digression, I shall now endeavor to bring into one
view the several parts which I have already stated, and form thereon
some propositions, and conclude.

I have placed before the reader, the average tax per head, paid by the
people of England; which is forty shillings sterling.

And I have shown the rate on an average per head, which will defray
all the expenses of the war to us, and support the several governments
without running the country into debt, which is thirteen shillings and
four pence.

I have shown what the peace establishment may be conducted for, viz., an
eighth part of what it would be, if under the government of Britain.

And I have likewise shown what the average per head of the present
taxes is, namely, three shillings and fivepence sterling, or threepence
two-fifths per month; and that their whole yearly value, in sterling,
is only sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty pounds. Whereas our
quota, to keep the payments equal with the expenses, is two hundred
and fifty thousand pounds. Consequently, there is a deficiency of one
hundred and eighty-five thousand seven hundred and twenty pounds, and
the same proportion of defect, according to the several quotas, happens
in every other state. And this defect is the cause why the army has been
so indifferently fed, clothed and paid. It is the cause, likewise, of
the nerveless state of the campaign, and the insecurity of the country.
Now, if a tax equal to thirteen and fourpence per head, will remove all
these difficulties, and make people secure in their homes, leave them to
follow the business of their stores and farms unmolested, and not only
drive out but keep out the enemy from the country; and if the neglect of
raising this sum will let them in, and produce the evils which might be
prevented--on which side, I ask, does the wisdom, interest and policy
lie? Or, rather, would it not be an insult to reason, to put the
question? The sum, when proportioned out according to the several
abilities of the people, can hurt no one, but an inroad from the enemy
ruins hundreds of families.

Look at the destruction done in this city [Philadelphia]. The many
houses totally destroyed, and others damaged; the waste of fences in
the country round it, besides the plunder of furniture, forage,
and provisions. I do not suppose that half a million sterling would
reinstate the sufferers; and, does this, I ask, bear any proportion to
the expense that would make us secure? The damage, on an average, is
at least ten pounds sterling per head, which is as much as thirteen
shillings and fourpence per head comes to for fifteen years. The same
has happened on the frontiers, and in the Jerseys, New York, and other
places where the enemy has been--Carolina and Georgia are likewise
suffering the same fate.

That the people generally do not understand the insufficiency of the
taxes to carry on the war, is evident, not only from common observation,
but from the construction of several petitions which were presented to
the Assembly of this state, against the recommendation of Congress of
the 18th of March last, for taking up and funding the present currency
at forty to one, and issuing new money in its stead. The prayer of the
petition was, that the currency might be appreciated by taxes (meaning
the present taxes) and that part of the taxes be applied to the support
of the army, if the army could not be otherwise supported. Now it could
not have been possible for such a petition to have been presented,
had the petitioners known, that so far from part of the taxes being
sufficient for the support of the whole of them falls three-fourths
short of the year's expenses.

Before I proceed to propose methods by which a sufficiency of money
may be raised, I shall take a short view of the general state of the
country.

Notwithstanding the weight of the war, the ravages of the enemy, and the
obstructions she has thrown in the way of trade and commerce, so soon
does a young country outgrow misfortune, that America has already
surmounted many that heavily oppressed her. For the first year or two
of the war, we were shut up within our ports, scarce venturing to look
towards the ocean. Now our rivers are beautified with large and valuable
vessels, our stores filled with merchandise, and the produce of the
country has a ready market, and an advantageous price. Gold and silver,
that for a while seemed to have retreated again within the bowels of
the earth, have once more risen into circulation, and every day adds new
strength to trade, commerce and agriculture. In a pamphlet, written
by Sir John Dalrymple, and dispersed in America in the year 1775, he
asserted that two twenty-gun ships, nay, says he, tenders of those
ships, stationed between Albermarle sound and Chesapeake bay, would shut
up the trade of America for 600 miles. How little did Sir John Dalrymple
know of the abilities of America!

While under the government of Britain, the trade of this country was
loaded with restrictions. It was only a few foreign ports which we were
allowed to sail to. Now it is otherwise; and allowing that the quantity
of trade is but half what it was before the war, the case must show the
vast advantage of an open trade, because the present quantity under her
restrictions could not support itself; from which I infer, that if half
the quantity without the restrictions can bear itself up nearly, if not
quite, as well as the whole when subject to them, how prosperous must
the condition of America be when the whole shall return open with all
the world. By the trade I do not mean the employment of a merchant only,
but the whole interest and business of the country taken collectively.

It is not so much my intention, by this publication, to propose
particular plans for raising money, as it is to show the necessity and
the advantages to be derived from it. My principal design is to form the
disposition of the people to the measures which I am fully persuaded it
is their interest and duty to adopt, and which need no other force to
accomplish them than the force of being felt. But as every hint may
be useful, I shall throw out a sketch, and leave others to make such
improvements upon it as to them may appear reasonable.

The annual sum wanted is two millions, and the average rate in which it
falls, is thirteen shillings and fourpence per head.

Suppose, then, that we raise half the sum and sixty thousand pounds
over. The average rate thereof will be seven shillings per head.

In this case we shall have half the supply that we want, and an annual
fund of sixty thousand pounds whereon to borrow the other million;
because sixty thousand pounds is the interest of a million at six per
cent.; and if at the end of another year we should be obliged, by the
continuance of the war, to borrow another million, the taxes will be
increased to seven shillings and sixpence; and thus for every million
borrowed, an additional tax, equal to sixpence per head, must be levied.

The sum to be raised next year will be one million and sixty thousand
pounds: one half of which I would propose should be raised by duties on
imported goods, and prize goods, and the other half by a tax on landed
property and houses, or such other means as each state may devise.

But as the duties on imports and prize goods must be the same in all the
states, therefore the rate per cent., or what other form the duty shall
be laid, must be ascertained and regulated by Congress, and ingrafted in
that form into the law of each state; and the monies arising therefrom
carried into the treasury of each state. The duties to be paid in gold
or silver.

There are many reasons why a duty on imports is the most convenient
duty or tax that can be collected; one of which is, because the whole is
payable in a few places in a country, and it likewise operates with the
greatest ease and equality, because as every one pays in proportion to
what he consumes, so people in general consume in proportion to what
they can afford; and therefore the tax is regulated by the abilities
which every man supposes himself to have, or in other words, every man
becomes his own assessor, and pays by a little at a time, when it suits
him to buy. Besides, it is a tax which people may pay or let alone
by not consuming the articles; and though the alternative may have no
influence on their conduct, the power of choosing is an agreeable thing
to the mind. For my own part, it would be a satisfaction to me was there
a duty on all sorts of liquors during the war, as in my idea of things
it would be an addition to the pleasures of society to know, that when
the health of the army goes round, a few drops, from every glass becomes
theirs. How often have I heard an emphatical wish, almost accompanied by
a tear, "Oh, that our poor fellows in the field had some of this!" Why
then need we suffer under a fruitless sympathy, when there is a way to
enjoy both the wish and the entertainment at once.

But the great national policy of putting a duty upon imports is, that it
either keeps the foreign trade in our own hands, or draws something for
the defence of the country from every foreigner who participates in it
with us.

Thus much for the first half of the taxes, and as each state will best
devise means to raise the other half, I shall confine my remarks to the
resources of this state.

The quota, then, of this state, of one million and sixty thousand
pounds, will be one hundred and thirty-three thousand two hundred and
fifty pounds, the half of which is sixty-six thousand six hundred
and twenty-five pounds; and supposing one fourth part of Pennsylvania
inhabited, then a tax of one bushel of wheat on every twenty acres of
land, one with another, would produce the sum, and all the present taxes
to cease. Whereas, the tithes of the bishops and clergy in England,
exclusive of the taxes, are upwards of half a bushel of wheat on every
single acre of land, good and bad, throughout the nation.

In the former part of this paper, I mentioned the militia fines, but
reserved speaking of the matter, which I shall now do. The ground I
shall put it upon is, that two millions sterling a year will support
a sufficient army, and all the expenses of war and government, without
having recourse to the inconvenient method of continually calling men
from their employments, which, of all others, is the most expensive and
the least substantial. I consider the revenues created by taxes as the
first and principal thing, and fines only as secondary and accidental
things. It was not the intention of the militia law to apply the fines
to anything else but the support of the militia, neither do they produce
any revenue to the state, yet these fines amount to more than all the
taxes: for taking the muster-roll to be sixty thousand men, the fine
on forty thousand who may not attend, will be sixty thousand pounds
sterling, and those who muster, will give up a portion of time equal
to half that sum, and if the eight classes should be called within the
year, and one third turn out, the fine on the remaining forty thousand
would amount to seventy-two millions of dollars, besides the fifteen
shillings on every hundred pounds of property, and the charge of seven
and a half per cent. for collecting, in certain instances which, on
the whole, would be upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds
sterling.

Now if those very fines disable the country from raising a sufficient
revenue without producing an equivalent advantage, would it not be for
the ease and interest of all parties to increase the revenue, in the
manner I have proposed, or any better, if a better can be devised, and
cease the operation of the fines? I would still keep the militia as an
organized body of men, and should there be a real necessity to call them
forth, pay them out of the proper revenues of the state, and increase
the taxes a third or fourth per cent. on those who do not attend. My
limits will not allow me to go further into this matter, which I shall
therefore close with this remark; that fines are, of all modes of
revenue, the most unsuited to the minds of a free country. When a
man pays a tax, he knows that the public necessity requires it, and
therefore feels a pride in discharging his duty; but a fine seems
an atonement for neglect of duty, and of consequence is paid with
discredit, and frequently levied with severity.

I have now only one subject more to speak of, with which I shall
conclude, which is, the resolve of Congress of the 18th of March last,
for taking up and funding the present currency at forty for one, and
issuing new money in its stead.

Every one knows that I am not the flatterer of Congress, but in this
instance they are right; and if that measure is supported, the currency
will acquire a value, which, without it, it will not. But this is not
all: it will give relief to the finances until such time as they can be
properly arranged, and save the country from being immediately doubled
taxed under the present mode. In short, support that measure, and it
will support you.

I have now waded through a tedious course of difficult business, and
over an untrodden path. The subject, on every point in which it could be
viewed, was entangled with perplexities, and enveloped in obscurity, yet
such are the resources of America, that she wants nothing but system to
secure success.

                                          COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 4, 1780.




THE CRISIS X. ON THE KING OF ENGLAND'S SPEECH.


OF all the innocent passions which actuate the human mind there is none
more universally prevalent than curiosity. It reaches all mankind, and
in matters which concern us, or concern us not, it alike provokes in us
a desire to know them.

Although the situation of America, superior to every effort to enslave
her, and daily rising to importance and opulence, has placed her above
the region of anxiety, it has still left her within the circle of
curiosity; and her fancy to see the speech of a man who had proudly
threatened to bring her to his feet, was visibly marked with that
tranquil confidence which cared nothing about its contents. It was
inquired after with a smile, read with a laugh, and dismissed with
disdain.

But, as justice is due, even to an enemy, it is right to say, that the
speech is as well managed as the embarrassed condition of their affairs
could well admit of; and though hardly a line of it is true, except the
mournful story of Cornwallis, it may serve to amuse the deluded commons
and people of England, for whom it was calculated.

"The war," says the speech, "is still unhappily prolonged by that
restless ambition which first excited our enemies to commence it, and
which still continues to disappoint my earnest wishes and diligent
exertions to restore the public tranquillity."

How easy it is to abuse truth and language, when men, by habitual
wickedness, have learned to set justice at defiance. That the very man
who began the war, who with the most sullen insolence refused to answer,
and even to hear the humblest of all petitions, who has encouraged
his officers and his army in the most savage cruelties, and the most
scandalous plunderings, who has stirred up the Indians on one side, and
the negroes on the other, and invoked every aid of hell in his behalf,
should now, with an affected air of pity, turn the tables from himself,
and charge to another the wickedness that is his own, can only be
equalled by the baseness of the heart that spoke it.

To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right, is an
expression I once used on a former occasion, and it is equally
applicable now. We feel something like respect for consistency even in
error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the
vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the
various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men
have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust,
than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible
falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.

"But I should not," continues the speech, "answer the trust committed
to the sovereign of a free people, nor make a suitable return to my
subjects for their constant, zealous, and affectionate attachment to my
person, family and government, if I consented to sacrifice, either to
my own desire of peace, or to their temporary ease and relief, those
essential rights and permanent interests, upon the maintenance and
preservation of which, the future strength and security of this country
must principally depend."

That the man whose ignorance and obstinacy first involved and still
continues the nation in the most hopeless and expensive of all wars,
should now meanly flatter them with the name of a free people, and make
a merit of his crime, under the disguise of their essential rights and
permanent interests, is something which disgraces even the character of
perverseness. Is he afraid they will send him to Hanover, or what does
he fear? Why is the sycophant thus added to the hypocrite, and the man
who pretends to govern, sunk into the humble and submissive memorialist?

What those essential rights and permanent interests are, on which the
future strength and security of England must principally depend, are not
so much as alluded to. They are words which impress nothing but the ear,
and are calculated only for the sound.

But if they have any reference to America, then do they amount to
the disgraceful confession, that England, who once assumed to be her
protectress, has now become her dependant. The British king and ministry
are constantly holding up the vast importance which America is of
to England, in order to allure the nation to carry on the war: now,
whatever ground there is for this idea, it ought to have operated as a
reason for not beginning it; and, therefore, they support their present
measures to their own disgrace, because the arguments which they now
use, are a direct reflection on their former policy.

"The favorable appearance of affairs," continues the speech, "in the
East Indies, and the safe arrival of the numerous commercial fleets of
my kingdom, must have given you satisfaction."

That things are not quite so bad every where as in America may be some
cause of consolation, but can be none for triumph. One broken leg
is better than two, but still it is not a source of joy: and let the
appearance of affairs in the East Indies be ever so favorable, they are
nevertheless worse than at first, without a prospect of their ever being
better. But the mournful story of Cornwallis was yet to be told, and it
was necessary to give it the softest introduction possible.

"But in the course of this year," continues the speech, "my assiduous
endeavors to guard the extensive dominions of my crown have not been
attended with success equal to the justice and uprightness of my
views."--What justice and uprightness there was in beginning a war with
America, the world will judge of, and the unequalled barbarity with
which it has been conducted, is not to be worn from the memory by the
cant of snivelling hypocrisy.

"And it is with great concern that I inform you that the events of war
have been very unfortunate to my arms in Virginia, having ended in the
loss of my forces in that province."--And our great concern is that they
are not all served in the same manner.

"No endeavors have been wanted on my part," says the speech, "to
extinguish that spirit of rebellion which our enemies have found means
to foment and maintain in the colonies; and to restore to my deluded
subjects in America that happy and prosperous condition which they
formerly derived from a due obedience to the laws."

The expression of deluded subjects is become so hacknied and
contemptible, and the more so when we see them making prisoners of whole
armies at a time, that the pride of not being laughed at would induce a
man of common sense to leave it off. But the most offensive falsehood
in the paragraph is the attributing the prosperity of America to a
wrong cause. It was the unremitted industry of the settlers and their
descendants, the hard labor and toil of persevering fortitude, that
were the true causes of the prosperity of America. The former tyranny
of England served to people it, and the virtue of the adventurers to
improve it. Ask the man, who, with his axe, has cleared a way in the
wilderness, and now possesses an estate, what made him rich, and he will
tell you the labor of his hands, the sweat of his brow, and the blessing
of heaven. Let Britain but leave America to herself and she asks no
more. She has risen into greatness without the knowledge and against the
will of England, and has a right to the unmolested enjoyment of her own
created wealth.

"I will order," says the speech, "the estimates of the ensuing year to
be laid before you. I rely on your wisdom and public spirit for such
supplies as the circumstances of our affairs shall be found to require.
Among the many ill consequences which attend the continuation of the
present war, I most sincerely regret the additional burdens which it
must unavoidably bring upon my faithful subjects."

It is strange that a nation must run through such a labyrinth of
trouble, and expend such a mass of wealth to gain the wisdom which an
hour's reflection might have taught. The final superiority of America
over every attempt that an island might make to conquer her, was as
naturally marked in the constitution of things, as the future ability of
a giant over a dwarf is delineated in his features while an infant.
How far providence, to accomplish purposes which no human wisdom could
foresee, permitted such extraordinary errors, is still a secret in the
womb of time, and must remain so till futurity shall give it birth.

"In the prosecution of this great and important contest," says the
speech, "in which we are engaged, I retain a firm confidence in the
protection of divine providence, and a perfect conviction in the justice
of my cause, and I have no doubt, but, that by the concurrence and
support of my Parliament, by the valour of my fleets and armies, and by
a vigorous, animated, and united exertion of the faculties and resources
of my people, I shall be enabled to restore the blessings of a safe and
honorable peace to all my dominions."

The King of England is one of the readiest believers in the world. In
the beginning of the contest he passed an act to put America out of the
protection of the crown of England, and though providence, for seven
years together, has put him out of her protection, still the man has no
doubt. Like Pharaoh on the edge of the Red Sea, he sees not the plunge
he is making, and precipitately drives across the flood that is closing
over his head.

I think it is a reasonable supposition, that this part of the speech was
composed before the arrival of the news of the capture of Cornwallis:
for it certainly has no relation to their condition at the time it was
spoken. But, be this as it may, it is nothing to us. Our line is
fixed. Our lot is cast; and America, the child of fate, is arriving at
maturity. We have nothing to do but by a spirited and quick exertion,
to stand prepared for war or peace. Too great to yield, and too noble
to insult; superior to misfortune, and generous in success, let us
untaintedly preserve the character which we have gained, and show to
future ages an example of unequalled magnanimity. There is something in
the cause and consequence of America that has drawn on her the attention
of all mankind. The world has seen her brave. Her love of liberty; her
ardour in supporting it; the justice of her claims, and the constancy
of her fortitude have won her the esteem of Europe, and attached to her
interest the first power in that country.

Her situation now is such, that to whatever point, past, present or to
come, she casts her eyes, new matter rises to convince her that she is
right. In her conduct towards her enemy, no reproachful sentiment lurks
in secret. No sense of injustice is left upon the mind. Untainted with
ambition, and a stranger to revenge, her progress has been marked by
providence, and she, in every stage of the conflict, has blest her with
success.

But let not America wrap herself up in delusive hope and suppose the
business done. The least remissness in preparation, the least relaxation
in execution, will only serve to prolong the war, and increase
expenses. If our enemies can draw consolation from misfortune, and
exert themselves upon despair, how much more ought we, who are to win a
continent by the conquest, and have already an earnest of success?

Having, in the preceding part, made my remarks on the several matters
which the speech contains, I shall now make my remarks on what it does
not contain.

There is not a syllable in its respecting alliances. Either the
injustice of Britain is too glaring, or her condition too desperate, or
both, for any neighboring power to come to her support. In the beginning
of the contest, when she had only America to contend with, she hired
assistance from Hesse, and other smaller states of Germany, and
for nearly three years did America, young, raw, undisciplined and
unprovided, stand against the power of Britain, aided by twenty thousand
foreign troops, and made a complete conquest of one entire army. The
remembrance of those things ought to inspire us with confidence and
greatness of mind, and carry us through every remaining difficulty with
content and cheerfulness. What are the little sufferings of the present
day, compared with the hardships that are past? There was a time, when
we had neither house nor home in safety; when every hour was the hour of
alarm and danger; when the mind, tortured with anxiety, knew no repose,
and every thing, but hope and fortitude, was bidding us farewell.

It is of use to look back upon these things; to call to mind the times
of trouble and the scenes of complicated anguish that are past and gone.
Then every expense was cheap, compared with the dread of conquest and
the misery of submission. We did not stand debating upon trifles, or
contending about the necessary and unavoidable charges of defence. Every
one bore his lot of suffering, and looked forward to happier days, and
scenes of rest.

Perhaps one of the greatest dangers which any country can be exposed
to, arises from a kind of trifling which sometimes steals upon the mind,
when it supposes the danger past; and this unsafe situation marks at
this time the peculiar crisis of America. What would she once have given
to have known that her condition at this day should be what it now is?
And yet we do not seem to place a proper value upon it, nor vigorously
pursue the necessary measures to secure it. We know that we cannot be
defended, nor yet defend ourselves, without trouble and expense. We have
no right to expect it; neither ought we to look for it. We are a people,
who, in our situation, differ from all the world. We form one common
floor of public good, and, whatever is our charge, it is paid for our
own interest and upon our own account.

Misfortune and experience have now taught us system and method; and the
arrangements for carrying on the war are reduced to rule and order. The
quotas of the several states are ascertained, and I intend in a future
publication to show what they are, and the necessity as well as the
advantages of vigorously providing for them.

In the mean time, I shall conclude this paper with an instance of
British clemency, from Smollett's History of England, vol. xi., printed
in London. It will serve to show how dismal the situation of a conquered
people is, and that the only security is an effectual defence.

We all know that the Stuart family and the house of Hanover opposed each
other for the crown of England. The Stuart family stood first in the
line of succession, but the other was the most successful.

In July, 1745, Charles, the son of the exiled king, landed in Scotland,
collected a small force, at no time exceeding five or six thousand
men, and made some attempts to re-establish his claim. The late Duke of
Cumberland, uncle to the present King of England, was sent against him,
and on the 16th of April following, Charles was totally defeated at
Culloden, in Scotland. Success and power are the only situations in
which clemency can be shown, and those who are cruel, because they
are victorious, can with the same facility act any other degenerate
character.

"Immediately after the decisive action at Culloden, the Duke of
Cumberland took possession of Inverness; where six and thirty deserters,
convicted by a court martial, were ordered to be executed: then he
detached several parties to ravage the country. One of these apprehended
The Lady Mackintosh, who was sent prisoner to Inverness, plundered her
house, and drove away her cattle, though her husband was actually in the
service of the government. The castle of Lord Lovat was destroyed.
The French prisoners were sent to Carlisle and Penrith: Kilmarnock,
Balmerino, Cromartie, and his son, The Lord Macleod, were conveyed by
sea to London; and those of an inferior rank were confined in different
prisons. The Marquis of Tullibardine, together with a brother of the
Earl of Dunmore, and Murray, the pretender's secretary, were seized and
transported to the Tower of London, to which the Earl of Traquaire
had been committed on suspicion; and the eldest son of Lord Lovat was
imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh. In a word, all the jails in
Great Britain, from the capital, northwards, were filled with those
unfortunate captives; and great numbers of them were crowded together in
the holds of ships, where they perished in the most deplorable manner,
for want of air and exercise. Some rebel chiefs escaped in two French
frigates that arrived on the coast of Lochaber about the end of April,
and engaged three vessels belonging to his Britannic majesty, which
they obliged to retire. Others embarked on board a ship on the coast
of Buchan, and were conveyed to Norway, from whence they travelled to
Sweden. In the month of May, the Duke of Cumberland advanced with the
army into the Highlands, as far as Fort Augustus, where he encamped; and
sent off detachments on all hands, to hunt down the fugitives, and
lay waste the country with fire and sword. The castles of Glengary and
Lochiel were plundered and burned; every house, hut, or habitation,
met with the same fate, without distinction; and all the cattle and
provision were carried off; the men were either shot upon the mountains,
like wild beasts, or put to death in cold blood, without form of trial;
the women, after having seen their husbands and fathers murdered, were
subjected to brutal violation, and then turned out naked, with their
children, to starve on the barren heaths. One whole family was enclosed
in a barn, and consumed to ashes. Those ministers of vengeance were so
alert in the execution of their office, that in a few days there was
neither house, cottage, man, nor beast, to be seen within the compass of
fifty miles; all was ruin, silence, and desolation."

I have here presented the reader with one of the most shocking instances
of cruelty ever practised, and I leave it, to rest on his mind, that he
may be fully impressed with a sense of the destruction he has escaped,
in case Britain had conquered America; and likewise, that he may see
and feel the necessity, as well for his own personal safety, as for the
honor, the interest, and happiness of the whole community, to omit or
delay no one preparation necessary to secure the ground which we so
happily stand upon.


                       TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

          On the expenses, arrangements and disbursements for
           carrying on the war, and finishing it with honor
                            and advantage

WHEN any necessity or occasion has pointed out the convenience of
addressing the public, I have never made it a consideration whether the
subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for
that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though
by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose
the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.

A remarkable instance of this happened in the case of Silas Deane; and
I mention this circumstance with the greater ease, because the poison
of his hypocrisy spread over the whole country, and every man, almost
without exception, thought me wrong in opposing him. The best friends
I then had, except Mr. [Henry] Laurens, stood at a distance, and this
tribute, which is due to his constancy, I pay to him with respect, and
that the readier, because he is not here to hear it. If it reaches him
in his imprisonment, it will afford him an agreeable reflection.

"As he rose like a rocket, he would fall like a stick," is a metaphor
which I applied to Mr. Deane, in the first piece which I published
respecting him, and he has exactly fulfilled the description. The credit
he so unjustly obtained from the public, he lost in almost as short a
time. The delusion perished as it fell, and he soon saw himself stripped
of popular support. His more intimate acquaintances began to doubt, and
to desert him long before he left America, and at his departure, he saw
himself the object of general suspicion. When he arrived in France,
he endeavored to effect by treason what he had failed to accomplish by
fraud. His plans, schemes and projects, together with his expectation of
being sent to Holland to negotiate a loan of money, had all miscarried.
He then began traducing and accusing America of every crime, which could
injure her reputation. "That she was a ruined country; that she only
meant to make a tool of France, to get what money she could out of her,
and then to leave her and accommodate with Britain." Of all which and
much more, Colonel Laurens and myself, when in France, informed Dr.
Franklin, who had not before heard of it. And to complete the character
of traitor, he has, by letters to his country since, some of which, in
his own handwriting, are now in the possession of Congress, used every
expression and argument in his power, to injure the reputation of
France, and to advise America to renounce her alliance, and surrender up
her independence.* Thus in France he abuses America, and in his letters
to America he abuses France; and is endeavoring to create disunion
between two countries, by the same arts of double-dealing by which he
caused dissensions among the commissioners in Paris, and distractions in
America. But his life has been fraud, and his character has been that of
a plodding, plotting, cringing mercenary, capable of any disguise that
suited his purpose. His final detection has very happily cleared up
those mistakes, and removed that uneasiness, which his unprincipled
conduct occasioned. Every one now sees him in the same light; for
towards friends or enemies he acted with the same deception and
injustice, and his name, like that of Arnold, ought now to be forgotten
among us. As this is the first time that I have mentioned him since my
return from France, it is my intention that it shall be the last. From
this digression, which for several reasons I thought necessary to give,
I now proceed to the purport of my address.


     * Mr. William Marshall, of this city [Philadelphia], formerly a
pilot, who had been taken at sea and carried to England, and got from
thence to France, brought over letters from Mr. Deane to America, one of
which was directed to "Robert Morris, Esq." Mr. Morris sent it unopened
to Congress, and advised Mr. Marshall to deliver the others there, which
he did. The letters were of the same purport with those which have been
already published under the signature of S. Deane, to which they had
frequent reference.

I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war,
the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for
the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own
property. It is not the war of Congress, the war of the assemblies, or
the war of government in any line whatever. The country first, by
mutual compact, resolved to defend their rights and maintain their
independence, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes; they elected
their representatives, by whom they appointed their members of Congress,
and said, act you for us, and we will support you. This is the
true ground and principle of the war on the part of America, and,
consequently, there remains nothing to do, but for every one to fulfil
his obligation.

It was next to impossible that a new country, engaged in a new
undertaking, could set off systematically right at first. She saw not
the extent of the struggle that she was involved in, neither could she
avoid the beginning. She supposed every step that she took, and every
resolution which she formed, would bring her enemy to reason and close
the contest. Those failing, she was forced into new measures; and these,
like the former, being fitted to her expectations, and failing in their
turn, left her continually unprovided, and without system. The
enemy, likewise, was induced to prosecute the war, from the temporary
expedients we adopted for carrying it on. We were continually expecting
to see their credit exhausted, and they were looking to see our currency
fail; and thus, between their watching us, and we them, the hopes of
both have been deceived, and the childishness of the expectation has
served to increase the expense.

Yet who, through this wilderness of error, has been to blame? Where is
the man who can say the fault, in part, has not been his? They were the
natural, unavoidable errors of the day. They were the errors of a whole
country, which nothing but experience could detect and time remove.
Neither could the circumstances of America admit of system, till either
the paper currency was fixed or laid aside. No calculation of a finance
could be made on a medium failing without reason, and fluctuating
without rule.

But there is one error which might have been prevented and was not; and
as it is not my custom to flatter, but to serve mankind, I will speak it
freely. It certainly was the duty of every assembly on the continent to
have known, at all times, what was the condition of its treasury, and
to have ascertained at every period of depreciation, how much the real
worth of the taxes fell short of their nominal value. This knowledge,
which might have been easily gained, in the time of it, would have
enabled them to have kept their constituents well informed, and this is
one of the greatest duties of representation. They ought to have studied
and calculated the expenses of the war, the quota of each state, and
the consequent proportion that would fall on each man's property for
his defence; and this must have easily shown to them, that a tax of one
hundred pounds could not be paid by a bushel of apples or an hundred of
flour, which was often the case two or three years ago. But instead of
this, which would have been plain and upright dealing, the little line
of temporary popularity, the feather of an hour's duration, was too much
pursued; and in this involved condition of things, every state, for the
want of a little thinking, or a little information, supposed that it
supported the whole expenses of the war, when in fact it fell, by the
time the tax was levied and collected, above three-fourths short of its
own quota.

Impressed with a sense of the danger to which the country was exposed by
this lax method of doing business, and the prevailing errors of the day,
I published, last October was a twelvemonth, the Crisis Extraordinary,
on the revenues of America, and the yearly expense of carrying on
the war. My estimation of the latter, together with the civil list of
Congress, and the civil list of the several states, was two million
pounds sterling, which is very nearly nine millions of dollars.

Since that time, Congress have gone into a calculation, and have
estimated the expenses of the War Department and the civil list of
Congress (exclusive of the civil list of the several governments) at
eight millions of dollars; and as the remaining million will be
fully sufficient for the civil list of the several states, the two
calculations are exceedingly near each other.

The sum of eight millions of dollars have called upon the states to
furnish, and their quotas are as follows, which I shall preface with the
resolution itself.



             "By the United States in Congress assembled.

                          "October 30, 1781.

"Resolved, That the respective states be called upon to furnish the
treasury of the United States with their quotas of eight millions of
dollars, for the War Department and civil list for the ensuing year, to
be paid quarterly, in equal proportions, the first payment to be made on
the first day of April next.

"Resolved, That a committee, consisting of a member from each state, be
appointed to apportion to the several states the quota of the above sum.

"November 2d. The committee appointed to ascertain the proportions of
the several states of the monies to be raised for the expenses of the
ensuing year, report the following resolutions:

"That the sum of eight millions of dollars, as required to be raised by
the resolutions of the 30th of October last, be paid by the states in
the following proportion:

               New Hampshire....... $  373,598
               Massachusetts.......  1,307,596
               Rhode Island........    216,684
               Connecticut.........    747,196
               New York............    373,598
               New Jersey..........    485,679
               Pennsylvania........  1,120,794
               Delaware............    112,085
               Maryland............    933,996
               Virginia............  1,307,594
               North Carolina......    622,677
               South Carolina......    373,598
               Georgia.............     24,905

                                    $8,000,000

"Resolved, That it be recommended to the several states, to lay taxes
for raising their quotas of money for the United States, separate from
those laid for their own particular use."



On these resolutions I shall offer several remarks.

   1st, On the sum itself, and the ability of the country.
   2d, On the several quotas, and the nature of a union. And,
   3d, On the manner of collection and expenditure.

1st, On the sum itself, and the ability of the country. As I know my
own calculation is as low as possible, and as the sum called for by
congress, according to their calculation, agrees very nearly therewith,
I am sensible it cannot possibly be lower. Neither can it be done for
that, unless there is ready money to go to market with; and even in that
case, it is only by the utmost management and economy that it can be
made to do.

By the accounts which were laid before the British Parliament last
spring, it appeared that the charge of only subsisting, that is, feeding
their army in America, cost annually four million pounds sterling, which
is very nearly eighteen millions of dollars. Now if, for eight millions,
we can feed, clothe, arm, provide for, and pay an army sufficient for
our defence, the very comparison shows that the money must be well laid
out.

It may be of some use, either in debate or conversation, to attend to
the progress of the expenses of an army, because it will enable us to
see on what part any deficiency will fall.

The first thing is, to feed them and prepare for the sick.

  _Second_, to clothe them.
  _Third_, to arm and furnish them.
  _Fourth_, to provide means for removing them from place to place. And,
  _Fifth_, to pay them.

The first and second are absolutely necessary to them as men. The third
and fourth are equally as necessary to them as an army. And the fifth is
their just due. Now if the sum which shall be raised should fall short,
either by the several acts of the states for raising it, or by the
manner of collecting it, the deficiency will fall on the fifth head, the
soldiers' pay, which would be defrauding them, and eternally disgracing
ourselves. It would be a blot on the councils, the country, and the
revolution of America, and a man would hereafter be ashamed to own that
he had any hand in it.

But if the deficiency should be still shorter, it would next fall on the
fourth head, the means of removing the army from place to place; and, in
this case, the army must either stand still where it can be of no use,
or seize on horses, carts, wagons, or any means of transportation which
it can lay hold of; and in this instance the country suffers. In short,
every attempt to do a thing for less than it can he done for, is sure to
become at last both a loss and a dishonor.

But the country cannot bear it, say some. This has been the most
expensive doctrine that ever was held out, and cost America millions
of money for nothing. Can the country bear to be overrun, ravaged,
and ruined by an enemy? This will immediately follow where defence is
wanting, and defence will ever be wanting, where sufficient revenues
are not provided. But this is only one part of the folly. The second is,
that when the danger comes, invited in part by our not preparing against
it, we have been obliged, in a number of instances, to expend double the
sums to do that which at first might have been done for half the money.
But this is not all. A third mischief has been, that grain of all sorts,
flour, beef fodder, horses, carts, wagons, or whatever was absolutely or
immediately wanted, have been taken without pay. Now, I ask, why was all
this done, but from that extremely weak and expensive doctrine, that
the country could not bear it? That is, that she could not bear, in the
first instance, that which would have saved her twice as much at last;
or, in proverbial language, that she could not bear to pay a penny to
save a pound; the consequence of which has been, that she has paid a
pound for a penny. Why are there so many unpaid certificates in almost
every man's hands, but from the parsimony of not providing sufficient
revenues? Besides, the doctrine contradicts itself; because, if the
whole country cannot bear it, how is it possible that a part should?
And yet this has been the case: for those things have been had; and they
must be had; but the misfortune is, that they have been obtained in
a very unequal manner, and upon expensive credit, whereas, with ready
money, they might have been purchased for half the price, and nobody
distressed.

But there is another thought which ought to strike us, which is, how is
the army to bear the want of food, clothing and other necessaries? The
man who is at home, can turn himself a thousand ways, and find as many
means of ease, convenience or relief: but a soldier's life admits of
none of those: their wants cannot be supplied from themselves: for an
army, though it is the defence of a state, is at the same time the child
of a country, or must be provided for in every thing.

And lastly, the doctrine is false. There are not three millions of
people in any part of the universe, who live so well, or have such a
fund of ability, as in America. The income of a common laborer, who is
industrious, is equal to that of the generality of tradesmen in England.
In the mercantile line, I have not heard of one who could be said to be
a bankrupt since the war began, and in England they have been without
number. In America almost every farmer lives on his own lands, and in
England not one in a hundred does. In short, it seems as if the poverty
of that country had made them furious, and they were determined to risk
all to recover all.

Yet, notwithstanding those advantages on the part of America, true it
is, that had it not been for the operation of taxes for our necessary
defence, we had sunk into a state of sloth and poverty: for there was
more wealth lost by neglecting to till the earth in the years 1776,
'77, and '78, than the quota of taxes amounts to. That which is lost by
neglect of this kind, is lost for ever: whereas that which is paid, and
continues in the country, returns to us again; and at the same time that
it provides us with defence, it operates not only as a spur, but as a
premium to our industry.

I shall now proceed to the second head, viz., on the several quotas, and
the nature of a union.

There was a time when America had no other bond of union, than that of
common interest and affection. The whole country flew to the relief of
Boston, and, making her cause, their own, participated in her cares and
administered to her wants. The fate of war, since that day, has carried
the calamity in a ten-fold proportion to the southward; but in the mean
time the union has been strengthened by a legal compact of the states,
jointly and severally ratified, and that which before was choice, or the
duty of affection, is now likewise the duty of legal obligation.

The union of America is the foundation-stone of her independence;
the rock on which it is built; and is something so sacred in her
constitution, that we ought to watch every word we speak, and every
thought we think, that we injure it not, even by mistake. When a
multitude, extended, or rather scattered, over a continent in the manner
we were, mutually agree to form one common centre whereon the whole
shall move to accomplish a particular purpose, all parts must act
together and alike, or act not at all, and a stoppage in any one is a
stoppage of the whole, at least for a time.

Thus the several states have sent representatives to assemble together
in Congress, and they have empowered that body, which thus becomes their
centre, and are no other than themselves in representation, to conduct
and manage the war, while their constituents at home attend to the
domestic cares of the country, their internal legislation, their farms,
professions or employments, for it is only by reducing complicated
things to method and orderly connection that they can be understood
with advantage, or pursued with success. Congress, by virtue of this
delegation, estimates the expense, and apportions it out to the several
parts of the empire according to their several abilities; and here the
debate must end, because each state has already had its voice, and the
matter has undergone its whole portion of argument, and can no more be
altered by any particular state, than a law of any state, after it has
passed, can be altered by any individual. For with respect to those
things which immediately concern the union, and for which the union was
purposely established, and is intended to secure, each state is to the
United States what each individual is to the state he lives in. And
it is on this grand point, this movement upon one centre, that our
existence as a nation, our happiness as a people, and our safety as
individuals, depend.

It may happen that some state or other may be somewhat over or under
rated, but this cannot be much. The experience which has been had upon
the matter, has nearly ascertained their several abilities. But even
in this case, it can only admit of an appeal to the United States, but
cannot authorise any state to make the alteration itself, any more than
our internal government can admit an individual to do so in the case of
an act of assembly; for if one state can do it, then may another do the
same, and the instant this is done the whole is undone.

Neither is it supposable that any single state can be a judge of all the
comparative reasons which may influence the collective body in arranging
the quotas of the continent. The circumstances of the several states are
frequently varying, occasioned by the accidents of war and commerce, and
it will often fall upon some to help others, rather beyond what their
exact proportion at another time might be; but even this assistance is
as naturally and politically included in the idea of a union as that of
any particular assigned proportion; because we know not whose turn
it may be next to want assistance, for which reason that state is the
wisest which sets the best example.

Though in matters of bounden duty and reciprocal affection, it is rather
a degeneracy from the honesty and ardor of the heart to admit any thing
selfish to partake in the government of our conduct, yet in cases where
our duty, our affections, and our interest all coincide, it may be of
some use to observe their union. The United States will become heir to
an extensive quantity of vacant land, and their several titles to
shares and quotas thereof, will naturally be adjusted according to their
relative quotas, during the war, exclusive of that inability which may
unfortunately arise to any state by the enemy's holding possession of
a part; but as this is a cold matter of interest, I pass it by,
and proceed to my third head, viz., on the manner of collection and
expenditure.

It has been our error, as well as our misfortune, to blend the affairs
of each state, especially in money matters, with those of the United
States; whereas it is our case, convenience and interest, to keep them
separate. The expenses of the United States for carrying on the war, and
the expenses of each state for its own domestic government, are distinct
things, and to involve them is a source of perplexity and a cloak for
fraud. I love method, because I see and am convinced of its beauty and
advantage. It is that which makes all business easy and understood, and
without which, everything becomes embarrassed and difficult.

There are certain powers which the people of each state have delegated
to their legislative and executive bodies, and there are other powers
which the people of every state have delegated to Congress, among
which is that of conducting the war, and, consequently, of managing the
expenses attending it; for how else can that be managed, which concerns
every state, but by a delegation from each? When a state has furnished
its quota, it has an undoubted right to know how it has been applied,
and it is as much the duty of Congress to inform the state of the one,
as it is the duty of the state to provide the other.

In the resolution of Congress already recited, it is recommended to the
several states to lay taxes for raising their quotas of money for the
United States, separate from those laid for their own particular use.

This is a most necessary point to be observed, and the distinction
should follow all the way through. They should be levied, paid and
collected, separately, and kept separate in every instance. Neither have
the civil officers of any state, nor the government of that state, the
least right to touch that money which the people pay for the support of
their army and the war, any more than Congress has to touch that which
each state raises for its own use.

This distinction will naturally be followed by another. It will occasion
every state to examine nicely into the expenses of its civil list, and
to regulate, reduce, and bring it into better order than it has hitherto
been; because the money for that purpose must be raised apart, and
accounted for to the public separately. But while the, monies of both
were blended, the necessary nicety was not observed, and the poor
soldier, who ought to have been the first, was the last who was thought
of.

Another convenience will be, that the people, by paying the taxes
separately, will know what they are for; and will likewise know that
those which are for the defence of the country will cease with the war,
or soon after. For although, as I have before observed, the war is their
own, and for the support of their own rights and the protection of their
own property, yet they have the same right to know, that they have
to pay, and it is the want of not knowing that is often the cause of
dissatisfaction.

This regulation of keeping the taxes separate has given rise to a
regulation in the office of finance, by which it is directed:

"That the receivers shall, at the end of every month, make out an exact
account of the monies received by them respectively, during such month,
specifying therein the names of the persons from whom the same shall
have been received, the dates and the sums; which account they shall
respectively cause to be published in one of the newspapers of the
state; to the end that every citizen may know how much of the monies
collected from him, in taxes, is transmitted to the treasury of the
United States for the support of the war; and also, that it may be known
what monies have been at the order of the superintendent of finance. It
being proper and necessary, that, in a free country, the people should
be as fully informed of the administration of their affairs as the
nature of things will admit."

It is an agreeable thing to see a spirit of order and economy taking
place, after such a series of errors and difficulties. A government or
an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and
consequently has nothing to conceal; and it would be of use if a monthly
or quarterly account was to be published, as well of the expenditures
as of the receipts. Eight millions of dollars must be husbanded with an
exceeding deal of care to make it do, and, therefore, as the management
must be reputable, the publication would be serviceable.

I have heard of petitions which have been presented to the assembly of
this state (and probably the same may have happened in other states)
praying to have the taxes lowered. Now the only way to keep taxes low
is, for the United States to have ready money to go to market with: and
though the taxes to be raised for the present year will fall heavy,
and there will naturally be some difficulty in paying them, yet the
difficulty, in proportion as money spreads about the country, will every
day grow less, and in the end we shall save some millions of dollars by
it. We see what a bitter, revengeful enemy we have to deal with, and
any expense is cheap compared to their merciless paw. We have seen the
unfortunate Carolineans hunted like partridges on the mountains, and it
is only by providing means for our defence, that we shall be kept from
the same condition. When we think or talk about taxes, we ought to
recollect that we lie down in peace and sleep in safety; that we
can follow our farms or stores or other occupations, in prosperous
tranquillity; and that these inestimable blessings are procured to us
by the taxes that we pay. In this view, our taxes are properly our
insurance money; they are what we pay to be made safe, and, in strict
policy, are the best money we can lay out.

It was my intention to offer some remarks on the impost law of five per
cent. recommended by Congress, and to be established as a fund for the
payment of the loan-office certificates, and other debts of the United
States; but I have already extended my piece beyond my intention. And
as this fund will make our system of finance complete, and is strictly
just, and consequently requires nothing but honesty to do it, there
needs but little to be said upon it.

                                              COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, March 5, 1782.




THE CRISIS. XI. ON THE PRESENT STATE OF NEWS.


SINCE the arrival of two, if not three packets in quick succession, at
New York, from England, a variety of unconnected news has circulated
through the country, and afforded as great a variety of speculation.

That something is the matter in the cabinet and councils of our enemies,
on the other side of the water, is certain--that they have run their
length of madness, and are under the necessity of changing their
measures may easily be seen into; but to what this change of measures
may amount, or how far it may correspond with our interest, happiness
and duty, is yet uncertain; and from what we have hitherto experienced,
we have too much reason to suspect them in every thing. I do not address
this publication so much to the people of America as to the British
ministry, whoever they may be, for if it is their intention to promote
any kind of negotiation, it is proper they should know beforehand, that
the United States have as much honor as bravery; and that they are no
more to be seduced from their alliance than their allegiance; that their
line of politics is formed and not dependent, like that of their enemy,
on chance and accident. On our part, in order to know, at any time, what
the British government will do, we have only to find out what they ought
not to do, and this last will be their conduct. Forever changing and
forever wrong; too distant from America to improve in circumstances, and
too unwise to foresee them; scheming without principle, and executing
without probability, their whole line of management has hitherto been
blunder and baseness. Every campaign has added to their loss, and every
year to their disgrace; till unable to go on, and ashamed to go back,
their politics have come to a halt, and all their fine prospects to a
halter.

Could our affections forgive, or humanity forget the wounds of an
injured country--we might, under the influence of a momentary oblivion,
stand still and laugh. But they are engraven where no amusement can
conceal them, and of a kind for which there is no recompense. Can ye
restore to us the beloved dead? Can ye say to the grave, give up the
murdered? Can ye obliterate from our memories those who are no more?
Think not then to tamper with our feelings by an insidious contrivance,
nor suffocate our humanity by seducing us to dishonor.

In March 1780, I published part of the Crisis, No. VIII., in the
newspapers, but did not conclude it in the following papers, and the
remainder has lain by me till the present day. There appeared about
that time some disposition in the British cabinet to cease the further
prosecution of the war, and as I had formed my opinion that whenever
such a design should take place, it would be accompanied by a
dishonorable proposition to America, respecting France, I had suppressed
the remainder of that number, not to expose the baseness of any such
proposition. But the arrival of the next news from England, declared her
determination to go on with the war, and consequently as the political
object I had then in view was not become a subject, it was unnecessary
in me to bring it forward, which is the reason it was never published.
The matter which I allude to in the unpublished part, I shall now make a
quotation of, and apply it as the more enlarged state of things, at this
day, shall make convenient or necessary. It was as follows:

"By the speeches which have appeared from the British Parliament, it is
easy to perceive to what impolitic and imprudent excesses their passions
and prejudices have, in every instance, carried them during the present
war. Provoked at the upright and honorable treaty between America and
France, they imagined that nothing more was necessary to be done to
prevent its final ratification, than to promise, through the agency of
their commissioners (Carlisle, Eden, and Johnstone) a repeal of their
once offensive acts of Parliament. The vanity of the conceit, was as
unpardonable as the experiment was impolitic. And so convinced am I of
their wrong ideas of America, that I shall not wonder, if, in their last
stage of political frenzy, they propose to her to break her alliance
with France, and enter into one with them. Such a proposition, should
it ever be made, and it has been already more than once hinted at in
Parliament, would discover such a disposition to perfidiousness, and
such disregard of honor and morals, as would add the finishing vice to
national corruption.--I do not mention this to put America on the watch,
but to put England on her guard, that she do not, in the looseness of
her heart, envelop in disgrace every fragment of reputation."--Thus far
the quotation.

By the complection of some part of the news which has transpired through
the New York papers, it seems probable that this insidious era in the
British politics is beginning to make its appearance. I wish it may
not; for that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a
shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share
of the wound that is given to the whole. The policy of Britain has ever
been to divide America in some way or other. In the beginning of the
dispute, she practised every art to prevent or destroy the union of the
states, well knowing that could she once get them to stand singly, she
could conquer them unconditionally. Failing in this project in America,
she renewed it in Europe; and, after the alliance had taken place, she
made secret offers to France to induce her to give up America; and what
is still more extraordinary, she at the same time made propositions to
Dr. Franklin, then in Paris, the very court to which she was secretly
applying, to draw off America from France. But this is not all. On the
14th of September, 1778, the British court, through their secretary,
Lord Weymouth, made application to the Marquis d'Almadovar, the Spanish
ambassador at London, to "ask the mediation," for these were the words,
of the court of Spain, for the purpose of negotiating a peace with
France, leaving America (as I shall hereafter show) out of the question.
Spain readily offered her mediation, and likewise the city of Madrid as
the place of conference, but withal, proposed, that the United States of
America should be invited to the treaty, and considered as independent
during the time the business was negotiating. But this was not the
view of England. She wanted to draw France from the war, that she might
uninterruptedly pour out all her force and fury upon America; and being
disappointed in this plan, as well through the open and generous conduct
of Spain, as the determination of France, she refused the mediation
which she had solicited. I shall now give some extracts from the
justifying memorial of the Spanish court, in which she has set the
conduct and character of Britain, with respect to America, in a clear
and striking point of light.

The memorial, speaking of the refusal of the British court to meet in
conference with commissioners from the United States, who were to be
considered as independent during the time of the conference, says,

"It is a thing very extraordinary and even ridiculous, that the court of
London, who treats the colonies as independent, not only in acting, but
of right, during the war, should have a repugnance to treat them as
such only in acting during a truce, or suspension of hostilities.
The convention of Saratoga; the reputing General Burgoyne as a lawful
prisoner, in order to suspend his trial; the exchange and liberation of
other prisoners made from the colonies; the having named commissioners
to go and supplicate the Americans, at their own doors, request peace of
them, and treat with them and the Congress: and, finally, by a thousand
other acts of this sort, authorized by the court of London, which have
been, and are true signs of the acknowledgment of their independence.

"In aggravation of all the foregoing, at the same time the British
cabinet answered the King of Spain in the terms already mentioned, they
were insinuating themselves at the court of France by means of secret
emissaries, and making very great offers to her, to abandon the colonies
and make peace with England. But there is yet more; for at this same
time the English ministry were treating, by means of another certain
emissary, with Dr. Franklin, minister plenipotentiary from the colonies,
residing at Paris, to whom they made various proposals to disunite them
from France, and accommodate matters with England.

"From what has been observed, it evidently follows, that the whole
of the British politics was, to disunite the two courts of Paris and
Madrid, by means of the suggestions and offers which she separately
made to them; and also to separate the colonies from their treaties and
engagements entered into with France, and induce them to arm against the
house of Bourbon, or more probably to oppress them when they found,
from breaking their engagements, that they stood alone and without
protection.

"This, therefore, is the net they laid for the American states; that is
to say, to tempt them with flattering and very magnificent promises to
come to an accommodation with them, exclusive of any intervention of
Spain or France, that the British ministry might always remain the
arbiters of the fate of the colonies. But the Catholic king (the King
of Spain) faithful on the one part of the engagements which bind him
to the Most Christian king (the King of France) his nephew; just and
upright on the other, to his own subjects, whom he ought to protect
and guard against so many insults; and finally, full of humanity and
compassion for the Americans and other individuals who suffer in the
present war; he is determined to pursue and prosecute it, and to make
all the efforts in his power, until he can obtain a solid and permanent
peace, with full and satisfactory securities that it shall be observed."

Thus far the memorial; a translation of which into English, may be seen
in full, under the head of State Papers, in the Annual Register, for
1779.

The extracts I have here given, serve to show the various endeavors
and contrivances of the enemy, to draw France from her connection with
America, and to prevail on her to make a separate peace with England,
leaving America totally out of the question, and at the mercy of a
merciless, unprincipled enemy. The opinion, likewise, which Spain
has formed of the British cabinet's character for meanness and
perfidiousness, is so exactly the opinion of America respecting it,
that the memorial, in this instance, contains our own statements and
language; for people, however remote, who think alike, will unavoidably
speak alike.

Thus we see the insidious use which Britain endeavored to make of the
propositions of peace under the mediation of Spain. I shall now proceed
to the second proposition under the mediation of the Emperor of Germany
and the Empress of Russia; the general outline of which was, that a
congress of the several powers at war should meet at Vienna, in 1781,
to settle preliminaries of peace. I could wish myself at liberty to make
use of all the information which I am possessed of on this subject, but
as there is a delicacy in the matter, I do not conceive it prudent, at
least at present, to make references and quotations in the same manner
as I have done with respect to the mediation of Spain, who published the
whole proceedings herself; and therefore, what comes from me, on this
part of the business, must rest on my own credit with the public,
assuring them, that when the whole proceedings, relative to the proposed
Congress of Vienna shall appear, they will find my account not only
true, but studiously moderate.

We know at the time this mediation was on the carpet, the expectation of
the British king and ministry ran high with respect to the conquest of
America. The English packet which was taken with the mail on board,
and carried into l'Orient, in France, contained letters from Lord G.
Germaine to Sir Henry Clinton, which expressed in the fullest terms the
ministerial idea of a total conquest. Copies of those letters were sent
to congress and published in the newspapers of last year. Colonel
[John] Laurens brought over the originals, some of which, signed in the
handwriting of the then secretary, Germaine, are now in my possession.

Filled with these high ideas, nothing could be more insolent towards
America than the language of the British court on the proposed
mediation. A peace with France and Spain she anxiously solicited; but
America, as before, was to be left to her mercy, neither would she hear
any proposition for admitting an agent from the United States into the
congress of Vienna.

On the other hand, France, with an open, noble and manly determination,
and a fidelity of a good ally, would hear no proposition for a separate
peace, nor even meet in congress at Vienna, without an agent from
America: and likewise that the independent character of the United
States, represented by the agent, should be fully and unequivocally
defined and settled before any conference should be entered on. The
reasoning of the court of France on the several propositions of the
two imperial courts, which relate to us, is rather in the style of an
American than an ally, and she advocated the cause of America as if she
had been America herself.--Thus the second mediation, like the first,
proved ineffectual. But since that time, a reverse of fortune has
overtaken the British arms, and all their high expectations are dashed
to the ground. The noble exertions to the southward under General
[Nathaniel] Greene; the successful operations of the allied arms in the
Chesapeake; the loss of most of their islands in the West Indies, and
Minorca in the Mediterranean; the persevering spirit of Spain against
Gibraltar; the expected capture of Jamaica; the failure of making a
separate peace with Holland, and the expense of an hundred millions
sterling, by which all these fine losses were obtained, have read them
a loud lesson of disgraceful misfortune and necessity has called on them
to change their ground.

In this situation of confusion and despair, their present councils have
no fixed character. It is now the hurricane months of British politics.
Every day seems to have a storm of its own, and they are scudding under
the bare poles of hope. Beaten, but not humble; condemned, but not
penitent; they act like men trembling at fate and catching at a straw.
From this convulsion, in the entrails of their politics, it is more than
probable, that the mountain groaning in labor, will bring forth a mouse,
as to its size, and a monster in its make. They will try on America the
same insidious arts they tried on France and Spain.

We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal.
The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of
thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude,
find no way out--and, in the struggle of expression, every finger tries
to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too little for the mind,
and we look about for helps to show our thoughts by. Such must be the
sensation of America, whenever Britain, teeming with corruption, shall
propose to her to sacrifice her faith.

But, exclusive of the wickedness, there is a personal offence contained
in every such attempt. It is calling us villains: for no man asks the
other to act the villain unless he believes him inclined to be one.
No man attempts to seduce the truly honest woman. It is the supposed
looseness of her mind that starts the thoughts of seduction, and he who
offers it calls her a prostitute. Our pride is always hurt by the same
propositions which offend our principles; for when we are shocked at the
crime, we are wounded by the suspicion of our compliance.

Could I convey a thought that might serve to regulate the public mind,
I would not make the interest of the alliance the basis of defending
it. All the world are moved by interest, and it affords them nothing to
boast of. But I would go a step higher, and defend it on the ground of
honor and principle. That our public affairs have flourished under the
alliance--that it was wisely made, and has been nobly executed--that by
its assistance we are enabled to preserve our country from conquest, and
expel those who sought our destruction--that it is our true interest to
maintain it unimpaired, and that while we do so no enemy can conquer
us, are matters which experience has taught us, and the common good of
ourselves, abstracted from principles of faith and honor, would lead us
to maintain the connection.

But over and above the mere letter of the alliance, we have been nobly
and generously treated, and have had the same respect and attention paid
to us, as if we had been an old established country. To oblige and
be obliged is fair work among mankind, and we want an opportunity of
showing to the world that we are a people sensible of kindness and
worthy of confidence. Character is to us, in our present circumstances,
of more importance than interest. We are a young nation, just stepping
upon the stage of public life, and the eye of the world is upon us
to see how we act. We have an enemy who is watching to destroy our
reputation, and who will go any length to gain some evidence against
us, that may serve to render our conduct suspected, and our character
odious; because, could she accomplish this, wicked as it is, the world
would withdraw from us, as from a people not to be trusted, and our task
would then become difficult. There is nothing which sets the character
of a nation in a higher or lower light with others, than the faithfully
fulfilling, or perfidiously breaking, of treaties. They are things not
to be tampered with: and should Britain, which seems very probable,
propose to seduce America into such an act of baseness, it would
merit from her some mark of unusual detestation. It is one of those
extraordinary instances in which we ought not to be contented with the
bare negative of Congress, because it is an affront on the multitude as
well as on the government. It goes on the supposition that the public
are not honest men, and that they may be managed by contrivance, though
they cannot be conquered by arms. But, let the world and Britain know,
that we are neither to be bought nor sold; that our mind is great and
fixed; our prospect clear; and that we will support our character as
firmly as our independence.

But I will go still further; General Conway, who made the motion, in
the British Parliament, for discontinuing offensive war in America, is a
gentleman of an amiable character. We have no personal quarrel with him.
But he feels not as we feel; he is not in our situation, and that alone,
without any other explanation, is enough. The British Parliament suppose
they have many friends in America, and that, when all chance of conquest
is over, they will be able to draw her from her alliance with France.
Now, if I have any conception of the human heart, they will fail in this
more than in any thing that they have yet tried.

This part of the business is not a question of policy only, but of honor
and honesty; and the proposition will have in it something so visibly
low and base, that their partisans, if they have any, will be ashamed of
it. Men are often hurt by a mean action who are not startled at a wicked
one, and this will be such a confession of inability, such a declaration
of servile thinking, that the scandal of it will ruin all their hopes.

In short, we have nothing to do but to go on with vigor and
determination. The enemy is yet in our country. They hold New York,
Charleston, and Savannah, and the very being in those places is an
offence, and a part of offensive war, and until they can be driven from
them, or captured in them, it would be folly in us to listen to an idle
tale. I take it for granted that the British ministry are sinking under
the impossibility of carrying on the war. Let them then come to a fair
and open peace with France, Spain, Holland and America, in the manner
they ought to do; but until then, we can have nothing to say to them.

                                     COMMON SENSE.

                    PHILADELPHIA, May 22, 1782.



                        A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS

                         TO SIR GUY CARLETON.

IT is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune; and I
address this to you in behalf even of an enemy, a captain in the British
service, now on his way to the headquarters of the American army, and
unfortunately doomed to death for a crime not his own. A sentence so
extraordinary, an execution so repugnant to every human sensation, ought
never to be told without the circumstances which produced it: and as the
destined victim is yet in existence, and in your hands rests his life or
death, I shall briefly state the case, and the melancholy consequence.

Captain Huddy, of the Jersey militia, was attacked in a small fort on
Tom's River, by a party of refugees in the British pay and service, was
made prisoner, together with his company, carried to New York and lodged
in the provost of that city: about three weeks after which, he was taken
out of the provost down to the water-side, put into a boat, and brought
again upon the Jersey shore, and there, contrary to the practice of all
nations but savages, was hung up on a tree, and left hanging till found
by our people who took him down and buried him. The inhabitants of that
part of the country where the murder was committed, sent a deputation
to General Washington with a full and certified statement of the fact.
Struck, as every human breast must be, with such brutish outrage, and
determined both to punish and prevent it for the future, the General
represented the case to General Clinton, who then commanded, and
demanded that the refugee officer who ordered and attended the
execution, and whose name is Lippencott, should be delivered up as
a murderer; and in case of refusal, that the person of some British
officer should suffer in his stead. The demand, though not refused, has
not been complied with; and the melancholy lot (not by selection, but by
casting lots) has fallen upon Captain Asgill, of the Guards, who, as I
have already mentioned, is on his way from Lancaster to camp, a
martyr to the general wickedness of the cause he engaged in, and the
ingratitude of those whom he served.

The first reflection which arises on this black business is, what sort
of men must Englishmen be, and what sort of order and discipline do
they preserve in their army, when in the immediate place of their
headquarters, and under the eye and nose of their commander-in-chief,
a prisoner can be taken at pleasure from his confinement, and his death
made a matter of sport.

The history of the most savage Indians does not produce instances
exactly of this kind. They, at least, have a formality in their
punishments. With them it is the horridness of revenge, but with your
army it is a still greater crime, the horridness of diversion. The
British generals who have succeeded each other, from the time of General
Gage to yourself, have all affected to speak in language that they have
no right to. In their proclamations, their addresses, their letters
to General Washington, and their supplications to Congress (for they
deserve no other name) they talk of British honor, British generosity,
and British clemency, as if those things were matters of fact; whereas,
we whose eyes are open, who speak the same language with yourselves,
many of whom were born on the same spot with you, and who can no more
be mistaken in your words than in your actions, can declare to all the
world, that so far as our knowledge goes, there is not a more detestable
character, nor a meaner or more barbarous enemy, than the present
British one. With us, you have forfeited all pretensions to reputation,
and it is only by holding you like a wild beast, afraid of your keepers,
that you can be made manageable. But to return to the point in question.

Though I can think no man innocent who has lent his hand to destroy
the country which he did not plant, and to ruin those that he could not
enslave, yet, abstracted from all ideas of right and wrong on the
original question, Captain Asgill, in the present case, is not the
guilty man. The villain and the victim are here separated characters.
You hold the one and we the other. You disown, or affect to disown and
reprobate the conduct of Lippincut, yet you give him a sanctuary; and by
so doing you as effectually become the executioner of Asgill, as if you
had put the rope on his neck, and dismissed him from the world. Whatever
your feelings on this interesting occasion may be are best known to
yourself. Within the grave of your own mind lies buried the fate of
Asgill. He becomes the corpse of your will, or the survivor of your
justice. Deliver up the one, and you save the other; withhold the one,
and the other dies by your choice.

On our part the case is exceeding plain; an officer has been taken from
his confinement and murdered, and the murderer is within your lines.
Your army has been guilty of a thousand instances of equal cruelty,
but they have been rendered equivocal, and sheltered from personal
detection. Here the crime is fixed; and is one of those extraordinary
cases which can neither be denied nor palliated, and to which the custom
of war does not apply; for it never could be supposed that such a brutal
outrage would ever be committed. It is an original in the history
of civilized barbarians, and is truly British. On your part you are
accountable to us for the personal safety of the prisoners within your
walls. Here can be no mistake; they can neither be spies nor suspected
as such; your security is not endangered, nor your operations subjected
to miscarriage, by men immured within a dungeon. They differ in every
circumstance from men in the field, and leave no pretence for severity
of punishment. But if to the dismal condition of captivity with you must
be added the constant apprehensions of death; if to be imprisoned is
so nearly to be entombed; and if, after all, the murderers are to be
protected, and thereby the crime encouraged, wherein do you differ from
[American] Indians either in conduct or character?

We can have no idea of your honor, or your justice, in any future
transaction, of what nature it may be, while you shelter within your
lines an outrageous murderer, and sacrifice in his stead an officer of
your own. If you have no regard to us, at least spare the blood which
it is your duty to save. Whether the punishment will be greater on him,
who, in this case, innocently dies, or on him whom sad necessity forces
to retaliate, is, in the nicety of sensation, an undecided question? It
rests with you to prevent the sufferings of both. You have nothing to do
but to give up the murderer, and the matter ends.

But to protect him, be he who he may, is to patronize his crime, and to
trifle it off by frivolous and unmeaning inquiries, is to promote it.
There is no declaration you can make, nor promise you can give that will
obtain credit. It is the man and not the apology that is demanded.

You see yourself pressed on all sides to spare the life of your own
officer, for die he will if you withhold justice. The murder of Captain
Huddy is an offence not to be borne with, and there is no security which
we can have, that such actions or similar ones shall not be repeated,
but by making the punishment fall upon yourselves. To destroy the last
security of captivity, and to take the unarmed, the unresisting prisoner
to private and sportive execution, is carrying barbarity too high for
silence. The evil must be put an end to; and the choice of persons rests
with you. But if your attachment to the guilty is stronger than to the
innocent, you invent a crime that must destroy your character, and if
the cause of your king needs to be so supported, for ever cease, sir,
to torture our remembrance with the wretched phrases of British honor,
British generosity and British clemency.

From this melancholy circumstance, learn, sir, a lesson of morality. The
refugees are men whom your predecessors have instructed in wickedness,
the better to fit them to their master's purpose. To make them useful,
they have made them vile, and the consequence of their tutored villany
is now descending on the heads of their encouragers. They have been
trained like hounds to the scent of blood, and cherished in every
species of dissolute barbarity. Their ideas of right and wrong are
worn away in the constant habitude of repeated infamy, till, like men
practised in execution, they feel not the value of another's life.

The task before you, though painful, is not difficult; give up the
murderer, and save your officer, as the first outset of a necessary
reformation.                                             COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA May 31, 1782.




THE CRISIS. XII. TO THE EARL OF SHELBURNE.


MY LORD,--A speech, which has been printed in several of the British and
New York newspapers, as coming from your lordship, in answer to one from
the Duke of Richmond, of the 10th of July last, contains expressions and
opinions so new and singular, and so enveloped in mysterious reasoning,
that I address this publication to you, for the purpose of giving them a
free and candid examination. The speech I allude to is in these words:

"His lordship said, it had been mentioned in another place, that he had
been guilty of inconsistency. To clear himself of this, he asserted that
he still held the same principles in respect to American independence
which he at first imbibed. He had been, and yet was of opinion, whenever
the Parliament of Great Britain acknowledges that point, the sun of
England's glory is set forever. Such were the sentiments he possessed on
a former day, and such the sentiments he continued to hold at this
hour. It was the opinion of Lord Chatham, as well as many other able
statesmen. Other noble lords, however, think differently, and as the
majority of the cabinet support them, he acquiesced in the measure,
dissenting from the idea; and the point is settled for bringing
the matter into the full discussion of Parliament, where it will be
candidly, fairly, and impartially debated. The independence of America
would end in the ruin of England; and that a peace patched up with
France, would give that proud enemy the means of yet trampling on this
country. The sun of England's glory he wished not to see set forever; he
looked for a spark at least to be left, which might in time light us
up to a new day. But if independence was to be granted, if Parliament
deemed that measure prudent, he foresaw, in his own mind, that England
was undone. He wished to God that he had been deputed to Congress, that
be might plead the cause of that country as well as of this, and that he
might exercise whatever powers he possessed as an orator, to save both
from ruin, in a conviction to Congress, that, if their independence was
signed, their liberties were gone forever.

"Peace, his lordship added, was a desirable object, but it must be an
honorable peace, and not an humiliating one, dictated by France, or
insisted on by America. It was very true, that this kingdom was not in a
flourishing state, it was impoverished by war. But if we were not
rich, it was evident that France was poor. If we were straitened in our
finances, the enemy were exhausted in their resources. This was a great
empire; it abounded with brave men, who were able and willing to fight
in a common cause; the language of humiliation should not, therefore, be
the language of Great Britain. His lordship said, that he was not afraid
nor ashamed of those expressions going to America. There were numbers,
great numbers there, who were of the same way of thinking, in respect
to that country being dependent on this, and who, with his lordship,
perceived ruin and independence linked together."

Thus far the speech; on which I remark--That his lordship is a total
stranger to the mind and sentiments of America; that he has wrapped
himself up in fond delusion, that something less than independence, may,
under his administration, be accepted; and he wishes himself sent to
Congress, to prove the most extraordinary of all doctrines, which is,
that independence, the sublimest of all human conditions, is loss of
liberty.

In answer to which we may say, that in order to know what the contrary
word dependence means, we have only to look back to those years of
severe humiliation, when the mildest of all petitions could obtain no
other notice than the haughtiest of all insults; and when the base
terms of unconditional submission were demanded, or undistinguishable
destruction threatened. It is nothing to us that the ministry have been
changed, for they may be changed again. The guilt of a government is
the crime of a whole country; and the nation that can, though but for
a moment, think and act as England has done, can never afterwards be
believed or trusted. There are cases in which it is as impossible to
restore character to life, as it is to recover the dead. It is a phoenix
that can expire but once, and from whose ashes there is no resurrection.
Some offences are of such a slight composition, that they reach no
further than the temper, and are created or cured by a thought. But the
sin of England has struck the heart of America, and nature has not left
in our power to say we can forgive.

Your lordship wishes for an opportunity to plead before Congress the
cause of England and America, and to save, as you say, both from ruin.

That the country, which, for more than seven years has sought our
destruction, should now cringe to solicit our protection, is adding the
wretchedness of disgrace to the misery of disappointment; and if England
has the least spark of supposed honor left, that spark must be darkened
by asking, and extinguished by receiving, the smallest favor from
America; for the criminal who owes his life to the grace and mercy of
the injured, is more executed by living, than he who dies.

But a thousand pleadings, even from your lordship, can have no effect.
Honor, interest, and every sensation of the heart, would plead against
you. We are a people who think not as you think; and what is equally
true, you cannot feel as we feel. The situations of the two countries
are exceedingly different. Ours has been the seat of war; yours has seen
nothing of it. The most wanton destruction has been committed in our
sight; the most insolent barbarity has been acted on our feelings. We
can look round and see the remains of burnt and destroyed houses, once
the fair fruit of hard industry, and now the striking monuments of
British brutality. We walk over the dead whom we loved, in every part of
America, and remember by whom they fell. There is scarcely a village but
brings to life some melancholy thought, and reminds us of what we have
suffered, and of those we have lost by the inhumanity of Britain. A
thousand images arise to us, which, from situation, you cannot see, and
are accompanied by as many ideas which you cannot know; and therefore
your supposed system of reasoning would apply to nothing, and all your
expectations die of themselves.

The question whether England shall accede to the independence of
America, and which your lordship says is to undergo a parliamentary
discussion, is so very simple, and composed of so few cases, that it
scarcely needs a debate.

It is the only way out of an expensive and ruinous war, which has no
object, and without which acknowledgment there can be no peace.

But your lordship says, the sun of Great Britain will set whenever she
acknowledges the independence of America.--Whereas the metaphor would
have been strictly just, to have left the sun wholly out of the figure,
and have ascribed her not acknowledging it to the influence of the moon.

But the expression, if true, is the greatest confession of disgrace
that could be made, and furnishes America with the highest notions of
sovereign independent importance. Mr. Wedderburne, about the year 1776,
made use of an idea of much the same kind,--Relinquish America! says
he--What is it but to desire a giant to shrink spontaneously into a
dwarf.

Alas! are those people who call themselves Englishmen, of so little
internal consequence, that when America is gone, or shuts her eyes
upon them, their sun is set, they can shine no more, but grope about in
obscurity, and contract into insignificant animals? Was America, then,
the giant of the empire, and England only her dwarf in waiting! Is the
case so strangely altered, that those who once thought we could not live
without them, are now brought to declare that they cannot exist without
us? Will they tell to the world, and that from their first minister of
state, that America is their all in all; that it is by her importance
only that they can live, and breathe, and have a being? Will they, who
long since threatened to bring us to their feet, bow themselves to
ours, and own that without us they are not a nation? Are they become so
unqualified to debate on independence, that they have lost all idea of
it themselves, and are calling to the rocks and mountains of America to
cover their insignificance? Or, if America is lost, is it manly to sob
over it like a child for its rattle, and invite the laughter of the
world by declarations of disgrace? Surely, a more consistent line of
conduct would be to bear it without complaint; and to show that England,
without America, can preserve her independence, and a suitable rank with
other European powers. You were not contented while you had her, and to
weep for her now is childish.

But Lord Shelburne thinks something may yet be done. What that something
is, or how it is to be accomplished, is a matter in obscurity. By arms
there is no hope. The experience of nearly eight years, with the expense
of an hundred million pounds sterling, and the loss of two armies,
must positively decide that point. Besides, the British have lost their
interest in America with the disaffected. Every part of it has been
tried. There is no new scene left for delusion: and the thousands
who have been ruined by adhering to them, and have now to quit the
settlements which they had acquired, and be conveyed like transports to
cultivate the deserts of Augustine and Nova Scotia, has put an end to
all further expectations of aid.

If you cast your eyes on the people of England, what have they
to console themselves with for the millions expended? Or, what
encouragement is there left to continue throwing good money after bad?
America can carry on the war for ten years longer, and all the charges
of government included, for less than you can defray the charges of war
and government for one year. And I, who know both countries, know well,
that the people of America can afford to pay their share of the expense
much better than the people of England can. Besides, it is their own
estates and property, their own rights, liberties and government, that
they are defending; and were they not to do it, they would deserve to
lose all, and none would pity them. The fault would be their own, and
their punishment just.

The British army in America care not how long the war lasts. They enjoy
an easy and indolent life. They fatten on the folly of one country and
the spoils of another; and, between their plunder and their prey, may go
home rich. But the case is very different with the laboring farmer, the
working tradesman, and the necessitous poor in England, the sweat of
whose brow goes day after day to feed, in prodigality and sloth, the
army that is robbing both them and us. Removed from the eye of that
country that supports them, and distant from the government that employs
them, they cut and carve for themselves, and there is none to call them
to account.

But England will be ruined, says Lord Shelburne, if America is
independent.

Then I say, is England already ruined, for America is already
independent: and if Lord Shelburne will not allow this, he immediately
denies the fact which he infers. Besides, to make England the mere
creature of America, is paying too great a compliment to us, and too
little to himself.

But the declaration is a rhapsody of inconsistency. For to say, as Lord
Shelburne has numberless times said, that the war against America is
ruinous, and yet to continue the prosecution of that ruinous war for
the purpose of avoiding ruin, is a language which cannot be understood.
Neither is it possible to see how the independence of America is to
accomplish the ruin of England after the war is over, and yet not affect
it before. America cannot be more independent of her, nor a greater
enemy to her, hereafter than she now is; nor can England derive less
advantages from her than at present: why then is ruin to follow in the
best state of the case, and not in the worst? And if not in the worst,
why is it to follow at all?

That a nation is to be ruined by peace and commerce, and fourteen or
fifteen millions a-year less expenses than before, is a new doctrine in
politics. We have heard much clamor of national savings and economy; but
surely the true economy would be, to save the whole charge of a silly,
foolish, and headstrong war; because, compared with this, all other
retrenchments are baubles and trifles.

But is it possible that Lord Shelburne can be serious in supposing that
the least advantage can be obtained by arms, or that any advantage can
be equal to the expense or the danger of attempting it? Will not
the capture of one army after another satisfy him, must all become
prisoners? Must England ever be the sport of hope, and the victim of
delusion? Sometimes our currency was to fail; another time our army was
to disband; then whole provinces were to revolt. Such a general said
this and that; another wrote so and so; Lord Chatham was of this
opinion; and lord somebody else of another. To-day 20,000 Russians and
20 Russian ships of the line were to come; to-morrow the empress was
abused without mercy or decency. Then the Emperor of Germany was to
be bribed with a million of money, and the King of Prussia was to do
wonderful things. At one time it was, Lo here! and then it was, Lo
there! Sometimes this power, and sometimes that power, was to engage in
the war, just as if the whole world was mad and foolish like Britain.
And thus, from year to year, has every straw been catched at, and every
Will-with-a-wisp led them a new dance.

This year a still newer folly is to take place. Lord Shelburne wishes to
be sent to Congress, and he thinks that something may be done.

Are not the repeated declarations of Congress, and which all America
supports, that they will not even hear any proposals whatever, until the
unconditional and unequivocal independence of America is recognised; are
not, I say, these declarations answer enough?

But for England to receive any thing from America now, after so many
insults, injuries and outrages, acted towards us, would show such
a spirit of meanness in her, that we could not but despise her for
accepting it. And so far from Lord Shelburne's coming here to solicit
it, it would be the greatest disgrace we could do them to offer it.
England would appear a wretch indeed, at this time of day, to ask or owe
any thing to the bounty of America. Has not the name of Englishman blots
enough upon it, without inventing more? Even Lucifer would scorn to
reign in heaven by permission, and yet an Englishman can creep for only
an entrance into America. Or, has a land of liberty so many charms, that
to be a doorkeeper in it is better than to be an English minister of
state?

But what can this expected something be? Or, if obtained, what can it
amount to, but new disgraces, contentions and quarrels? The people
of America have for years accustomed themselves to think and speak so
freely and contemptuously of English authority, and the inveteracy is
so deeply rooted, that a person invested with any authority from that
country, and attempting to exercise it here, would have the life of a
toad under a harrow. They would look on him as an interloper, to whom
their compassion permitted a residence. He would be no more than the
Mungo of a farce; and if he disliked that, he must set off. It would
be a station of degradation, debased by our pity, and despised by our
pride, and would place England in a more contemptible situation than
any she has yet been in during the war. We have too high an opinion
of ourselves, even to think of yielding again the least obedience to
outlandish authority; and for a thousand reasons, England would be the
last country in the world to yield it to. She has been treacherous, and
we know it. Her character is gone, and we have seen the funeral.

Surely she loves to fish in troubled waters, and drink the cup of
contention, or she would not now think of mingling her affairs with
those of America. It would be like a foolish dotard taking to his arms
the bride that despises him, or who has placed on his head the ensigns
of her disgust. It is kissing the hand that boxes his ears, and
proposing to renew the exchange. The thought is as servile as the war is
wicked, and shows the last scene of the drama to be as inconsistent as
the first.

As America is gone, the only act of manhood is to let her go. Your
lordship had no hand in the separation, and you will gain no honor
by temporising politics. Besides, there is something so exceedingly
whimsical, unsteady, and even insincere in the present conduct of
England, that she exhibits herself in the most dishonorable colors. On
the second of August last, General Carleton and Admiral Digby wrote to
General Washington in these words:

"The resolution of the House of Commons, of the 27th of February last,
has been placed in Your Excellency's hands, and intimations given at
the same time that further pacific measures were likely to follow. Since
which, until the present time, we have had no direct communications
with England; but a mail is now arrived, which brings us very important
information. We are acquainted, sir, by authority, that negotiations for
a general peace have already commenced at Paris, and that Mr. Grenville
is invested with full powers to treat with all the parties at war, and
is now at Paris in execution of his commission. And we are further, sir,
made acquainted, that His Majesty, in order to remove any obstacles to
this peace which he so ardently wishes to restore, has commanded his
ministers to direct Mr. Grenville, that the independence of the Thirteen
United Provinces, should be proposed by him in the first instance,
instead of making it a condition of a general treaty."

Now, taking your present measures into view, and comparing them with the
declaration in this letter, pray what is the word of your king, or his
ministers, or the Parliament, good for? Must we not look upon you as a
confederated body of faithless, treacherous men, whose assurances are
fraud, and their language deceit? What opinion can we possibly form of
you, but that you are a lost, abandoned, profligate nation, who sport
even with your own character, and are to be held by nothing but the
bayonet or the halter?

To say, after this, that the sun of Great Britain will be set whenever
she acknowledges the independence of America, when the not doing it is
the unqualified lie of government, can be no other than the language of
ridicule, the jargon of inconsistency. There were thousands in America
who predicted the delusion, and looked upon it as a trick of treachery,
to take us from our guard, and draw off our attention from the only
system of finance, by which we can be called, or deserve to be called,
a sovereign, independent people. The fraud, on your part, might be worth
attempting, but the sacrifice to obtain it is too high.

There are others who credited the assurance, because they thought it
impossible that men who had their characters to establish, would begin
with a lie. The prosecution of the war by the former ministry was savage
and horrid; since which it has been mean, trickish, and delusive.
The one went greedily into the passion of revenge, the other into the
subtleties of low contrivance; till, between the crimes of both, there
is scarcely left a man in America, be he Whig or Tory, who does not
despise or detest the conduct of Britain.

The management of Lord Shelburne, whatever may be his views, is a
caution to us, and must be to the world, never to regard British
assurances. A perfidy so notorious cannot be hid. It stands even in the
public papers of New York, with the names of Carleton and Digby affixed
to it. It is a proclamation that the king of England is not to be
believed; that the spirit of lying is the governing principle of the
ministry. It is holding up the character of the House of Commons to
public infamy, and warning all men not to credit them. Such are the
consequences which Lord Shelburne's management has brought upon his
country.

After the authorized declarations contained in Carleton and Digby's
letter, you ought, from every motive of honor, policy and prudence,
to have fulfilled them, whatever might have been the event. It was
the least atonement that you could possibly make to America, and the
greatest kindness you could do to yourselves; for you will save millions
by a general peace, and you will lose as many by continuing the war.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 29, 1782.

P. S. The manuscript copy of this letter is sent your lordship, by the
way of our head-quarters, to New York, inclosing a late pamphlet of
mine, addressed to the Abbe Raynal, which will serve to give your
lordship some idea of the principles and sentiments of America.

                                                 C. S.




THE CRISIS. XIII. THOUGHTS ON THE PEACE, AND PROBABLE ADVANTAGES
THEREOF.

"THE times that tried men's souls,"* are over--and the greatest and
completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily
accomplished.


     * "These are the times that try men's souls," The Crisis No. I.
published December, 1776.

But to pass from the extremes of danger to safety--from the tumult
of war to the tranquillity of peace, though sweet in contemplation,
requires a gradual composure of the senses to receive it. Even calmness
has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly upon us. The long
and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment, would leave us in a
state rather of wonder than enjoyment; and some moments of recollection
must pass, before we could be capable of tasting the felicity of repose.
There are but few instances, in which the mind is fitted for sudden
transitions: it takes in its pleasures by reflection and comparison
and those must have time to act, before the relish for new scenes is
complete.

In the present case--the mighty magnitude of the object--the various
uncertainties of fate it has undergone--the numerous and complicated
dangers we have suffered or escaped--the eminence we now stand on,
and the vast prospect before us, must all conspire to impress us with
contemplation.

To see it in our power to make a world happy--to teach mankind the art
of being so--to exhibit, on the theatre of the universe a character
hitherto unknown--and to have, as it were, a new creation intrusted to
our hands, are honors that command reflection, and can neither be too
highly estimated, nor too gratefully received.

In this pause then of recollection--while the storm is ceasing, and the
long agitated mind vibrating to a rest, let us look back on the scenes
we have passed, and learn from experience what is yet to be done.

Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this. Her
setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was unclouded
and promising. Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her
temper serene and firm. Her conduct regulated by the nicest steps, and
everything about her wore the mark of honor. It is not every country
(perhaps there is not another in the world) that can boast so fair
an origin. Even the first settlement of America corresponds with the
character of the revolution. Rome, once the proud mistress of the
universe, was originally a band of ruffians. Plunder and rapine made her
rich, and her oppression of millions made her great. But America need
never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate the stages by which she
rose to empire.

The remembrance, then, of what is past, if it operates rightly, must
inspire her with the most laudable of all ambition, that of adding to
the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great in adversity;
struggling, without a thought of yielding, beneath accumulated
difficulties, bravely, nay proudly, encountering distress, and rising
in resolution as the storm increased. All this is justly due to her, for
her fortitude has merited the character. Let, then, the world see that
she can bear prosperity: and that her honest virtue in time of peace, is
equal to the bravest virtue in time of war.

She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domestic life. Not
beneath the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy in her own
land, and under her own vine, the sweet of her labors, and the reward of
her toil.--In this situation, may she never forget that a fair national
reputation is of as much importance as independence. That it possesses
a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies civil. That it
gives a dignity which is often superior to power, and commands reverence
where pomp and splendor fail.

It would be a circumstance ever to be lamented and never to be
forgotten, were a single blot, from any cause whatever, suffered to fall
on a revolution, which to the end of time must be an honor to the age
that accomplished it: and which has contributed more to enlighten the
world, and diffuse a spirit of freedom and liberality among mankind,
than any human event (if this may be called one) that ever preceded it.

It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war,
that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other
times appear so amiable. The continual spectacle of woe blunts the
finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, renders it
familiar. In like manner, are many of the moral obligations of society
weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity becomes an apology,
where it is truly a crime. Yet let but a nation conceive rightly of
its character, and it will be chastely just in protecting it. None
ever began with a fairer than America and none can be under a greater
obligation to preserve it.

The debt which America has contracted, compared with the cause she
has gained, and the advantages to flow from it, ought scarcely to be
mentioned. She has it in her choice to do, and to live as happily as
she pleases. The world is in her hands. She has no foreign power
to monopolize her commerce, perplex her legislation, or control her
prosperity. The struggle is over, which must one day have happened, and,
perhaps, never could have happened at a better time.* And instead of a
domineering master, she has gained an ally whose exemplary greatness,
and universal liberality, have extorted a confession even from her
enemies.


     * That the revolution began at the exact period of time best fitted
to the purpose, is sufficiently proved by the event.--But the great
hinge on which the whole machine turned, is the Union of the States: and
this union was naturally produced by the inability of any one state to
support itself against any foreign enemy without the assistance of the
rest. Had the states severally been less able than they were when
the war began, their united strength would not have been equal to the
undertaking, and they must in all human probability have failed.--And,
on the other hand, had they severally been more able, they might not
have seen, or, what is more, might not have felt, the necessity
of uniting: and, either by attempting to stand alone or in small
confederacies, would have been separately conquered. Now, as we cannot
see a time (and many years must pass away before it can arrive) when the
strength of any one state, or several united, can be equal to the whole
of the present United States, and as we have seen the extreme difficulty
of collectively prosecuting the war to a successful issue, and
preserving our national importance in the world, therefore, from the
experience we have had, and the knowledge we have gained, we must,
unless we make a waste of wisdom, be strongly impressed with the
advantage, as well as the necessity of strengthening that happy union
which had been our salvation, and without which we should have been
a ruined people. While I was writing this note, I cast my eye on the
pamphlet, Common Sense, from which I shall make an extract, as it
exactly applies to the case. It is as follows: "I have never met with
a man, either in England or America, who has not confessed it as his
opinion that a separation between the countries would take place one
time or other; and there is no instance in which we have shown less
judgment, than in endeavoring to describe what we call the ripeness
or fitness of the continent for independence. As all men allow the
measure, and differ only in their opinion of the time, let us, in order
to remove mistakes, take a general survey of things, and endeavor, if
possible, to find out the very time. But we need not to go far,
the inquiry ceases at once, for, the time has found us. The general
concurrence, the glorious union of all things prove the fact. It is not
in numbers, but in a union, that our great strength lies. The continent
is just arrived at that pitch of strength, in which no single colony is
able to support itself, and the whole, when united, can accomplish
the matter; and either more or less than this, might be fatal in its
effects."

With the blessings of peace, independence, and an universal commerce,
the states, individually and collectively, will have leisure and
opportunity to regulate and establish their domestic concerns, and to
put it beyond the power of calumny to throw the least reflection on
their honor. Character is much easier kept than recovered, and that man,
if any such there be, who, from sinister views, or littleness of soul,
lends unseen his hand to injure it, contrives a wound it will never be
in his power to heal.

As we have established an inheritance for posterity, let that
inheritance descend, with every mark of an honorable conveyance.
The little it will cost, compared with the worth of the states, the
greatness of the object, and the value of the national character, will
be a profitable exchange.

But that which must more forcibly strike a thoughtful, penetrating mind,
and which includes and renders easy all inferior concerns, is the UNION
OF THE STATES. On this our great national character depends. It is this
which must give us importance abroad and security at home. It is through
this only that we are, or can be, nationally known in the world; it is
the flag of the United States which renders our ships and commerce safe
on the seas, or in a foreign port. Our Mediterranean passes must be
obtained under the same style. All our treaties, whether of alliance,
peace, or commerce, are formed under the sovereignty of the United
States, and Europe knows us by no other name or title.

The division of the empire into states is for our own convenience, but
abroad this distinction ceases. The affairs of each state are local.
They can go no further than to itself. And were the whole worth of even
the richest of them expended in revenue, it would not be sufficient to
support sovereignty against a foreign attack. In short, we have no other
national sovereignty than as United States. It would even be fatal
for us if we had--too expensive to be maintained, and impossible to be
supported. Individuals, or individual states, may call themselves what
they please; but the world, and especially the world of enemies, is
not to be held in awe by the whistling of a name. Sovereignty must have
power to protect all the parts that compose and constitute it: and as
UNITED STATES we are equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise
we are not. Our union, well and wisely regulated and cemented, is the
cheapest way of being great--the easiest way of being powerful, and the
happiest invention in government which the circumstances of America can
admit of.--Because it collects from each state, that which, by being
inadequate, can be of no use to it, and forms an aggregate that serves
for all.

The states of Holland are an unfortunate instance of the effects of
individual sovereignty. Their disjointed condition exposes them to
numerous intrigues, losses, calamities, and enemies; and the almost
impossibility of bringing their measures to a decision, and that
decision into execution, is to them, and would be to us, a source of
endless misfortune.

It is with confederated states as with individuals in society; something
must be yielded up to make the whole secure. In this view of things
we gain by what we give, and draw an annual interest greater than the
capital.--I ever feel myself hurt when I hear the union, that great
palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of.
It is the most sacred thing in the constitution of America, and that
which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our citizenship
in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any
particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we
are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is
AMERICANS--our inferior one varies with the place.

So far as my endeavors could go, they have all been directed to
conciliate the affections, unite the interests, and draw and keep
the mind of the country together; and the better to assist in this
foundation work of the revolution, I have avoided all places of profit
or office, either in the state I live in, or in the United States; kept
myself at a distance from all parties and party connections, and even
disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we take into
view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as we ought
to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that the
little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are as
dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious to our repose.

It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with which
it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country appeared to me
in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural reconciliation with those
who were determined to reduce her, instead of striking out into the only
line that could cement and save her, A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, made
it impossible for me, feeling as I did, to be silent: and if, in the
course of more than seven years, I have rendered her any service, I have
likewise added something to the reputation of literature, by freely and
disinterestedly employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing
that there may be genius without prostitution.

Independence always appeared to me practicable and probable, provided
the sentiment of the country could be formed and held to the object:
and there is no instance in the world, where a people so extended,
and wedded to former habits of thinking, and under such a variety of
circumstances, were so instantly and effectually pervaded, by a turn
in politics, as in the case of independence; and who supported their
opinion, undiminished, through such a succession of good and ill
fortune, till they crowned it with success.

But as the scenes of war are closed, and every man preparing for home
and happier times, I therefore take my leave of the subject. I have most
sincerely followed it from beginning to end, and through all its turns
and windings: and whatever country I may hereafter be in, I shall always
feel an honest pride at the part I have taken and acted, and a gratitude
to nature and providence for putting it in my power to be of some use to
mankind.

                                                COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1783.




A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS: TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA.

IN "_Rivington's New York Gazette_," of December 6th, is a publication,
under the appearance of a letter from London, dated September 30th; and
is on a subject which demands the attention of the United States.

The public will remember that a treaty of commerce between the United
States and England was set on foot last spring, and that until the
said treaty could be completed, a bill was brought into the British
Parliament by the then chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Pitt, to admit
and legalize (as the case then required) the commerce of the United
States into the British ports and dominions. But neither the one nor the
other has been completed. The commercial treaty is either broken off, or
remains as it began; and the bill in Parliament has been thrown aside.
And in lieu thereof, a selfish system of English politics has started
up, calculated to fetter the commerce of America, by engrossing to
England the carrying trade of the American produce to the West India
islands.

Among the advocates for this last measure is Lord Sheffield, a member
of the British Parliament, who has published a pamphlet entitled
"Observations on the Commerce of the American States." The pamphlet
has two objects; the one is to allure the Americans to purchase British
manufactures; and the other to spirit up the British Parliament to
prohibit the citizens of the United States from trading to the West
India islands.

Viewed in this light, the pamphlet, though in some parts dexterously
written, is an absurdity. It offends, in the very act of endeavoring
to ingratiate; and his lordship, as a politician, ought not to have
suffered the two objects to have appeared together. The latter alluded
to, contains extracts from the pamphlet, with high encomiums on Lord
Sheffield, for laboriously endeavoring (as the letter styles it) "to
show the mighty advantages of retaining the carrying trade."

Since the publication of this pamphlet in England, the commerce of
the United States to the West Indies, in American vessels, has been
prohibited; and all intercourse, except in British bottoms, the property
of and navigated by British subjects, cut off.

That a country has a right to be as foolish as it pleases, has been
proved by the practice of England for many years past: in her island
situation, sequestered from the world, she forgets that her whispers are
heard by other nations; and in her plans of politics and commerce she
seems not to know, that other votes are necessary besides her own.
America would be equally as foolish as Britain, were she to suffer so
great a degradation on her flag, and such a stroke on the freedom of her
commerce, to pass without a balance.

We admit the right of any nation to prohibit the commerce of another
into its own dominions, where there are no treaties to the contrary; but
as this right belongs to one side as well as the other, there is always
a way left to bring avarice and insolence to reason.

But the ground of security which Lord Sheffield has chosen to erect his
policy upon, is of a nature which ought, and I think must, awaken
in every American a just and strong sense of national dignity. Lord
Sheffield appears to be sensible, that in advising the British nation
and Parliament to engross to themselves so great a part of the carrying
trade of America, he is attempting a measure which cannot succeed, if
the politics of the United States be properly directed to counteract the
assumption.

But, says he, in his pamphlet, "It will be a long time before the
American states can be brought to act as a nation, neither are they to
be feared as such by us."

What is this more or less than to tell us, that while we have no
national system of commerce, the British will govern our trade by their
own laws and proclamations as they please. The quotation discloses
a truth too serious to be overlooked, and too mischievous not to be
remedied.

Among other circumstances which led them to this discovery none could
operate so effectually as the injudicious, uncandid and indecent
opposition made by sundry persons in a certain state, to the
recommendations of Congress last winter, for an import duty of five per
cent. It could not but explain to the British a weakness in the national
power of America, and encourage them to attempt restrictions on her
trade, which otherwise they would not have dared to hazard. Neither is
there any state in the union, whose policy was more misdirected to its
interest than the state I allude to, because her principal support is
the carrying trade, which Britain, induced by the want of a well-centred
power in the United States to protect and secure, is now attempting to
take away. It fortunately happened (and to no state in the union more
than the state in question) that the terms of peace were agreed on
before the opposition appeared, otherwise, there cannot be a doubt, that
if the same idea of the diminished authority of America had occurred
to them at that time as has occurred to them since, but they would have
made the same grasp at the fisheries, as they have done at the carrying
trade.

It is surprising that an authority which can be supported with so much
ease, and so little expense, and capable of such extensive advantages
to the country, should be cavilled at by those whose duty it is to watch
over it, and whose existence as a people depends upon it. But this,
perhaps, will ever be the case, till some misfortune awakens us into
reason, and the instance now before us is but a gentle beginning of what
America must expect, unless she guards her union with nicer care and
stricter honor. United, she is formidable, and that with the least
possible charge a nation can be so; separated, she is a medley of
individual nothings, subject to the sport of foreign nations.

It is very probable that the ingenuity of commerce may have found out
a method to evade and supersede the intentions of the British, in
interdicting the trade with the West India islands. The language of both
being the same, and their customs well understood, the vessels of one
country may, by deception, pass for those of another. But this would
be a practice too debasing for a sovereign people to stoop to, and too
profligate not to be discountenanced. An illicit trade, under any shape
it can be placed, cannot be carried on without a violation of truth.
America is now sovereign and independent, and ought to conduct her
affairs in a regular style of character. She has the same right to
say that no British vessel shall enter ports, or that no British
manufactures shall be imported, but in American bottoms, the property
of, and navigated by American subjects, as Britain has to say the same
thing respecting the West Indies. Or she may lay a duty of ten, fifteen,
or twenty shillings per ton (exclusive of other duties) on every
British vessel coming from any port of the West Indies, where she is not
admitted to trade, the said tonnage to continue as long on her side as
the prohibition continues on the other.

But it is only by acting in union, that the usurpations of foreign
nations on the freedom of trade can be counteracted, and security
extended to the commerce of America. And when we view a flag, which to
the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires
a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our
interest to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other.

                                                COMMON SENSE.

NEW YORK, December 9, 1783.







THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE, VOLUME II.

By Thomas Paine

Collected And Edited By

Moncure Daniel Conway


1779 - 1792



[Redactor's Note: Reprinted from the "The Writings of Thomas Paine
Volume I" (1894 - 1896). The author's notes are preceded by a "*". A
Table of Contents has been added for each part for the convenience of
the reader which is not included in the printed edition. Notes are at
the end of Part II. ]




                         TABLE OF CONTENTS

                       XIII The Rights of Man

                            PART THE FIRST
    BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

  *  Editor's Introduction
  *  Dedication to George Washington
  *  Preface to the English Edition
  *  Preface to the French Edition
  *  Rights of Man
  *  Miscellaneous Chapter
  *  Conclusion

                       XIV The Rights of Man

                           PART THE SECOND
                   COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

  *  French Translator's Preface
  *  Dedication to M. de la Fayette
  *  Preface
  *  Introduction
  *  Chapter I   Of Society and Civilisation
  *  Chapter II  Of the Origin of the Present Old Governments
  *  Chapter III Of the Old and New Systems of Government
  *  Chapter IV  Of Constitutions
  *  Chapter V   Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe,
     Interspersed with Miscellaneous Observations

  *  Appendix
  *  Notes




XIII. RIGHTS OF MAN.




EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.


WHEN Thomas Paine sailed from America for France, in April, 1787, he was
perhaps as happy a man as any in the world. His most intimate friend,
Jefferson, was Minister at Paris, and his friend Lafayette was the idol
of France. His fame had preceded him, and he at once became, in Paris,
the centre of the same circle of savants and philosophers that had
surrounded Franklin. His main reason for proceeding at once to Paris was
that he might submit to the Academy of Sciences his invention of an iron
bridge, and with its favorable verdict he came to England, in September.
He at once went to his aged mother at Thetford, leaving with a publisher
(Ridgway), his "Prospects on the Rubicon." He next made arrangements to
patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it
exhibited on Paddington Green, London. He was welcomed in England by
leading statesmen, such as Lansdowne and Fox, and above all by Edmund
Burke, who for some time had him as a guest at Beaconsfield, and drove
him about in various parts of the country. He had not the slightest
revolutionary purpose, either as regarded England or France. Towards
Louis XVI. he felt only gratitude for the services he had rendered
America, and towards George III. he felt no animosity whatever. His four
months' sojourn in Paris had convinced him that there was approaching a
reform of that country after the American model, except that the Crown
would be preserved, a compromise he approved, provided the throne should
not be hereditary. Events in France travelled more swiftly than he had
anticipated, and Paine was summoned by Lafayette, Condorcet, and others,
as an adviser in the formation of a new constitution.

Such was the situation immediately preceding the political and literary
duel between Paine and Burke, which in the event turned out a tremendous
war between Royalism and Republicanism in Europe. Paine was, both in
France and in England, the inspirer of moderate counsels. Samuel Rogers
relates that in early life he dined at a friend's house in London
with Thomas Paine, when one of the toasts given was the "memory of
Joshua,"--in allusion to the Hebrew leader's conquest of the kings of
Canaan, and execution of them. Paine observed that he would not treat
kings like Joshua. "I 'm of the Scotch parson's opinion," he said,
"when he prayed against Louis XIV.--`Lord, shake him over the mouth of
hell, but don't let him drop!'" Paine then gave as his toast, "The
Republic of the World,"--which Samuel Rogers, aged twenty-nine, noted
as a sublime idea. This was Paine's faith and hope, and with it he
confronted the revolutionary storms which presently burst over France
and England.

Until Burke's arraignment of France in his parliamentary speech
(February 9, 1790), Paine had no doubt whatever that he would sympathize
with the movement in France, and wrote to him from that country as
if conveying glad tidings. Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in
France" appeared November 1, 1790, and Paine at once set himself to
answer it. He was then staying at the Angel Inn, Islington. The inn
has been twice rebuilt since that time, and from its contents there is
preserved only a small image, which perhaps was meant to represent
"Liberty,"--possibly brought from Paris by Paine as an ornament for his
study. From the Angel he removed to a house in Harding Street, Fetter
Lane. Rickman says Part First of "Rights of Man" was finished at
Versailles, but probably this has reference to the preface only, as I
cannot find Paine in France that year until April 8. The book had been
printed by Johnson, in time for the opening of Parliament, in February;
but this publisher became frightened after a few copies were out (there
is one in the British Museum), and the work was transferred to J. S.
Jordan, 166 Fleet Street, with a preface sent from Paris (not contained
in Johnson's edition, nor in the American editions). The pamphlet,
though sold at the same price as Burke's, three shillings, had a vast
circulation, and Paine gave the proceeds to the Constitutional Societies
which sprang up under his teachings in various parts of the country.

Soon after appeared Burke's "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs." In
this Burke quoted a good deal from "Rights of Man," but replied to it
only with exclamation points, saying that the only answer such ideas
merited was "criminal justice." Paine's Part Second followed, published
February 17, 1792. In Part First Paine had mentioned a rumor that Burke
was a masked pensioner (a charge that will be noticed in connection with
its detailed statement in a further publication); and as Burke had
been formerly arraigned in Parliament, while Paymaster, for a very
questionable proceeding, this charge no doubt hurt a good deal. Although
the government did not follow Burke's suggestion of a prosecution
at that time, there is little doubt that it was he who induced the
prosecution of Part Second. Before the trial came on, December 18, 1792,
Paine was occupying his seat in the French Convention, and could only be
outlawed.

Burke humorously remarked to a friend of Paine and himself, "We hunt
in pairs." The severally representative character and influence of these
two men in the revolutionary era, in France and England, deserve more
adequate study than they have received. While Paine maintained freedom
of discussion, Burke first proposed criminal prosecution for sentiments
by no means libellous (such as Paine's Part First). While Paine was
endeavoring to make the movement in France peaceful, Burke fomented the
league of monarchs against France which maddened its people, and brought
on the Reign of Terror. While Paine was endeavoring to preserve the
French throne ("phantom" though he believed it), to prevent bloodshed,
Burke was secretly writing to the Queen of France, entreating her not
to compromise, and to "trust to the support of foreign armies"
("Histoire de France depuis 1789." Henri Martin, i., 151). While Burke
thus helped to bring the King and Queen to the guillotine, Paine pleaded
for their lives to the last moment. While Paine maintained the right of
mankind to improve their condition, Burke held that "the awful Author
of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence;
and that, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactick, not
according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that
disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to
the place assigned us." Paine was a religious believer in eternal
principles; Burke held that "political problems do not primarily
concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the
result is likely to produce evil is politically false, that which is
productive of good politically is true." Assuming thus the visionary's
right to decide before the result what was "likely to produce evil,"
Burke vigorously sought to kindle war against the French Republic which
might have developed itself peacefully, while Paine was striving for
an international Congress in Europe in the interest of peace. Paine
had faith in the people, and believed that, if allowed to choose
representatives, they would select their best and wisest men; and that
while reforming government the people would remain orderly, as they had
generally remained in America during the transition from British rule
to selfgovernment. Burke maintained that if the existing political order
were broken up there would be no longer a people, but "a number of
vague, loose individuals, and nothing more." "Alas!" he exclaims,
"they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can
form themselves into a mass, which has a true personality." For the sake
of peace Paine wished the revolution to be peaceful as the advance of
summer; he used every endeavor to reconcile English radicals to some
modus vivendi with the existing order, as he was willing to retain Louis
XVI. as head of the executive in France: Burke resisted every tendency
of English statesmanship to reform at home, or to negotiate with the
French Republic, and was mainly responsible for the King's death and the
war that followed between England and France in February, 1793. Burke
became a royal favorite, Paine was outlawed by a prosecution originally
proposed by Burke. While Paine was demanding religious liberty, Burke
was opposing the removal of penal statutes from Unitarians, on the
ground that but for those statutes Paine might some day set up a church
in England. When Burke was retiring on a large royal pension, Paine
was in prison, through the devices of Burke's confederate, the American
Minister in Paris. So the two men, as Burke said, "hunted in pairs."

So far as Burke attempts to affirm any principle he is fairly quoted in
Paine's work, and nowhere misrepresented. As for Paine's own ideas, the
reader should remember that "Rights of Man" was the earliest complete
statement of republican principles. They were pronounced to be the
fundamental principles of the American Republic by Jefferson, Madison,
and Jackson,-the three Presidents who above all others represented the
republican idea which Paine first allied with American Independence.
Those who suppose that Paine did but reproduce the principles of
Rousseau and Locke will find by careful study of his well-weighed
language that such is not the case. Paine's political principles were
evolved out of his early Quakerism. He was potential in George Fox. The
belief that every human soul was the child of God, and capable of
direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or priestly
intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege
and rank. The universal Fatherhood implied universal Brotherhood, or
human equality. But the fate of the Quakers proved the necessity of
protecting the individual spirit from oppression by the majority as well
as by privileged classes. For this purpose Paine insisted on surrounding
the individual right with the security of the Declaration of Rights,
not to be invaded by any government; and would reduce government to an
association limited in its operations to the defence of those rights
which the individual is unable, alone, to maintain.

From the preceding chapter it will be seen that Part Second of "Rights
of Man" was begun by Paine in the spring of 1791. At the close of that
year, or early in 1792, he took up his abode with his friend Thomas
"Clio" Rickman, at No. 7 Upper Marylebone Street. Rickman was a radical
publisher; the house remains still a book-binding establishment, and
seems little changed since Paine therein revised the proofs of Part
Second on a table which Rickman marked with a plate, and which is now in
possession of Mr. Edward Truelove. As the plate states, Paine wrote on
the same table other works which appeared in England in 1792.

In 1795 D. I. Eaton published an edition of "Rights of Man," with a
preface purporting to have been written by Paine while in Luxembourg
prison. It is manifestly spurious. The genuine English and French
prefaces are given.




RIGHTS OF MAN

Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revoloution

By Thomas Paine

Secretary For Foreign Affairs To Congress In The American War, And
Author Of The Works Entitled "Common Sense" And "A Letter To Abbe
Raynal"



                              DEDICATION

  George Washington

  President Of The United States Of America

  Sir,

  I present you a small treatise in defence of those principles of
  freedom which your exemplary virtue hath so eminently contributed to
  establish. That the Rights of Man may become as universal as your
  benevolence can wish, and that you may enjoy the happiness of seeing
  the New World regenerate the Old, is the prayer of

  Sir,

  Your much obliged, and

     Obedient humble Servant,

      Thomas Paine




PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution, it was natural
that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and as our acquaintance
commenced on that ground, it would have been more agreeable to me to
have had cause to continue in that opinion than to change it.

At the time Mr. Burke made his violent speech last winter in the English
Parliament against the French Revolution and the National Assembly, I
was in Paris, and had written to him but a short time before to inform
him how prosperously matters were going on. Soon after this I saw his
advertisement of the Pamphlet he intended to publish: As the attack
was to be made in a language but little studied, and less understood in
France, and as everything suffers by translation, I promised some of
the friends of the Revolution in that country that whenever Mr. Burke's
Pamphlet came forth, I would answer it. This appeared to me the more
necessary to be done, when I saw the flagrant misrepresentations which
Mr. Burke's Pamphlet contains; and that while it is an outrageous
abuse on the French Revolution, and the principles of Liberty, it is an
imposition on the rest of the world.

I am the more astonished and disappointed at this conduct in Mr. Burke,
as (from the circumstances I am going to mention) I had formed other
expectations.

I had seen enough of the miseries of war, to wish it might never more
have existence in the world, and that some other mode might be found
out to settle the differences that should occasionally arise in the
neighbourhood of nations. This certainly might be done if Courts were
disposed to set honesty about it, or if countries were enlightened
enough not to be made the dupes of Courts. The people of America had
been bred up in the same prejudices against France, which at that time
characterised the people of England; but experience and an acquaintance
with the French Nation have most effectually shown to the Americans the
falsehood of those prejudices; and I do not believe that a more cordial
and confidential intercourse exists between any two countries than
between America and France.

When I came to France, in the spring of 1787, the Archbishop of
Thoulouse was then Minister, and at that time highly esteemed. I became
much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister, a man of
an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments and my own
perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and the wretched
impolicy of two nations, like England and France, continually worrying
each other, to no other end than that of a mutual increase of burdens
and taxes. That I might be assured I had not misunderstood him, nor he
me, I put the substance of our opinions into writing and sent it to him;
subjoining a request, that if I should see among the people of England,
any disposition to cultivate a better understanding between the two
nations than had hitherto prevailed, how far I might be authorised
to say that the same disposition prevailed on the part of France? He
answered me by letter in the most unreserved manner, and that not for
himself only, but for the Minister, with whose knowledge the letter was
declared to be written.

I put this letter into the, hands of Mr. Burke almost three years ago,
and left it with him, where it still remains; hoping, and at the same
time naturally expecting, from the opinion I had conceived of him, that
he would find some opportunity of making good use of it, for the purpose
of removing those errors and prejudices which two neighbouring nations,
from the want of knowing each other, had entertained, to the injury of
both.

When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke
an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead
of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he
immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were
afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are
men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the
quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who
are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow
discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more
unpardonable.

With respect to a paragraph in this work alluding to Mr. Burke's having
a pension, the report has been some time in circulation, at least two
months; and as a person is often the last to hear what concerns him
the most to know, I have mentioned it, that Mr. Burke may have an
opportunity of contradicting the rumour, if he thinks proper.

      Thomas Paine




PAINE'S PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION

The astonishment which the French Revolution has caused throughout
Europe should be considered from two different points of view: first as
it affects foreign peoples, secondly as it affects their governments.

The cause of the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of the
whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means
favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this
distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments;
especially not the English people with its government.

The government of England is no friend of the revolution of France.
Of this we have sufficient proofs in the thanks given by that weak and
witless person, the Elector of Hanover, sometimes called the King of
England, to Mr. Burke for the insults heaped on it in his book, and in
the malevolent comments of the English Minister, Pitt, in his speeches
in Parliament.

In spite of the professions of sincerest friendship found in the
official correspondence of the English government with that of France,
its conduct gives the lie to all its declarations, and shows us clearly
that it is not a court to be trusted, but an insane court, plunging in
all the quarrels and intrigues of Europe, in quest of a war to satisfy
its folly and countenance its extravagance.

The English nation, on the contrary, is very favorably disposed towards
the French Revolution, and to the progress of liberty in the whole
world; and this feeling will become more general in England as the
intrigues and artifices of its government are better known, and the
principles of the revolution better understood. The French should know
that most English newspapers are directly in the pay of government, or,
if indirectly connected with it, always under its orders; and that those
papers constantly distort and attack the revolution in France in order
to deceive the nation. But, as it is impossible long to prevent the
prevalence of truth, the daily falsehoods of those papers no longer have
the desired effect.

To be convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England, the
world needs only to be told that the government regards and prosecutes
as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage on morality is
called law, and judges are found wicked enough to inflict penalties on
truth.

The English government presents, just now, a curious phenomenon. Seeing
that the French and English nations are getting rid of the prejudices
and false notions formerly entertained against each other, and which
have cost them so much money, that government seems to be placarding its
need of a foe; for unless it finds one somewhere, no pretext exists for
the enormous revenue and taxation now deemed necessary.

Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and
appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will be
so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies,
and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war enabled me to
double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the Nootka humbug gave
me a pretext for raising three millions sterling more; but unless I can
make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars will end. I was the first
to incite Turk against Russian, and now I hope to reap a fresh crop of
taxes."

If the miseries of war, and the flood of evils it spreads over a
country, did not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter
into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would only
excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind the
images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious policy
presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages,
is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that
reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt that the
peoples of France, England, and America, enlightened and enlightening
each other, shall henceforth be able, not merely to give the world an
example of good government, but by their united influence enforce its
practice.

(Translated from the French)




RIGHTS OF MAN. PART THE FIRST BEING AN ANSWER TO MR. BURKE'S ATTACK ON
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION


Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and
irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is an
extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National
Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or
the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked
attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that
cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified on that of
policy.

There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English
language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and the
National Assembly. Everything which rancour, prejudice, ignorance or
knowledge could suggest, is poured forth in the copious fury of near
four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr. Burke was writing,
he might have written on to as many thousands. When the tongue or the
pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the
subject, that becomes exhausted.

Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions
he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his
hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new
pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr.
Burke believe there would be any Revolution in France. His opinion then
was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it nor fortitude to
support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning
it.

Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great
part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the
best-hearted men that lives) and the two societies in England known by
the name of the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional
Information.

Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being
the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took
place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: "The political
Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of
the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental
rights:

1. To choose our own governors.

2. To cashier them for misconduct.

3. To frame a government for ourselves."

Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this
or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons, but
that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation.
Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists anywhere; and,
what is still more strange and marvellous, he says: "that the people
of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist
the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men
should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain
their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new
species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.

The method which Mr. Burke takes to prove that the people of England
have no such rights, and that such rights do not now exist in the
nation, either in whole or in part, or anywhere at all, is of the same
marvellous and monstrous kind with what he has already said; for his
arguments are that the persons, or the generation of persons, in whom
they did exist, are dead, and with them the right is dead also. To prove
this, he quotes a declaration made by Parliament about a hundred years
ago, to William and Mary, in these words: "The Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of the people aforesaid" (meaning
the people of England then living) "most humbly and faithfully submit
themselves, their heirs and posterities, for Ever." He quotes a clause
of another Act of Parliament made in the same reign, the terms of which
he says, "bind us" (meaning the people of their day), "our heirs and our
posterity, to them, their heirs and posterity, to the end of time."

Mr. Burke conceives his point sufficiently established by producing
those clauses, which he enforces by saying that they exclude the
right of the nation for ever. And not yet content with making such
declarations, repeated over and over again, he farther says, "that if
the people of England possessed such a right before the Revolution"
(which he acknowledges to have been the case, not only in England, but
throughout Europe, at an early period), "yet that the English Nation
did, at the time of the Revolution, most solemnly renounce and abdicate
it, for themselves, and for all their posterity, for ever."

As Mr. Burke occasionally applies the poison drawn from his horrid
principles, not only to the English nation, but to the French Revolution
and the National Assembly, and charges that august, illuminated and
illuminating body of men with the epithet of usurpers, I shall, sans
ceremonie, place another system of principles in opposition to his.

The English Parliament of 1688 did a certain thing, which, for
themselves and their constituents, they had a right to do, and which
it appeared right should be done. But, in addition to this right, which
they possessed by delegation, they set up another right by assumption,
that of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time. The case,
therefore, divides itself into two parts; the right which they possessed
by delegation, and the right which they set up by assumption. The first
is admitted; but with respect to the second, I reply: There never
did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any
description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed
of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to
the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be
governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts
or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have
neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in
themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to
act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded
it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to
follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period,
had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or
the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those
who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation
is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions
require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be
accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with
him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this
world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be
its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how
administered.

I am not contending for nor against any form of government, nor for nor
against any party, here or elsewhere. That which a whole nation chooses
to do it has a right to do. Mr. Burke says, No. Where, then, does the
right exist? I am contending for the rights of the living, and against
their being willed away and controlled and contracted for by the
manuscript assumed authority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is contending
for the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living.
There was a time when kings disposed of their crowns by will upon their
death-beds, and consigned the people, like beasts of the field, to
whatever successor they appointed. This is now so exploded as scarcely
to be remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to be believed. But the
Parliamentary clauses upon which Mr. Burke builds his political church
are of the same nature.

The laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle.
In England no parent or master, nor all the authority of Parliament,
omnipotent as it has called itself, can bind or control the personal
freedom even of an individual beyond the age of twenty-one years. On
what ground of right, then, could the Parliament of 1688, or any other
Parliament, bind all posterity for ever?

Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived
at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal
imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist
between them--what rule or principle can be laid down that of two
nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who
never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the
end of time?

In England it is said that money cannot be taken out of the pockets
of the people without their consent. But who authorised, or who could
authorise, the Parliament of 1688 to control and take away the freedom
of posterity (who were not in existence to give or to withhold their
consent) and limit and confine their right of acting in certain cases
for ever?

A greater absurdity cannot present itself to the understanding of man
than what Mr. Burke offers to his readers. He tells them, and he tells
the world to come, that a certain body of men who existed a hundred
years ago made a law, and that there does not exist in the nation, nor
ever will, nor ever can, a power to alter it. Under how many subtilties
or absurdities has the divine right to govern been imposed on the
credulity of mankind? Mr. Burke has discovered a new one, and he
has shortened his journey to Rome by appealing to the power of this
infallible Parliament of former days, and he produces what it has done
as of divine authority, for that power must certainly be more than human
which no human power to the end of time can alter.

But Mr. Burke has done some service--not to his cause, but to his
country--by bringing those clauses into public view. They serve to
demonstrate how necessary it is at all times to watch against the
attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
It is somewhat extraordinary that the offence for which James II. was
expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted,
under another shape and form, by the Parliament that expelled him. It
shows that the Rights of Man were but imperfectly understood at the
Revolution, for certain it is that the right which that Parliament set
up by assumption (for by the delegation it had not, and could not
have it, because none could give it) over the persons and freedom of
posterity for ever was of the same tyrannical unfounded kind which James
attempted to set up over the Parliament and the nation, and for which he
was expelled. The only difference is (for in principle they differ not)
that the one was an usurper over living, and the other over the unborn;
and as the one has no better authority to stand upon than the other,
both of them must be equally null and void, and of no effect.

From what, or from whence, does Mr. Burke prove the right of any human
power to bind posterity for ever? He has produced his clauses, but he
must produce also his proofs that such a right existed, and show how it
existed. If it ever existed it must now exist, for whatever appertains
to the nature of man cannot be annihilated by man. It is the nature of
man to die, and he will continue to die as long as he continues to be
born. But Mr. Burke has set up a sort of political Adam, in whom all
posterity are bound for ever. He must, therefore, prove that his Adam
possessed such a power, or such a right.

The weaker any cord is, the less will it bear to be stretched, and the
worse is the policy to stretch it, unless it is intended to break it.
Had anyone proposed the overthrow of Mr. Burke's positions, he would
have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He would have magnified the
authorities, on purpose to have called the right of them into question;
and the instant the question of right was started, the authorities must
have been given up.

It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive that although
laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding
generations, yet they continue to derive their force from the consent of
the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot
be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing
passes for consent.

But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even this qualification in their
favour. They become null, by attempting to become immortal. The nature
of them precludes consent. They destroy the right which they might have,
by grounding it on a right which they cannot have. Immortal power is
not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of Parliament. The
Parliament of 1688 might as well have passed an act to have authorised
themselves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever.
All, therefore, that can be said of those clauses is that they are a
formality of words, of as much import as if those who used them had
addressed a congratulation to themselves, and in the oriental style of
antiquity had said: O Parliament, live for ever!

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the
opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and
not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.
That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be
thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is
to decide, the living or the dead?

As almost one hundred pages of Mr. Burke's book are employed upon these
clauses, it will consequently follow that if the clauses themselves, so
far as they set up an assumed usurped dominion over posterity for ever,
are unauthoritative, and in their nature null and void; that all his
voluminous inferences, and declamation drawn therefrom, or founded
thereon, are null and void also; and on this ground I rest the matter.

We now come more particularly to the affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book
has the appearance of being written as instruction to the French nation;
but if I may permit myself the use of an extravagant metaphor, suited
to the extravagance of the case, it is darkness attempting to illuminate
light.

While I am writing this there are accidentally before me some proposals
for a declaration of rights by the Marquis de la Fayette (I ask his
pardon for using his former address, and do it only for distinction's
sake) to the National Assembly, on the 11th of July, 1789, three
days before the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but remark with
astonishment how opposite the sources are from which that gentleman and
Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead of referring to musty records
and mouldy parchments to prove that the rights of the living are lost,
"renounced and abdicated for ever," by those who are now no more, as
Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette applies to the living world,
and emphatically says: "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has
engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when
they are solemnly recognised by all:--For a nation to love liberty, it
is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that
she wills it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr.
Burke labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his
declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and
soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a
vast field of generous and manly thinking, and do not finish, like Mr.
Burke's periods, with music in the ear, and nothing in the heart.

As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I will take the liberty of adding
an anecdote respecting his farewell address to the Congress of America
in 1783, and which occurred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr. Burke's
thundering attack on the French Revolution. M. de la Fayette went to
America at the early period of the war, and continued a volunteer in her
service to the end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise is
one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in the history of a
young man, scarcely twenty years of age. Situated in a country that was
like the lap of sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how
few are there to be found who would exchange such a scene for the woods
and wildernesses of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in
unprofitable danger and hardship! but such is the fact. When the
war ended, and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he
presented himself to Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate
farewell the Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words:
"May this great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to
the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count
Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never
could obtain his consent. The fact was that Count Vergennes was an
aristocratical despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American
Revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread the example of
the French Revolution in England, and Mr. Burke's tribute of fear (for
in this light his book must be considered) runs parallel with Count
Vergennes' refusal. But to return more particularly to his work.

"We have seen," says Mr. Burke, "the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant." This is one among a thousand other instances, in
which Mr. Burke shows that he is ignorant of the springs and principles
of the French Revolution.

It was not against Louis XVI. but against the despotic principles of
the Government, that the nation revolted. These principles had not their
origin in him, but in the original establishment, many centuries back:
and they were become too deeply rooted to be removed, and the Augean
stables of parasites and plunderers too abominably filthy to be cleansed
by anything short of a complete and universal Revolution. When it
becomes necessary to do anything, the whole heart and soul should go
into the measure, or not attempt it. That crisis was then arrived, and
there remained no choice but to act with determined vigor, or not to
act at all. The king was known to be the friend of the nation, and this
circumstance was favorable to the enterprise. Perhaps no man bred up in
the style of an absolute king, ever possessed a heart so little disposed
to the exercise of that species of power as the present King of France.
But the principles of the Government itself still remained the same. The
Monarch and the Monarchy were distinct and separate things; and it was
against the established despotism of the latter, and not against the
person or principles of the former, that the revolt commenced, and the
Revolution has been carried.

Mr. Burke does not attend to the distinction between men and principles,
and, therefore, he does not see that a revolt may take place against the
despotism of the latter, while there lies no charge of despotism against
the former.

The natural moderation of Louis XVI. contributed nothing to alter
the hereditary despotism of the monarchy. All the tyrannies of former
reigns, acted under that hereditary despotism, were still liable to be
revived in the hands of a successor. It was not the respite of a reign
that would satisfy France, enlightened as she was then become. A casual
discontinuance of the practice of despotism, is not a discontinuance of
its principles: the former depends on the virtue of the individual who
is in immediate possession of the power; the latter, on the virtue and
fortitude of the nation. In the case of Charles I. and James II. of
England, the revolt was against the personal despotism of the men;
whereas in France, it was against the hereditary despotism of the
established Government. But men who can consign over the rights of
posterity for ever on the authority of a mouldy parchment, like Mr.
Burke, are not qualified to judge of this Revolution. It takes in
a field too vast for their views to explore, and proceeds with a
mightiness of reason they cannot keep pace with.

But there are many points of view in which this Revolution may be
considered. When despotism has established itself for ages in a country,
as in France, it is not in the person of the king only that it resides.
It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but
it is not so in practice and in fact. It has its standard everywhere.
Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and
usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot.
The original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the king,
divides and sub-divides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till
at last the whole of it is acted by deputation. This was the case in
France; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through
an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely
perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It strengthens itself by
assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannies under the pretence of
obeying.

When a man reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature
of her government, he will see other causes for revolt than those which
immediately connect themselves with the person or character of Louis
XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thousand despotisms to be
reformed in France, which had grown up under the hereditary despotism
of the monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in a great measure
independent of it. Between the Monarchy, the Parliament, and the
Church there was a rivalship of despotism; besides the feudal despotism
operating locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere.
But Mr. Burke, by considering the king as the only possible object of
a revolt, speaks as if France was a village, in which everything that
passed must be known to its commanding officer, and no oppression could
be acted but what he could immediately control. Mr. Burke might have
been in the Bastille his whole life, as well under Louis XVI. as Louis
XIV., and neither the one nor the other have known that such a man as
Burke existed. The despotic principles of the government were the same
in both reigns, though the dispositions of the men were as remote as
tyranny and benevolence.

What Mr. Burke considers as a reproach to the French Revolution (that of
bringing it forward under a reign more mild than the preceding ones)
is one of its highest honors. The Revolutions that have taken place in
other European countries, have been excited by personal hatred. The rage
was against the man, and he became the victim. But, in the instance of
France we see a Revolution generated in the rational contemplation of
the Rights of Man, and distinguishing from the beginning between persons
and principles.

But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is
contemplating Governments. "Ten years ago," says he, "I could have
felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring what
the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered." Is this
the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a heart feeling as
it ought to feel for the rights and happiness of the human race? On
this ground, Mr. Burke must compliment all the Governments in the world,
while the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into slavery, or
tortured out of existence, are wholly forgotten. It is power, and
not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates; and under this abominable
depravity he is disqualified to judge between them. Thus much for his
opinion as to the occasions of the French Revolution. I now proceed to
other considerations.

I know a place in America called Point-no-Point, because as you proceed
along the shore, gay and flowery as Mr. Burke's language, it continually
recedes and presents itself at a distance before you; but when you have
got as far as you can go, there is no point at all. Just thus it is with
Mr. Burke's three hundred and sixty-six pages. It is therefore difficult
to reply to him. But as the points he wishes to establish may be
inferred from what he abuses, it is in his paradoxes that we must look
for his arguments.

As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. Burke has outraged his own
imagination, and seeks to work upon that of his readers, they are
very well calculated for theatrical representation, where facts are
manufactured for the sake of show, and accommodated to produce, through
the weakness of sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke should
recollect that he is writing history, and not plays, and that his
readers will expect truth, and not the spouting rant of high-toned
exclamation.

When we see a man dramatically lamenting in a publication intended to be
believed that "The age of chivalry is gone! that The glory of Europe is
extinguished for ever! that The unbought grace of life (if anyone knows
what it is), the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment
and heroic enterprise is gone!" and all this because the Quixot age of
chivalry nonsense is gone, what opinion can we form of his judgment, or
what regard can we pay to his facts? In the rhapsody of his imagination
he has discovered a world of wind mills, and his sorrows are that there
are no Quixots to attack them. But if the age of aristocracy, like that
of chivalry, should fall (and they had originally some connection) Mr.
Burke, the trumpeter of the Order, may continue his parody to the end,
and finish with exclaiming: "Othello's occupation's gone!"

Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid paintings, when the French Revolution
is compared with the Revolutions of other countries, the astonishment
will be that it is marked with so few sacrifices; but this astonishment
will cease when we reflect that principles, and not persons, were the
meditated objects of destruction. The mind of the nation was acted
upon by a higher stimulus than what the consideration of persons could
inspire, and sought a higher conquest than could be produced by the
downfall of an enemy. Among the few who fell there do not appear to be
any that were intentionally singled out. They all of them had their fate
in the circumstances of the moment, and were not pursued with that long,
cold-blooded unabated revenge which pursued the unfortunate Scotch in
the affair of 1745.

Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book I do not observe that the Bastille
is mentioned more than once, and that with a kind of implication as if
he were sorry it was pulled down, and wished it were built up again. "We
have rebuilt Newgate," says he, "and tenanted the mansion; and we have
prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to libel the
queens of France."*[2] As to what a madman like the person called Lord
George Gordon might say, and to whom Newgate is rather a bedlam than a
prison, it is unworthy a rational consideration. It was a madman that
libelled, and that is sufficient apology; and it afforded an opportunity
for confining him, which was the thing that was wished for. But certain
it is that Mr. Burke, who does not call himself a madman (whatever other
people may do), has libelled in the most unprovoked manner, and in
the grossest style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole representative
authority of France, and yet Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British
House of Commons! From his violence and his grief, his silence on some
points and his excess on others, it is difficult not to believe that Mr.
Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, that arbitrary power, the power of the
Pope and the Bastille, are pulled down.

Not one glance of compassion, not one commiserating reflection that I
can find throughout his book, has he bestowed on those who lingered out
the most wretched of lives, a life without hope in the most miserable of
prisons. It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt
himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is
not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the
showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage,
but forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss the aristocratical hand
that hath purloined him from himself, he degenerates into a composition
of art, and the genuine soul of nature forsakes him. His hero or his
heroine must be a tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real
prisoner of misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.

As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole transaction of the Bastille (and
his silence is nothing in his favour), and has entertained his readers
with refections on supposed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I will
give, since he has not, some account of the circumstances which preceded
that transaction. They will serve to show that less mischief could
scarcely have accompanied such an event when considered with the
treacherous and hostile aggravations of the enemies of the Revolution.

The mind can hardly picture to itself a more tremendous scene than what
the city of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the Bastille, and for
two days before and after, nor perceive the possibility of its quieting
so soon. At a distance this transaction has appeared only as an act of
heroism standing on itself, and the close political connection it had
with the Revolution is lost in the brilliancy of the achievement. But
we are to consider it as the strength of the parties brought man to man,
and contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize
or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea
of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as
figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.

The National Assembly, before and at the time of taking the Bastille,
was sitting at Versailles, twelve miles distant from Paris. About a week
before the rising of the Partisans, and their taking the Bastille, it
was discovered that a plot was forming, at the head of which was
the Count D'Artois, the king's youngest brother, for demolishing the
National Assembly, seizing its members, and thereby crushing, by a coup
de main, all hopes and prospects of forming a free government. For
the sake of humanity, as well as freedom, it is well this plan did not
succeed. Examples are not wanting to show how dreadfully vindictive and
cruel are all old governments, when they are successful against what
they call a revolt.

This plan must have been some time in contemplation; because, in order
to carry it into execution, it was necessary to collect a large military
force round Paris, and cut off the communication between that city
and the National Assembly at Versailles. The troops destined for this
service were chiefly the foreign troops in the pay of France, and who,
for this particular purpose, were drawn from the distant provinces where
they were then stationed. When they were collected to the amount of
between twenty-five and thirty thousand, it was judged time to put the
plan into execution. The ministry who were then in office, and who were
friendly to the Revolution, were instantly dismissed and a new ministry
formed of those who had concerted the project, among whom was Count de
Broglio, and to his share was given the command of those troops.
The character of this man as described to me in a letter which I
communicated to Mr. Burke before he began to write his book, and from
an authority which Mr. Burke well knows was good, was that of "a
high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable of every mischief."

While these matters were agitating, the National Assembly stood in the
most perilous and critical situation that a body of men can be supposed
to act in. They were the devoted victims, and they knew it. They had the
hearts and wishes of their country on their side, but military authority
they had none. The guards of Broglio surrounded the hall where the
Assembly sat, ready, at the word of command, to seize their persons,
as had been done the year before to the Parliament of Paris. Had the
National Assembly deserted their trust, or had they exhibited signs of
weakness or fear, their enemies had been encouraged and their country
depressed. When the situation they stood in, the cause they were engaged
in, and the crisis then ready to burst, which should determine their
personal and political fate and that of their country, and probably of
Europe, are taken into one view, none but a heart callous with prejudice
or corrupted by dependence can avoid interesting itself in their
success.

The Archbishop of Vienne was at this time President of the National
Assembly--a person too old to undergo the scene that a few days or a few
hours might bring forth. A man of more activity and bolder fortitude
was necessary, and the National Assembly chose (under the form of a
Vice-President, for the Presidency still resided in the Archbishop) M.
de la Fayette; and this is the only instance of a Vice-President being
chosen. It was at the moment that this storm was pending (July 11th)
that a declaration of rights was brought forward by M. de la Fayette,
and is the same which is alluded to earlier. It was hastily drawn up,
and makes only a part of the more extensive declaration of rights agreed
upon and adopted afterwards by the National Assembly. The particular
reason for bringing it forward at this moment (M. de la Fayette has
since informed me) was that, if the National Assembly should fall in
the threatened destruction that then surrounded it, some trace of its
principles might have the chance of surviving the wreck.

Everything now was drawing to a crisis. The event was freedom or
slavery. On one side, an army of nearly thirty thousand men; on the
other, an unarmed body of citizens--for the citizens of Paris, on whom
the National Assembly must then immediately depend, were as unarmed and
as undisciplined as the citizens of London are now. The French guards
had given strong symptoms of their being attached to the national cause;
but their numbers were small, not a tenth part of the force that Broglio
commanded, and their officers were in the interest of Broglio.

Matters being now ripe for execution, the new ministry made their
appearance in office. The reader will carry in his mind that the
Bastille was taken the 14th July; the point of time I am now speaking of
is the 12th. Immediately on the news of the change of ministry reaching
Paris, in the afternoon, all the playhouses and places of entertainment,
shops and houses, were shut up. The change of ministry was considered as
the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion was rightly founded.

The foreign troops began to advance towards the city. The Prince de
Lambesc, who commanded a body of German cavalry, approached by the Place
of Louis Xv., which connects itself with some of the streets. In his
march, he insulted and struck an old man with a sword. The French are
remarkable for their respect to old age; and the insolence with which it
appeared to be done, uniting with the general fermentation they were
in, produced a powerful effect, and a cry of "To arms! to arms!" spread
itself in a moment over the city.

Arms they had none, nor scarcely anyone who knew the use of them; but
desperate resolution, when every hope is at stake, supplies, for a
while, the want of arms. Near where the Prince de Lambesc was drawn up,
were large piles of stones collected for building the new bridge, and
with these the people attacked the cavalry. A party of French guards
upon hearing the firing, rushed from their quarters and joined the
people; and night coming on, the cavalry retreated.

The streets of Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence, and the
loftiness of the houses, consisting of many stories, from which great
annoyance might be given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises;
and the night was spent in providing themselves with every sort of
weapon they could make or procure: guns, swords, blacksmiths' hammers,
carpenters' axes, iron crows, pikes, halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs,
etc., etc. The incredible numbers in which they assembled the next
morning, and the still more incredible resolution they exhibited,
embarrassed and astonished their enemies. Little did the new ministry
expect such a salute. Accustomed to slavery themselves, they had no idea
that liberty was capable of such inspiration, or that a body of unarmed
citizens would dare to face the military force of thirty thousand men.
Every moment of this day was employed in collecting arms, concerting
plans, and arranging themselves into the best order which such an
instantaneous movement could afford. Broglio continued lying round the
city, but made no further advances this day, and the succeeding night
passed with as much tranquility as such a scene could possibly produce.

But defence only was not the object of the citizens. They had a cause
at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery. They every
moment expected an attack, or to hear of one made on the National
Assembly; and in such a situation, the most prompt measures are
sometimes the best. The object that now presented itself was the
Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such a fortress in the face of such
an army, could not fail to strike terror into the new ministry, who had
scarcely yet had time to meet. By some intercepted correspondence this
morning, it was discovered that the Mayor of Paris, M. Defflesselles,
who appeared to be in the interest of the citizens, was betraying them;
and from this discovery, there remained no doubt that Broglio would
reinforce the Bastille the ensuing evening. It was therefore necessary
to attack it that day; but before this could be done, it was first
necessary to procure a better supply of arms than they were then
possessed of.

There was, adjoining to the city a large magazine of arms deposited at
the Hospital of the Invalids, which the citizens summoned to surrender;
and as the place was neither defensible, nor attempted much defence,
they soon succeeded. Thus supplied, they marched to attack the Bastille;
a vast mixed multitude of all ages, and of all degrees, armed with all
sorts of weapons. Imagination would fail in describing to itself the
appearance of such a procession, and of the anxiety of the events which
a few hours or a few minutes might produce. What plans the ministry
were forming, were as unknown to the people within the city, as what
the citizens were doing was unknown to the ministry; and what movements
Broglio might make for the support or relief of the place, were to the
citizens equally as unknown. All was mystery and hazard.

That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only
as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the
space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of.
I am not undertaking the detail of the attack, but bringing into view
the conspiracy against the nation which provoked it, and which fell
with the Bastille. The prison to which the new ministry were dooming the
National Assembly, in addition to its being the high altar and castle of
despotism, became the proper object to begin with. This enterprise
broke up the new ministry, who began now to fly from the ruin they had
prepared for others. The troops of Broglio dispersed, and himself fled
also.

Mr. Burke has spoken a great deal about plots, but he has never once
spoken of this plot against the National Assembly, and the liberties
of the nation; and that he might not, he has passed over all the
circumstances that might throw it in his way. The exiles who have fled
from France, whose case he so much interests himself in, and from whom
he has had his lesson, fled in consequence of the miscarriage of this
plot. No plot was formed against them; they were plotting against
others; and those who fell, met, not unjustly, the punishment they
were preparing to execute. But will Mr. Burke say that if this plot,
contrived with the subtilty of an ambuscade, had succeeded, the
successful party would have restrained their wrath so soon? Let the
history of all governments answer the question.

Whom has the National Assembly brought to the scaffold? None. They
were themselves the devoted victims of this plot, and they have not
retaliated; why, then, are they charged with revenge they have not
acted? In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which all
degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering themselves,
by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction meditated against them,
is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men are sore with
the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the prospects of new ones,
is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked
for? Mr. Burke exclaims against outrage; yet the greatest is that which
himself has committed. His book is a volume of outrage, not apologised
for by the impulse of a moment, but cherished through a space of ten
months; yet Mr. Burke had no provocation--no life, no interest, at
stake.

More of the citizens fell in this struggle than of their opponents: but
four or five persons were seized by the populace, and instantly put to
death; the Governor of the Bastille, and the Mayor of Paris, who was
detected in the act of betraying them; and afterwards Foulon, one of the
new ministry, and Berthier, his son-in-law, who had accepted the office
of intendant of Paris. Their heads were stuck upon spikes, and carried
about the city; and it is upon this mode of punishment that Mr. Burke
builds a great part of his tragic scene. Let us therefore examine how
men came by the idea of punishing in this manner.

They learn it from the governments they live under; and retaliate the
punishments they have been accustomed to behold. The heads stuck upon
spikes, which remained for years upon Temple Bar, differed nothing in
the horror of the scene from those carried about upon spikes at Paris;
yet this was done by the English Government. It may perhaps be said that
it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but
it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or
hardens their hearts, and in either case it instructs them how to punish
when power falls into their hands.

Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is
their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind. In England the
punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing and quartering;
the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up to the view of the
populace. In France, under the former Government, the punishments were
not less barbarous. Who does not remember the execution of Damien, torn
to pieces by horses? The effect of those cruel spectacles exhibited to
the populace is to destroy tenderness or excite revenge; and by the
base and false idea of governing men by terror, instead of reason,
they become precedents. It is over the lowest class of mankind that
government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it
operates to the worst effect. They have sense enough to feel they are
the objects aimed at; and they inflict in their turn the examples of
terror they have been instructed to practise.

There is in all European countries a large class of people of that
description, which in England is called the "mob." Of this class were
those who committed the burnings and devastations in London in 1780, and
of this class were those who carried the heads on iron spikes in Paris.
Foulon and Berthier were taken up in the country, and sent to Paris,
to undergo their examination at the Hotel de Ville; for the National
Assembly, immediately on the new ministry coming into office, passed a
decree, which they communicated to the King and Cabinet, that they (the
National Assembly) would hold the ministry, of which Foulon was one,
responsible for the measures they were advising and pursuing; but the
mob, incensed at the appearance of Foulon and Berthier, tore them from
their conductors before they were carried to the Hotel de Ville, and
executed them on the spot. Why then does Mr. Burke charge outrages
of this kind on a whole people? As well may he charge the riots and
outrages of 1780 on all the people of London, or those in Ireland on all
his countrymen.

But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory
to the human character should lead to other reflections than those
of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some claim to our
consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of mankind as are
distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob,
are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves
this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable
consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in
Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting
some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out
of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the
back-ground of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare,
the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a
revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the
standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.

I give to Mr. Burke all his theatrical exaggerations for facts, and I
then ask him if they do not establish the certainty of what I here lay
down? Admitting them to be true, they show the necessity of the French
Revolution, as much as any one thing he could have asserted. These
outrages were not the effect of the principles of the Revolution, but
of the degraded mind that existed before the Revolution, and which the
Revolution is calculated to reform. Place them then to their proper
cause, and take the reproach of them to your own side.

It is the honour of the National Assembly and the city of Paris that,
during such a tremendous scene of arms and confusion, beyond the control
of all authority, they have been able, by the influence of example
and exhortation, to restrain so much. Never were more pains taken to
instruct and enlighten mankind, and to make them see that their interest
consisted in their virtue, and not in their revenge, than have been
displayed in the Revolution of France. I now proceed to make some
remarks on Mr. Burke's account of the expedition to Versailles, October
the 5th and 6th.

I can consider Mr. Burke's book in scarcely any other light than a
dramatic performance; and he must, I think, have considered it in the
same light himself, by the poetical liberties he has taken of omitting
some facts, distorting others, and making the whole machinery bend to
produce a stage effect. Of this kind is his account of the expedition to
Versailles. He begins this account by omitting the only facts which as
causes are known to be true; everything beyond these is conjecture, even
in Paris; and he then works up a tale accommodated to his own passions
and prejudices.

It is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke's book that he never speaks
of plots against the Revolution; and it is from those plots that all the
mischiefs have arisen. It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences
without their causes. It is one of the arts of the drama to do so. If
the crimes of men were exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect
would sometimes be lost, and the audience would be inclined to approve
where it was intended they should commiserate.

After all the investigations that have been made into this intricate
affair (the expedition to Versailles), it still remains enveloped in all
that kind of mystery which ever accompanies events produced more from a
concurrence of awkward circumstances than from fixed design. While the
characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions,
there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each
other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes
concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views,
and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A great
deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the
issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.

The only things certainly known are that considerable uneasiness was at
this time excited at Paris by the delay of the King in not sanctioning
and forwarding the decrees of the National Assembly, particularly that
of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the decrees of the fourth
of August, which contained the foundation principles on which the
constitution was to be erected. The kindest, and perhaps the fairest
conjecture upon this matter is, that some of the ministers intended to
make remarks and observations upon certain parts of them before they
were finally sanctioned and sent to the provinces; but be this as it
may, the enemies of the Revolution derived hope from the delay, and the
friends of the Revolution uneasiness.

During this state of suspense, the Garde du Corps, which was composed as
such regiments generally are, of persons much connected with the
Court, gave an entertainment at Versailles (October 1) to some foreign
regiments then arrived; and when the entertainment was at the height, on
a signal given, the Garde du Corps tore the national cockade from their
hats, trampled it under foot, and replaced it with a counter-cockade
prepared for the purpose. An indignity of this kind amounted to
defiance. It was like declaring war; and if men will give challenges
they must expect consequences. But all this Mr. Burke has carefully kept
out of sight. He begins his account by saying: "History will record that
on the morning of the 6th October, 1789, the King and Queen of France,
after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down under
the pledged security of public faith to indulge nature in a few hours
of respite, and troubled melancholy repose." This is neither the sober
style of history, nor the intention of it. It leaves everything to
be guessed at and mistaken. One would at least think there had been a
battle; and a battle there probably would have been had it not been
for the moderating prudence of those whom Mr. Burke involves in his
censures. By his keeping the Garde du Corps out of sight Mr. Burke has
afforded himself the dramatic licence of putting the King and Queen in
their places, as if the object of the expedition was against them. But
to return to my account this conduct of the Garde du Corps, as might
well be expected, alarmed and enraged the Partisans. The colors of
the cause, and the cause itself, were become too united to mistake the
intention of the insult, and the Partisans were determined to call
the Garde du Corps to an account. There was certainly nothing of the
cowardice of assassination in marching in the face of the day to demand
satisfaction, if such a phrase may be used, of a body of armed men who
had voluntarily given defiance. But the circumstance which serves
to throw this affair into embarrassment is, that the enemies of the
Revolution appear to have encouraged it as well as its friends. The one
hoped to prevent a civil war by checking it in time, and the other to
make one. The hopes of those opposed to the Revolution rested in making
the King of their party, and getting him from Versailles to Metz,
where they expected to collect a force and set up a standard. We have,
therefore, two different objects presenting themselves at the same time,
and to be accomplished by the same means: the one to chastise the Garde
du Corps, which was the object of the Partisans; the other to render the
confusion of such a scene an inducement to the King to set off for Metz.

On the 5th of October a very numerous body of women, and men in the
disguise of women, collected around the Hotel de Ville or town-hall at
Paris, and set off for Versailles. Their professed object was the Garde
du Corps; but prudent men readily recollect that mischief is more easily
begun than ended; and this impressed itself with the more force from the
suspicions already stated, and the irregularity of such a cavalcade.
As soon, therefore, as a sufficient force could be collected, M. de la
Fayette, by orders from the civil authority of Paris, set off after
them at the head of twenty thousand of the Paris militia. The Revolution
could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might. By an
amiable and spirited manner of address he had hitherto been fortunate in
calming disquietudes, and in this he was extraordinarily successful; to
frustrate, therefore, the hopes of those who might seek to improve
this scene into a sort of justifiable necessity for the King's quitting
Versailles and withdrawing to Metz, and to prevent at the same time
the consequences that might ensue between the Garde du Corps and this
phalanx of men and women, he forwarded expresses to the King, that he
was on his march to Versailles, by the orders of the civil authority of
Paris, for the purpose of peace and protection, expressing at the same
time the necessity of restraining the Garde du Corps from firing upon
the people.*[3]

He arrived at Versailles between ten and eleven at night. The Garde du
Corps was drawn up, and the people had arrived some time before, but
everything had remained suspended. Wisdom and policy now consisted in
changing a scene of danger into a happy event. M. de la Fayette became
the mediator between the enraged parties; and the King, to remove the
uneasiness which had arisen from the delay already stated, sent for the
President of the National Assembly, and signed the Declaration of the
Rights of Man, and such other parts of the constitution as were in
readiness.

It was now about one in the morning. Everything appeared to be composed,
and a general congratulation took place. By the beat of a drum a
proclamation was made that the citizens of Versailles would give the
hospitality of their houses to their fellow-citizens of Paris. Those
who could not be accommodated in this manner remained in the streets, or
took up their quarters in the churches; and at two o'clock the King and
Queen retired.

In this state matters passed till the break of day, when a fresh
disturbance arose from the censurable conduct of some of both parties,
for such characters there will be in all such scenes. One of the Garde
du Corps appeared at one of the windows of the palace, and the people
who had remained during the night in the streets accosted him with
reviling and provocative language. Instead of retiring, as in such a
case prudence would have dictated, he presented his musket, fired, and
killed one of the Paris militia. The peace being thus broken, the people
rushed into the palace in quest of the offender. They attacked the
quarters of the Garde du Corps within the palace, and pursued them
throughout the avenues of it, and to the apartments of the King. On this
tumult, not the Queen only, as Mr. Burke has represented it, but every
person in the palace, was awakened and alarmed; and M. de la Fayette had
a second time to interpose between the parties, the event of which was
that the Garde du Corps put on the national cockade, and the matter
ended as by oblivion, after the loss of two or three lives.

During the latter part of the time in which this confusion was acting,
the King and Queen were in public at the balcony, and neither of them
concealed for safety's sake, as Mr. Burke insinuates. Matters being thus
appeased, and tranquility restored, a general acclamation broke forth of
Le Roi a Paris--Le Roi a Paris--The King to Paris. It was the shout of
peace, and immediately accepted on the part of the King. By this measure
all future projects of trapanning the King to Metz, and setting up the
standard of opposition to the constitution, were prevented, and the
suspicions extinguished. The King and his family reached Paris in the
evening, and were congratulated on their arrival by M. Bailly, the Mayor
of Paris, in the name of the citizens. Mr. Burke, who throughout his
book confounds things, persons, and principles, as in his remarks on
M. Bailly's address, confounded time also. He censures M. Bailly for
calling it "un bon jour," a good day. Mr. Burke should have informed
himself that this scene took up the space of two days, the day on which
it began with every appearance of danger and mischief, and the day on
which it terminated without the mischiefs that threatened; and that
it is to this peaceful termination that M. Bailly alludes, and to the
arrival of the King at Paris. Not less than three hundred thousand
persons arranged themselves in the procession from Versailles to Paris,
and not an act of molestation was committed during the whole march.

Mr. Burke on the authority of M. Lally Tollendal, a deserter from the
National Assembly, says that on entering Paris, the people shouted "Tous
les eveques a la lanterne." All Bishops to be hanged at the lanthorn
or lamp-posts. It is surprising that nobody could hear this but Lally
Tollendal, and that nobody should believe it but Mr. Burke. It has not
the least connection with any part of the transaction, and is totally
foreign to every circumstance of it. The Bishops had never been
introduced before into any scene of Mr. Burke's drama: why then are
they, all at once, and altogether, tout a coup, et tous ensemble,
introduced now? Mr. Burke brings forward his Bishops and his
lanthorn-like figures in a magic lanthorn, and raises his scenes by
contrast instead of connection. But it serves to show, with the rest of
his book what little credit ought to be given where even probability is
set at defiance, for the purpose of defaming; and with this reflection,
instead of a soliloquy in praise of chivalry, as Mr. Burke has done, I
close the account of the expedition to Versailles.*[4]

I have now to follow Mr. Burke through a pathless wilderness of
rhapsodies, and a sort of descant upon governments, in which he asserts
whatever he pleases, on the presumption of its being believed, without
offering either evidence or reasons for so doing.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts,
principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or
denied. Mr. Burke with his usual outrage, abused the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, published by the National Assembly of France, as
the basis on which the constitution of France is built. This he calls
"paltry and blurred sheets of paper about the rights of man." Does Mr.
Burke mean to deny that man has any rights? If he does, then he must
mean that there are no such things as rights anywhere, and that he has
none himself; for who is there in the world but man? But if Mr. Burke
means to admit that man has rights, the question then will be: What are
those rights, and how man came by them originally?

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,
respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the
intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what
was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at
all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct
contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be
authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively
contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come
out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his
Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a
higher cannot be given him. But of titles I shall speak hereafter.

We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights.
As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to
this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of
the errors or the improvements which the history of it presents. Those
who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we
are now. They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we
also shall be ancients in our turn. If the mere name of antiquity is to
govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or
a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make
a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The
fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish
nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come
to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our
enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a
dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred
years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must
have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.

Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion,
yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced
to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I
will answer the question. Because there have been upstart governments,
thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to un-make man.

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the
mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the
first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set
any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man
(for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the
living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other.
Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it,
by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his
contemporary.

Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether
from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their
opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one
point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree,
and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural
right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation
instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which the
former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the
world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world
is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his
natural right in it is of the same kind.

The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority or
merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or equality of man.
The expression admits of no controversy. "And God said, Let us make man
in our own image. In the image of God created he him; male and female
created he them." The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other
distinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority, it is at
least historical authority, and shows that the equality of man, so far
from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record.

It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the world are
founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all
of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man
may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only
distinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to slide
into this principle, by making degrees to consist in crimes and not in
persons.

It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest advantage to
cultivate. By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to
consider himself in this light, it places him in a close connection with
all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he
is a part; and it is only when he forgets his origin, or, to use a more
fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute. It
is not among the least of the evils of the present existing governments
in all parts of Europe that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a
vast distance from his Maker, and the artificial chasm filled up with a
succession of barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through which he has
to pass. I will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has
set up between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a
herald, he says: "We fear God--we look with awe to kings--with affection
to Parliaments with duty to magistrates--with reverence to priests,
and with respect to nobility." Mr. Burke has forgotten to put in
"'chivalry." He has also forgotten to put in Peter.

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he
is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and
consists but of two points. His duty to God, which every man must feel;
and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by. If those
to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected: if not,
they will be despised; and with regard to those to whom no power is
delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing of
them.

Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural
rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and
to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into
society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights
than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural
rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in order to
pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be necessary to
mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.

A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain
to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual
rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an
individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to
the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to
man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for
its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but
to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases,
sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to
security and protection.

From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class
of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and
those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.

The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to
execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among
this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or
rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those rights. The
natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though
the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is
defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a
right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is
concerned, he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge,
if he has not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the
common stock of society, and takes the ann of society, of which he is
a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him
nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital
as a matter of right.

From these premisses two or three certain conclusions will follow:

First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other
words, is a natural right exchanged.

Secondly, That civil power properly considered as such is made up of
the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes
defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his
purpose, but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the Purpose
of every one.

Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights,
imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the
natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the
power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.

We have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to a
member of society, and shown, or endeavoured to show, the quality of
the natural rights retained, and of those which are exchanged for civil
rights. Let us now apply these principles to governments.

In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish
the governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social
compact, from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light
than what a single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review
of the several sources from which governments have arisen and on which
they have been founded.

They may be all comprehended under three heads.

First, Superstition.

Secondly, Power.

Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and
the third of reason.

When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to
hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up
the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the
government of superstition. The oracles were consulted, and whatever
they were made to say became the law; and this sort of government lasted
as long as this sort of superstition lasted.

After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of
William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the
name of a sceptre. Governments thus established last as long as the
power to support them lasts; but that they might avail themselves of
every engine in their favor, they united fraud to force, and set up
an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in imitation of the
Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in contradiction to
the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards into an
idol of another shape, called Church and State. The key of St. Peter
and the key of the Treasury became quartered on one another, and the
wondering cheated multitude worshipped the invention.

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature
has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and
happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern
mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and
can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in
contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.

It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the
principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those
who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because
it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have
existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when
governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist
no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his
own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other
to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments
have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right
to exist.

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought
to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily
discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people
or over the people. Mr. Burke has made no distinction. He investigates
nothing to its source, and therefore he confounds everything; but he has
signified his intention of undertaking, at some future opportunity, a
comparison between the constitution of England and France. As he thus
renders it a subject of controversy by throwing the gauntlet, I take him
upon his own ground. It is in high challenges that high truths have the
right of appearing; and I accept it with the more readiness because it
affords me, at the same time, an opportunity of pursuing the subject
with respect to governments arising out of society.

But it will be first necessary to define what is meant by a
Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt the word; we must fix
also a standard signification to it.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an
ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a
visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a
government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The
constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the
people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which
you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the
principles on which the government shall be established, the manner
in which it shall be organised, the powers it shall have, the mode
of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name
such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the
government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the
complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles on which
it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore,
is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government
are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the
laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws
made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.

Can, then, Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot,
we may fairly conclude that though it has been so much talked about, no
such thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently
that the people have yet a constitution to form.

Mr. Burke will not, I presume, deny the position I have already
advanced--namely, that governments arise either out of the people or
over the people. The English Government is one of those which arose out
of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose over
the people; and though it has been much modified from the opportunity of
circumstances since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has
never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.

I readily perceive the reason why Mr. Burke declined going into the
comparison between the English and French constitutions, because he
could not but perceive, when he sat down to the task, that no such a
thing as a constitution existed on his side the question. His book
is certainly bulky enough to have contained all he could say on this
subject, and it would have been the best manner in which people could
have judged of their separate merits. Why then has he declined the only
thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the strongest ground he
could take, if the advantages were on his side, but the weakest if they
were not; and his declining to take it is either a sign that he could
not possess it or could not maintain it.

Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, "that when the
National Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the Clergy,
and the Noblesse), France had then a good constitution." This shows,
among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does not understand what
a constitution is. The persons so met were not a constitution, but a
convention, to make a constitution.

The present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the
personal social compact. The members of it are the delegates of
the nation in its original character; future assemblies will be the
delegates of the nation in its organised character. The authority of
the present Assembly is different from what the authority of future
Assemblies will be. The authority of the present one is to form a
constitution; the authority of future assemblies will be to legislate
according to the principles and forms prescribed in that constitution;
and if experience should hereafter show that alterations, amendments,
or additions are necessary, the constitution will point out the mode by
which such things shall be done, and not leave it to the discretionary
power of the future government.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments
arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of
altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself
what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there
is no constitution. The act by which the English Parliament empowered
itself to sit seven years, shows there is no constitution in England. It
might, by the same self-authority, have sat any great number of years,
or for life. The bill which the present Mr. Pitt brought into Parliament
some years ago, to reform Parliament, was on the same erroneous
principle. The right of reform is in the nation in its original
character, and the constitutional method would be by a general
convention elected for the purpose. There is, moreover, a paradox in the
idea of vitiated bodies reforming themselves.

From these preliminaries I proceed to draw some comparisons. I have
already spoken of the declaration of rights; and as I mean to be as
concise as possible, I shall proceed to other parts of the French
Constitution.

The constitution of France says that every man who pays a tax of sixty
sous per annum (2s. 6d. English) is an elector. What article will Mr.
Burke place against this? Can anything be more limited, and at the same
time more capricious, than the qualification of electors is in England?
Limited--because not one man in an hundred (I speak much within compass)
is admitted to vote. Capricious--because the lowest character that can
be supposed to exist, and who has not so much as the visible means of an
honest livelihood, is an elector in some places: while in other places,
the man who pays very large taxes, and has a known fair character, and
the farmer who rents to the amount of three or four hundred pounds a
year, with a property on that farm to three or four times that amount,
is not admitted to be an elector. Everything is out of nature, as Mr.
Burke says on another occasion, in this strange chaos, and all sorts of
follies are blended with all sorts of crimes. William the Conqueror and
his descendants parcelled out the country in this manner, and bribed
some parts of it by what they call charters to hold the other parts of
it the better subjected to their will. This is the reason why so many
of those charters abound in Cornwall; the people were averse to the
Government established at the Conquest, and the towns were garrisoned
and bribed to enslave the country. All the old charters are the badges
of this conquest, and it is from this source that the capriciousness of
election arises.

The French Constitution says that the number of representatives for
any place shall be in a ratio to the number of taxable inhabitants or
electors. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? The county
of York, which contains nearly a million of souls, sends two county
members; and so does the county of Rutland, which contains not an
hundredth part of that number. The old town of Sarum, which contains
not three houses, sends two members; and the town of Manchester, which
contains upward of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any.
Is there any principle in these things? It is admitted that all this
is altered, but there is much to be done yet, before we have a fair
representation of the people. Is there anything by which you can trace
the marks of freedom, or discover those of wisdom? No wonder then Mr.
Burke has declined the comparison, and endeavored to lead his readers
from the point by a wild, unsystematical display of paradoxical
rhapsodies.

The French Constitution says that the National Assembly shall be elected
every two years. What article will Mr. Burke place against this? Why,
that the nation has no right at all in the case; that the government is
perfectly arbitrary with respect to this point; and he can quote for his
authority the precedent of a former Parliament.

The French Constitution says there shall be no game laws, that the
farmer on whose lands wild game shall be found (for it is by the produce
of his lands they are fed) shall have a right to what he can take; that
there shall be no monopolies of any kind--that all trades shall be free
and every man free to follow any occupation by which he can procure
an honest livelihood, and in any place, town, or city throughout the
nation. What will Mr. Burke say to this? In England, game is made the
property of those at whose expense it is not fed; and with respect to
monopolies, the country is cut up into monopolies. Every chartered
town is an aristocratical monopoly in itself, and the qualification of
electors proceeds out of those chartered monopolies. Is this freedom? Is
this what Mr. Burke means by a constitution?

In these chartered monopolies, a man coming from another part of the
country is hunted from them as if he were a foreign enemy. An Englishman
is not free of his own country; every one of those places presents a
barrier in his way, and tells him he is not a freeman--that he has no
rights. Within these monopolies are other monopolies. In a city, such
for instance as Bath, which contains between twenty and thirty thousand
inhabitants, the right of electing representatives to Parliament is
monopolised by about thirty-one persons. And within these monopolies
are still others. A man even of the same town, whose parents were not
in circumstances to give him an occupation, is debarred, in many cases,
from the natural right of acquiring one, be his genius or industry what
it may.

Are these things examples to hold out to a country regenerating itself
from slavery, like France? Certainly they are not, and certain am I,
that when the people of England come to reflect upon them they will,
like France, annihilate those badges of ancient oppression, those traces
of a conquered nation. Had Mr. Burke possessed talents similar to the
author of "On the Wealth of Nations." he would have comprehended all
the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form a constitution.
He would have reasoned from minutiae to magnitude. It is not from his
prejudices only, but from the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is
unfitted for the subject he writes upon. Even his genius is without a
constitution. It is a genius at random, and not a genius constituted.
But he must say something. He has therefore mounted in the air like a
balloon, to draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand
upon.

Much is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and tyranny
transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into
England, and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May, then,
the example of all France contribute to regenerate the freedom which a
province of it destroyed!

The French Constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt, no member of the National Assembly
shall be an officer of the government, a placeman or a pensioner. What
will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer: Loaves and
Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mischief in
it than people have yet reflected on. The National Assembly has made the
discovery, and it holds out the example to the world. Had governments
agreed to quarrel on purpose to fleece their countries by taxes, they
could not have succeeded better than they have done.

Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of
what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament,
imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed
to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in the manner in
which an English Parliament is constructed it is like a man being both
mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it
is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the
supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and
are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted
them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of
Errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial
party nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse
is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country
people call "Ride and tie--you ride a little way, and then I."*[5] They
order these things better in France.

The French Constitution says that the right of war and peace is in the
nation. Where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the
expense?

In England this right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower
for sixpence or a shilling a piece: so are the lions; and it would be
a step nearer to reason to say it resided in them, for any inanimate
metaphor is no more than a hat or a cap. We can all see the absurdity of
worshipping Aaron's molten calf, or Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; but
why do men continue to practise themselves the absurdities they despise
in others?

It may with reason be said that in the manner the English nation is
represented it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the
Crown or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who
participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all
countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an
increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes,
a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the
English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded
by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not
raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

Mr. Burke, as a member of the House of Commons, is a part of the English
Government; and though he professes himself an enemy to war, he abuses
the French Constitution, which seeks to explode it. He holds up the
English Government as a model, in all its parts, to France; but he
should first know the remarks which the French make upon it. They
contend in favor of their own, that the portion of liberty enjoyed in
England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by
despotism, and that as the real object of all despotism is revenue,
a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct
despotism, or in a full state of freedom, and is, therefore on the
ground of interest, opposed to both. They account also for the readiness
which always appears in such governments for engaging in wars by
remarking on the different motives which produced them. In despotic
governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in
which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more
permanent promptitude.

The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these evils,
has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and
placed the right where the expense must fall.

When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much interested
in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a principle it
applies as much to one country as another. William the Conqueror, as
a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in himself, and his
descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a right.

Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any right
to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything but in
part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground he throws
the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running a line of
succession springing from William the Conqueror to the present day, he
makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the Conqueror was,
and where he came from, and into the origin, history and nature of what
are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a beginning, and the
fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to discover it. Let,
then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of Normandy, for it is to this
origin that his argument goes. It also unfortunately happens, in running
this line of succession, that another line parallel thereto presents
itself, which is that if the succession runs in the line of the
conquest, the nation runs in the line of being conquered, and it ought
to rescue itself from this reproach.

But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen when
a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it
often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other,
and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war as a
matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the supplies as a
matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse, than the disease.
The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands;
but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion
between the parties, and be made a screen to both.

On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the
right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly,
the mode of conducting it after it is declared. The French Constitution
places the right where the expense must fall, and this union can only
be in the nation. The mode of conducting it after it is declared,
it consigns to the executive department. Were this the case in all
countries, we should hear but little more of wars.

Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution,
and by way of relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an
anecdote which I had from Dr. Franklin.

While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America, during
the war, he had numerous proposals made to him by projectors of every
country and of every kind, who wished to go to the land that floweth
with milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there was one who
offered himself to be king. He introduced his proposal to the Doctor by
letter, which is now in the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of Paris--stating,
first, that as the Americans had dismissed or sent away*[6] their King,
that they would want another. Secondly, that himself was a Norman.
Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family than the Dukes of
Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his line having never been
bastardised. Fourthly, that there was already a precedent in England of
kings coming out of Normandy, and on these grounds he rested his offer,
enjoining that the Doctor would forward it to America. But as the Doctor
neither did this, nor yet sent him an answer, the projector wrote a
second letter, in which he did not, it is true, threaten to go over and
conquer America, but only with great dignity proposed that if his offer
was not accepted, an acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to
him for his generosity! Now, as all arguments respecting succession must
necessarily connect that succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke's
arguments on this subject go to show that there is no English origin of
kings, and that they are descendants of the Norman line in right of the
Conquest. It may, therefore, be of service to his doctrine to make this
story known, and to inform him, that in case of that natural extinction
to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be had from Normandy,
on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror; and consequently,
that the good people of England, at the revolution of 1688, might have
done much better, had such a generous Norman as this known their wants,
and they had known his. The chivalric character which Mr. Burke so much
admires, is certainly much easier to make a bargain with than a hard
dealing Dutchman. But to return to the matters of the constitution: The
French Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of consequence,
all that class of equivocal generation which in some countries is called
"aristocracy" and in others "nobility," is done away, and the peer is
exalted into the Man.

Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is
perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the
human character, which degrades it. It reduces man into the diminutive
of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things
which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and
shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer, of some antiquity,
says: "When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
man, I put away childish things."

It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of
titles has fallen. It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count and Duke,
and breeched itself in manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted.
It has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. The punyism of a senseless
word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please. Even those who
possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the
rickets, have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man, thirsting
for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him
from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to
contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the
Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.

Is it, then, any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a
greater wonder that they should be kept up anywhere? What are they? What
is their worth, and "what is their amount?" When we think or speak of
a Judge or a General, we associate with it the ideas of office and
character; we think of gravity in one and bravery in the other; but when
we use the word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. Through
all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a
Count; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words. Whether
they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or
the rider or the horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid
to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing? Imagination
has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all
the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a
chimerical nondescript.

But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them in
contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them. It is
common opinion only that makes them anything, or nothing, or worse
than nothing. There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take
themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them. This species of
imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and
it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise. There
was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more
thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour riding
throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than
a modern Duke. The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen
by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate. The
patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in
society must take a new ground. The old one has fallen through. It must
now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical
ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar, and
made of them a burnt-offering to Reason.

If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they would not
have been worth a serious and formal destruction, such as the National
Assembly have decreed them; and this makes it necessary to enquire
farther into the nature and character of aristocracy.

That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility
in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest. It was
originally a military order for the purpose of supporting military
government (for such were all governments founded in conquest); and
to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose for which it
was established, all the younger branches of those families were
disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up.

The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law.
It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself
calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy
falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family
of six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one
child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the
cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.

As everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less,
the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the
aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general,
cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but
at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in governments and
courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.

With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother
contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and
by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and
orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line,
and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents to
their children, and children to their parents relations to each other,
and man to society--and to exterminate the monster aristocracy, root
and branch--the French Constitution has destroyed the law of
Primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster; and Mr. Burke, if he
pleases, may write its epitaph.

Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view.
We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it before or
behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is
still a monster.

In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what
it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary
legislators. It was not "a corporation of aristocracy," for such I have
heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers. Let us then
examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has resolved
against having such a House in France.

Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is
kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to
be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are
corrupted at the very source. They begin life by trampling on all their
younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are
taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honour can
that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person
the inheritance of a whole family of children or doles out to them some
pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?

Thirdly. Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent
as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an
hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous
as an hereditary poet laureate.

Fourthly. Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to
nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Fifthly. Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of
governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having
property in man, and governing him by personal right.

Sixthly. Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human
species. By the universal economy of nature it is known, and by the
instance of the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a tendency
to degenerate, in any small number of persons, when separated from the
general stock of society, and inter-marrying constantly with each other.
It defeats even its pretended end, and becomes in time the opposite of
what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of nobility; let him show what
it is. The greatest characters the world have known have arisen on the
democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate
pace with democracy. The artificial Noble shrinks into a dwarf before
the Noble of Nature; and in the few instances of those (for there are
some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in
aristocracy, Those Men Despise It.--But it is time to proceed to a new
subject.

The French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It has
raised the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken from the
higher. None are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds
sterling), nor any higher than two or three thousand pounds. What will
Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.

He says: "That the people of England can see without pain or grudging,
an archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of Durham, or a
Bishop of Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and cannot see why
it is in worse hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands of this
earl or that squire." And Mr. Burke offers this as an example to France.

As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or the
duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general, somewhat
like Sternhold and Hopkins, or Hopkins and Sternhold; you may put which
you please first; and as I confess that I do not understand the merits
of this case, I will not contest it with Mr. Burke.

But with respect to the latter, I have something to say. Mr. Burke has
not put the case right. The comparison is out of order, by being put
between the bishop and the earl or the squire. It ought to be put
between the bishop and the curate, and then it will stand thus:--"The
people of England can see without pain or grudging, a Bishop of Durham,
or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a-year,
and a curate on thirty or forty pounds a-year, or less." No, sir, they
certainly do not see those things without great pain or grudging. It is
a case that applies itself to every man's sense of justice, and is one
among many that calls aloud for a constitution.

In France the cry of "the church! the church!" was repeated as often
as in Mr. Burke's book, and as loudly as when the Dissenters' Bill was
before the English Parliament; but the generality of the French clergy
were not to be deceived by this cry any longer. They knew that whatever
the pretence might be, it was they who were one of the principal objects
of it. It was the cry of the high beneficed clergy, to prevent any
regulation of income taking place between those of ten thousand pounds
a-year and the parish priest. They therefore joined their case to
those of every other oppressed class of men, and by this union obtained
redress.

The French Constitution has abolished tythes, that source of perpetual
discontent between the tythe-holder and the parishioner. When land is
held on tythe, it is in the condition of an estate held between two
parties; the one receiving one-tenth, and the other nine-tenths of the
produce: and consequently, on principles of equity, if the estate can be
improved, and made to produce by that improvement double or treble what
it did before, or in any other ratio, the expense of such improvement
ought to be borne in like proportion between the parties who are to
share the produce. But this is not the case in tythes: the farmer
bears the whole expense, and the tythe-holder takes a tenth of the
improvement, in addition to the original tenth, and by this means gets
the value of two-tenths instead of one. This is another case that calls
for a constitution.

The French Constitution hath abolished or renounced Toleration and
Intolerance also, and hath established Universal Right Of Conscience.

Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit
of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of
withholding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of granting it. The
one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope
selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and state, and the
latter is church and traffic.

But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man worships not
himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is
not for the service of himself, but of his God. In this case, therefore,
we must necessarily have the associated idea of two things; the mortal
who renders the worship, and the Immortal Being who is worshipped.
Toleration, therefore, places itself, not between man and man, nor
between church and church, nor between one denomination of religion and
another, but between God and man; between the being who worships, and
the Being who is worshipped; and by the same act of assumed authority
which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it presumptuously and
blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.

Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act to tolerate
or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or
Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it," all men would
startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption
of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked;
but the presumption is not the less because the name of "Man" only
appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the
worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes!
by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine
insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own
concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that
thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can
determine between you.

With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every
one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such thing as
a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's
religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and
therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong. But with
respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing
itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine object of all
adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and
though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the
earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted.

A Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, or the archbishop who
heads the dukes, will not refuse a tythe-sheaf of wheat because it is
not a cock of hay, nor a cock of hay because it is not a sheaf of wheat;
nor a pig, because it is neither one nor the other; but these same
persons, under the figure of an established church, will not permit
their Maker to receive the varied tythes of man's devotion.

One of the continual choruses of Mr. Burke's book is "Church and State."
He does not mean some one particular church, or some one particular
state, but any church and state; and he uses the term as a general
figure to hold forth the political doctrine of always uniting the church
with the state in every country, and he censures the National Assembly
for not having done this in France. Let us bestow a few thoughts on this
subject.

All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with
principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by
professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral.
Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by
persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose
their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?

It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By
engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable
only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called the
Church established by Law. It is a stranger, even from its birth, to any
parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom in time it kicks out and
destroys.

The inquisition in Spain does not proceed from the religion originally
professed, but from this mule-animal, engendered between the church
and the state. The burnings in Smithfield proceeded from the same
heterogeneous production; and it was the regeneration of this strange
animal in England afterwards, that renewed rancour and irreligion among
the inhabitants, and that drove the people called Quakers and Dissenters
to America. Persecution is not an original feature in any religion;
but it is alway the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or
religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and
every religion re-assumes its original benignity. In America, a catholic
priest is a good citizen, a good character, and a good neighbour; an
episcopalian minister is of the same description: and this proceeds
independently of the men, from there being no law-establishment in
America.

If also we view this matter in a temporal sense, we shall see the ill
effects it has had on the prosperity of nations. The union of church and
state has impoverished Spain. The revoking the edict of Nantes drove the
silk manufacture from that country into England; and church and state
are now driving the cotton manufacture from England to America and
France. Let then Mr. Burke continue to preach his antipolitical doctrine
of Church and State. It will do some good. The National Assembly
will not follow his advice, but will benefit by his folly. It was by
observing the ill effects of it in England, that America has been warned
against it; and it is by experiencing them in France, that the National
Assembly have abolished it, and, like America, have established
Universal Right Of Conscience, And Universal Right Of Citizenship.*[7]

I will here cease the comparison with respect to the principles of the
French Constitution, and conclude this part of the subject with a few
observations on the organisation of the formal parts of the French and
English governments.

The executive power in each country is in the hands of a person styled
the King; but the French Constitution distinguishes between the King and
the Sovereign: It considers the station of King as official, and places
Sovereignty in the nation.

The representatives of the nation, who compose the National Assembly,
and who are the legislative power, originate in and from the people
by election, as an inherent right in the people.--In England it is
otherwise; and this arises from the original establishment of what
is called its monarchy; for, as by the conquest all the rights of the
people or the nation were absorbed into the hands of the Conqueror, and
who added the title of King to that of Conqueror, those same matters
which in France are now held as rights in the people, or in the nation,
are held in England as grants from what is called the crown. The
Parliament in England, in both its branches, was erected by patents from
the descendants of the Conqueror. The House of Commons did not originate
as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant
or boon.

By the French Constitution the nation is always named before the king.
The third article of the declaration of rights says: "The nation is
essentially the source (or fountain) of all sovereignty." Mr. Burke
argues that in England a king is the fountain--that he is the fountain
of all honour. But as this idea is evidently descended from the conquest
I shall make no other remark upon it, than that it is the nature of
conquest to turn everything upside down; and as Mr. Burke will not be
refused the privilege of speaking twice, and as there are but two parts
in the figure, the fountain and the spout, he will be right the second
time.

The French Constitution puts the legislative before the executive, the
law before the king; la loi, le roi. This also is in the natural
order of things, because laws must have existence before they can have
execution.

A king in France does not, in addressing himself to the National
Assembly, say, "My Assembly," similar to the phrase used in England
of my "Parliament"; neither can he use it consistently with the
constitution, nor could it be admitted. There may be propriety in the
use of it in England, because as is before mentioned, both Houses
of Parliament originated from what is called the crown by patent or
boon--and not from the inherent rights of the people, as the National
Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its origin.

The President of the National Assembly does not ask the King to grant to
the Assembly liberty of speech, as is the case with the English House
of Commons. The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot
debase itself. Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights
of man always retained; and with respect to the National Assembly the
use of it is their duty, and the nation is their authority. They were
elected by the greatest body of men exercising the right of election
the European world ever saw. They sprung not from the filth of rotten
boroughs, nor are they the vassal representatives of aristocratical
ones. Feeling the proper dignity of their character they support it.
Their Parliamentary language, whether for or against a question, is
free, bold and manly, and extends to all the parts and circumstances of
the case. If any matter or subject respecting the executive department
or the person who presides in it (the king) comes before them it is
debated on with the spirit of men, and in the language of gentlemen; and
their answer or their address is returned in the same style. They stand
not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the
cringe of sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows
no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled
character of man.

Let us now look to the other side of the question. In the addresses
of the English Parliaments to their kings we see neither the intrepid
spirit of the old Parliaments of France, nor the serene dignity of the
present National Assembly; neither do we see in them anything of the
style of English manners, which border somewhat on bluntness. Since
then they are neither of foreign extraction, nor naturally of English
production, their origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin
is the Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the vassalage class of
manners, and emphatically mark the prostrate distance that exists in
no other condition of men than between the conqueror and the conquered.
That this vassalage idea and style of speaking was not got rid of even
at the Revolution of 1688, is evident from the declaration of Parliament
to William and Mary in these words: "We do most humbly and faithfully
submit ourselves, our heirs and posterities, for ever." Submission is
wholly a vassalage term, repugnant to the dignity of freedom, and an
echo of the language used at the Conquest.

As the estimation of all things is given by comparison, the Revolution
of 1688, however from circumstances it may have been exalted beyond its
value, will find its level. It is already on the wane, eclipsed by the
enlarging orb of reason, and the luminous revolutions of America and
France. In less than another century it will go, as well as Mr. Burke's
labours, "to the family vault of all the Capulets." Mankind will then
scarcely believe that a country calling itself free would send
to Holland for a man, and clothe him with power on purpose to put
themselves in fear of him, and give him almost a million sterling a year
for leave to submit themselves and their posterity, like bondmen and
bondwomen, for ever.

But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the
opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances,
there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as
courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is
seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition
of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that
show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be
made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the
show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and
a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy,
believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to
be nothing.

As I used sometimes to correspond with Mr. Burke believing him then to
be a man of sounder principles than his book shows him to be, I wrote
to him last winter from Paris, and gave him an account how prosperously
matters were going on. Among other subjects in that letter, I referred
to the happy situation the National Assembly were placed in; that they
had taken ground on which their moral duty and their political interest
were united. They have not to hold out a language which they do not
themselves believe, for the fraudulent purpose of making others believe
it. Their station requires no artifice to support it, and can only be
maintained by enlightening mankind. It is not their interest to cherish
ignorance, but to dispel it. They are not in the case of a ministerial
or an opposition party in England, who, though they are opposed, are
still united to keep up the common mystery. The National Assembly must
throw open a magazine of light. It must show man the proper character of
man; and the nearer it can bring him to that standard, the stronger the
National Assembly becomes.

In contemplating the French Constitution, we see in it a rational order
of things. The principles harmonise with the forms, and both with their
origin. It may perhaps be said as an excuse for bad forms, that they
are nothing more than forms; but this is a mistake. Forms grow out of
principles, and operate to continue the principles they grow from. It
is impossible to practise a bad form on anything but a bad principle.
It cannot be ingrafted on a good one; and wherever the forms in any
government are bad, it is a certain indication that the principles are
bad also.

I will here finally close this subject. I began it by remarking that Mr.
Burke had voluntarily declined going into a comparison of the English
and French Constitutions. He apologises (in page 241) for not doing it,
by saying that he had not time. Mr. Burke's book was upwards of eight
months in hand, and is extended to a volume of three hundred and
sixty-six pages. As his omission does injury to his cause, his apology
makes it worse; and men on the English side of the water will begin to
consider, whether there is not some radical defect in what is called the
English constitution, that made it necessary for Mr. Burke to suppress
the comparison, to avoid bringing it into view.

As Mr. Burke has not written on constitutions so neither has he written
on the French Revolution. He gives no account of its commencement or its
progress. He only expresses his wonder. "It looks," says he, "to me, as
if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but
of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken
together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has
hitherto happened in the world."

As wise men are astonished at foolish things, and other people at
wise ones, I know not on which ground to account for Mr. Burke's
astonishment; but certain it is, that he does not understand the French
Revolution. It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos,
but it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution priorily
existing in France. The mind of the nation had changed beforehand,
and the new order of things has naturally followed the new order of
thoughts. I will here, as concisely as I can, trace out the growth of
the French Revolution, and mark the circumstances that have contributed
to produce it.

The despotism of Louis XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and
the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same
time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have
lost all sense of their own dignity, in contemplating that of their
Grand Monarch; and the whole reign of Louis XV., remarkable only for
weakness and effeminacy, made no other alteration than that of spreading
a sort of lethargy over the nation, from which it showed no disposition
to rise.

The only signs which appeared to the spirit of Liberty during those
periods, are to be found in the writings of the French philosophers.
Montesquieu, President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as far as a
writer under a despotic government could well proceed; and being obliged
to divide himself between principle and prudence, his mind often appears
under a veil, and we ought to give him credit for more than he has
expressed.

Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took
another line. His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions
which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with
governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love
of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant),
but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his
irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They
were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he
merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.

On the contrary, we find in the writings of Rousseau, and the Abbe
Raynal, a loveliness of sentiment in favour of liberty, that excites
respect, and elevates the human faculties; but having raised this
animation, they do not direct its operation, and leave the mind in love
with an object, without describing the means of possessing it.

The writings of Quesnay, Turgot, and the friends of those authors, are
of the serious kind; but they laboured under the same disadvantage with
Montesquieu; their writings abound with moral maxims of government, but
are rather directed to economise and reform the administration of the
government, than the government itself.

But all those writings and many others had their weight; and by the
different manner in which they treated the subject of government,
Montesquieu by his judgment and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his wit,
Rousseau and Raynal by their animation, and Quesnay and Turgot by their
moral maxims and systems of economy, readers of every class met with
something to their taste, and a spirit of political inquiry began
to diffuse itself through the nation at the time the dispute between
England and the then colonies of America broke out.

In the war which France afterwards engaged in, it is very well known
that the nation appeared to be before-hand with the French ministry.
Each of them had its view; but those views were directed to different
objects; the one sought liberty, and the other retaliation on England.
The French officers and soldiers who after this went to America, were
eventually placed in the school of Freedom, and learned the practice as
well as the principles of it by heart.

As it was impossible to separate the military events which took place in
America from the principles of the American Revolution, the publication
of those events in France necessarily connected themselves with the
principles which produced them. Many of the facts were in themselves
principles; such as the declaration of American Independence, and the
treaty of alliance between France and America, which recognised the
natural rights of man, and justified resistance to oppression.

The then Minister of France, Count Vergennes, was not the friend of
America; and it is both justice and gratitude to say, that it was the
Queen of France who gave the cause of America a fashion at the French
Court. Count Vergennes was the personal and social friend of Dr.
Franklin; and the Doctor had obtained, by his sensible gracefulness,
a sort of influence over him; but with respect to principles Count
Vergennes was a despot.

The situation of Dr. Franklin, as Minister from America to France,
should be taken into the chain of circumstances. The diplomatic
character is of itself the narrowest sphere of society that man can
act in. It forbids intercourse by the reciprocity of suspicion; and
a diplomatic is a sort of unconnected atom, continually repelling and
repelled. But this was not the case with Dr. Franklin. He was not the
diplomatic of a Court, but of Man. His character as a philosopher
had been long established, and his circle of society in France was
universal.

Count Vergennes resisted for a considerable time the publication in
France of American constitutions, translated into the French language:
but even in this he was obliged to give way to public opinion, and
a sort of propriety in admitting to appear what he had undertaken to
defend. The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is
to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct
them into syntax.

The peculiar situation of the then Marquis de la Fayette is another link
in the great chain. He served in America as an American officer under a
commission of Congress, and by the universality of his acquaintance was
in close friendship with the civil government of America, as well as
with the military line. He spoke the language of the country, entered
into the discussions on the principles of government, and was always a
welcome friend at any election.

When the war closed, a vast reinforcement to the cause of Liberty spread
itself over France, by the return of the French officers and soldiers.
A knowledge of the practice was then joined to the theory; and all
that was wanting to give it real existence was opportunity. Man cannot,
properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has
it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case
in France.

M. Neckar was displaced in May, 1781; and by the ill-management of
the finances afterwards, and particularly during the extravagant
administration of M. Calonne, the revenue of France, which was nearly
twenty-four millions sterling per year, was become unequal to the
expenditure, not because the revenue had decreased, but because the
expenses had increased; and this was a circumstance which the nation
laid hold of to bring forward a Revolution. The English Minister, Mr.
Pitt, has frequently alluded to the state of the French finances in his
budgets, without understanding the subject. Had the French Parliaments
been as ready to register edicts for new taxes as an English Parliament
is to grant them, there had been no derangement in the finances, nor yet
any Revolution; but this will better explain itself as I proceed.

It will be necessary here to show how taxes were formerly raised in
France. The King, or rather the Court or Ministry acting under the use
of that name, framed the edicts for taxes at their own discretion,
and sent them to the Parliaments to be registered; for until they were
registered by the Parliaments they were not operative. Disputes had long
existed between the Court and the Parliaments with respect to the extent
of the Parliament's authority on this head. The Court insisted that the
authority of Parliaments went no farther than to remonstrate or show
reasons against the tax, reserving to itself the right of determining
whether the reasons were well or ill-founded; and in consequence
thereof, either to withdraw the edict as a matter of choice, or to order
it to be unregistered as a matter of authority. The Parliaments on their
part insisted that they had not only a right to remonstrate, but to
reject; and on this ground they were always supported by the nation.

But to return to the order of my narrative. M. Calonne wanted money: and
as he knew the sturdy disposition of the Parliaments with respect to new
taxes, he ingeniously sought either to approach them by a more gentle
means than that of direct authority, or to get over their heads by a
manoeuvre; and for this purpose he revived the project of assembling a
body of men from the several provinces, under the style of an "Assembly
of the Notables," or men of note, who met in 1787, and who were either
to recommend taxes to the Parliaments, or to act as a Parliament
themselves. An Assembly under this name had been called in 1617.

As we are to view this as the first practical step towards the
Revolution, it will be proper to enter into some particulars respecting
it. The Assembly of the Notables has in some places been mistaken for
the States-General, but was wholly a different body, the States-General
being always by election. The persons who composed the Assembly of the
Notables were all nominated by the king, and consisted of one hundred
and forty members. But as M. Calonne could not depend upon a majority of
this Assembly in his favour, he very ingeniously arranged them in such
a manner as to make forty-four a majority of one hundred and forty;
to effect this he disposed of them into seven separate committees, of
twenty members each. Every general question was to be decided, not by a
majority of persons, but by a majority of committee, and as eleven votes
would make a majority in a committee, and four committees a majority of
seven, M. Calonne had good reason to conclude that as forty-four would
determine any general question he could not be outvoted. But all his
plans deceived him, and in the event became his overthrow.

The then Marquis de la Fayette was placed in the second committee, of
which the Count D'Artois was president, and as money matters were the
object, it naturally brought into view every circumstance connected with
it. M. de la Fayette made a verbal charge against Calonne for selling
crown lands to the amount of two millions of livres, in a manner
that appeared to be unknown to the king. The Count D'Artois (as if to
intimidate, for the Bastille was then in being) asked the Marquis if he
would render the charge in writing? He replied that he would. The Count
D'Artois did not demand it, but brought a message from the king to that
purport. M. de la Fayette then delivered in his charge in writing, to
be given to the king, undertaking to support it. No farther proceedings
were had upon this affair, but M. Calonne was soon after dismissed by
the king and set off to England.

As M. de la Fayette, from the experience of what he had seen in America,
was better acquainted with the science of civil government than the
generality of the members who composed the Assembly of the Notables
could then be, the brunt of the business fell considerably to his share.
The plan of those who had a constitution in view was to contend with the
Court on the ground of taxes, and some of them openly professed their
object. Disputes frequently arose between Count D'Artois and M. de
la Fayette upon various subjects. With respect to the arrears already
incurred the latter proposed to remedy them by accommodating the
expenses to the revenue instead of the revenue to the expenses; and as
objects of reform he proposed to abolish the Bastille and all the State
prisons throughout the nation (the keeping of which was attended with
great expense), and to suppress Lettres de Cachet; but those matters
were not then much attended to, and with respect to Lettres de Cachet, a
majority of the Nobles appeared to be in favour of them.

On the subject of supplying the Treasury by new taxes the Assembly
declined taking the matter on themselves, concurring in the opinion that
they had not authority. In a debate on this subject M. de la Fayette
said that raising money by taxes could only be done by a National
Assembly, freely elected by the people, and acting as their
representatives. Do you mean, said the Count D'Artois, the
States-General? M. de la Fayette replied that he did. Will you, said
the Count D'Artois, sign what you say to be given to the king? The other
replied that he would not only do this but that he would go farther,
and say that the effectual mode would be for the king to agree to the
establishment of a constitution.

As one of the plans had thus failed, that of getting the Assembly to act
as a Parliament, the other came into view, that of recommending. On
this subject the Assembly agreed to recommend two new taxes to be
unregistered by the Parliament: the one a stamp-tax and the other a
territorial tax, or sort of land-tax. The two have been estimated
at about five millions sterling per annum. We have now to turn our
attention to the Parliaments, on whom the business was again devolving.

The Archbishop of Thoulouse (since Archbishop of Sens, and now a
Cardinal), was appointed to the administration of the finances soon
after the dismission of Calonne. He was also made Prime Minister, an
office that did not always exist in France. When this office did
not exist, the chief of each of the principal departments transacted
business immediately with the King, but when a Prime Minister was
appointed they did business only with him. The Archbishop arrived to
more state authority than any minister since the Duke de Choiseul, and
the nation was strongly disposed in his favour; but by a line of conduct
scarcely to be accounted for he perverted every opportunity, turned out
a despot, and sunk into disgrace, and a Cardinal.

The Assembly of the Notables having broken up, the minister sent
the edicts for the two new taxes recommended by the Assembly to the
Parliaments to be unregistered. They of course came first before the
Parliament of Paris, who returned for answer: "that with such a revenue
as the nation then supported the name of taxes ought not to be mentioned
but for the purpose of reducing them"; and threw both the edicts
out.*[8] On this refusal the Parliament was ordered to Versailles,
where, in the usual form, the King held what under the old government
was called a Bed of justice; and the two edicts were unregistered
in presence of the Parliament by an order of State, in the manner
mentioned, earlier. On this the Parliament immediately returned to
Paris, renewed their session in form, and ordered the enregistering to
be struck out, declaring that everything done at Versailles was illegal.
All the members of the Parliament were then served with Lettres de
Cachet, and exiled to Troyes; but as they continued as inflexible in
exile as before, and as vengeance did not supply the place of taxes,
they were after a short time recalled to Paris.

The edicts were again tendered to them, and the Count D'Artois undertook
to act as representative of the King. For this purpose he came from
Versailles to Paris, in a train of procession; and the Parliament were
assembled to receive him. But show and parade had lost their influence
in France; and whatever ideas of importance he might set off with,
he had to return with those of mortification and disappointment. On
alighting from his carriage to ascend the steps of the Parliament House,
the crowd (which was numerously collected) threw out trite expressions,
saying: "This is Monsieur D'Artois, who wants more of our money to
spend." The marked disapprobation which he saw impressed him with
apprehensions, and the word Aux armes! (To arms!) was given out by the
officer of the guard who attended him. It was so loudly vociferated,
that it echoed through the avenues of the house, and produced a
temporary confusion. I was then standing in one of the apartments
through which he had to pass, and could not avoid reflecting how
wretched was the condition of a disrespected man.

He endeavoured to impress the Parliament by great words, and opened his
authority by saying, "The King, our Lord and Master." The Parliament
received him very coolly, and with their usual determination not to
register the taxes: and in this manner the interview ended.

After this a new subject took place: In the various debates and contests
which arose between the Court and the Parliaments on the subject of
taxes, the Parliament of Paris at last declared that although it had
been customary for Parliaments to enregister edicts for taxes as a
matter of convenience, the right belonged only to the States-General;
and that, therefore, the Parliament could no longer with propriety
continue to debate on what it had not authority to act. The King after
this came to Paris and held a meeting with the Parliament, in which he
continued from ten in the morning till about six in the evening, and, in
a manner that appeared to proceed from him as if unconsulted upon
with the Cabinet or Ministry, gave his word to the Parliament that the
States-General should be convened.

But after this another scene arose, on a ground different from all
the former. The Minister and the Cabinet were averse to calling
the States-General. They well knew that if the States-General were
assembled, themselves must fall; and as the King had not mentioned any
time, they hit on a project calculated to elude, without appearing to
oppose.

For this purpose, the Court set about making a sort of constitution
itself. It was principally the work of M. Lamoignon, the Keeper of the
Seals, who afterwards shot himself. This new arrangement consisted in
establishing a body under the name of a Cour Pleniere, or Full Court,
in which were invested all the powers that the Government might have
occasion to make use of. The persons composing this Court were to be
nominated by the King; the contended right of taxation was given up
on the part of the King, and a new criminal code of laws and law
proceedings was substituted in the room of the former. The thing, in
many points, contained better principles than those upon which the
Government had hitherto been administered; but with respect to the Cour
Pleniere, it was no other than a medium through which despotism was to
pass, without appearing to act directly from itself.

The Cabinet had high expectations from their new contrivance. The people
who were to compose the Cour Pleniere were already nominated; and as it
was necessary to carry a fair appearance, many of the best characters in
the nation were appointed among the number. It was to commence on May
8, 1788; but an opposition arose to it on two grounds the one as to
principle, the other as to form.

On the ground of Principle it was contended that Government had not a
right to alter itself, and that if the practice was once admitted it
would grow into a principle and be made a precedent for any future
alterations the Government might wish to establish: that the right
of altering the Government was a national right, and not a right of
Government. And on the ground of form it was contended that the Cour
Pleniere was nothing more than a larger Cabinet.

The then Duke de la Rochefoucault, Luxembourg, De Noailles, and many
others, refused to accept the nomination, and strenuously opposed the
whole plan. When the edict for establishing this new court was sent to
the Parliaments to be unregistered and put into execution, they
resisted also. The Parliament of Paris not only refused, but denied the
authority; and the contest renewed itself between the Parliament and the
Cabinet more strongly than ever. While the Parliament were sitting in
debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a regiment of soldiers to
surround the House and form a blockade. The members sent out for beds
and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel: and as this had no
effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament House
and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were
shut up in different prisons. About the same time a deputation of
persons arrived from the province of Brittany to remonstrate against the
establishment of the Cour Pleniere, and those the archbishop sent to the
Bastille. But the spirit of the nation was not to be overcome, and
it was so fully sensible of the strong ground it had taken--that of
withholding taxes--that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of
quiet resistance, which effectually overthrew all the plans at that time
formed against it. The project of the Cour Pleniere was at last obliged
to be given up, and the Prime Minister not long afterwards followed its
fate, and M. Neckar was recalled into office.

The attempt to establish the Cour Pleniere had an effect upon the nation
which itself did not perceive. It was a sort of new form of government
that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge
it from the superstitious authority of antiquity. It was Government
dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one,
made a chasm.

The failure of this scheme renewed the subject of convening the
State-General; and this gave rise to a new series of politics. There was
no settled form for convening the States-General: all that it positively
meant was a deputation from what was then called the Clergy, the
Noblesse, and the Commons; but their numbers or their proportions had
not been always the same. They had been convened only on extraordinary
occasions, the last of which was in 1614; their numbers were then in
equal proportions, and they voted by orders.

It could not well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of
1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the
nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been
too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been
endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of
the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would
have been attended to. But as he did not choose to take the decision
upon himself, he summoned again the Assembly of the Notables and
referred it to them. This body was in general interested in the
decision, being chiefly of aristocracy and high-paid clergy, and they
decided in favor of the mode of 1614. This decision was against the
sense of the Nation, and also against the wishes of the Court; for
the aristocracy opposed itself to both and contended for privileges
independent of either. The subject was then taken up by the Parliament,
who recommended that the number of the Commons should be equal to the
other two: and they should all sit in one house and vote in one body.
The number finally determined on was 1,200; 600 to be chosen by the
Commons (and this was less than their proportion ought to have been when
their worth and consequence is considered on a national scale), 300 by
the Clergy, and 300 by the Aristocracy; but with respect to the mode of
assembling themselves, whether together or apart, or the manner in which
they should vote, those matters were referred.*[9]

The election that followed was not a contested election, but an animated
one. The candidates were not men, but principles. Societies were formed
in Paris, and committees of correspondence and communication established
throughout the nation, for the purpose of enlightening the people, and
explaining to them the principles of civil government; and so orderly
was the election conducted, that it did not give rise even to the rumour
of tumult.

The States-General were to meet at Versailles in April 1789, but did not
assemble till May. They situated themselves in three separate chambers,
or rather the Clergy and Aristocracy withdrew each into a separate
chamber. The majority of the Aristocracy claimed what they called the
privilege of voting as a separate body, and of giving their consent
or their negative in that manner; and many of the bishops and the
high-beneficed clergy claimed the same privilege on the part of their
Order.

The Tiers Etat (as they were then called) disowned any knowledge of
artificial orders and artificial privileges; and they were not only
resolute on this point, but somewhat disdainful. They began to consider
the Aristocracy as a kind of fungus growing out of the corruption of
society, that could not be admitted even as a branch of it; and from the
disposition the Aristocracy had shown by upholding Lettres de Cachet,
and in sundry other instances, it was manifest that no constitution
could be formed by admitting men in any other character than as National
Men.

After various altercations on this head, the Tiers Etat or Commons (as
they were then called) declared themselves (on a motion made for that
purpose by the Abbe Sieyes) "The Representative Of The Nation; and that
the two Orders could be considered but as deputies of corporations, and
could only have a deliberate voice when they assembled in a national
character with the national representatives." This proceeding
extinguished the style of Etats Generaux, or States-General, and erected
it into the style it now bears, that of L'Assemblee Nationale, or
National Assembly.

This motion was not made in a precipitate manner. It was the result of
cool deliberation, and concerned between the national representatives
and the patriotic members of the two chambers, who saw into the folly,
mischief, and injustice of artificial privileged distinctions. It was
become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that
name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.
The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and
affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as
the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from
the same motives.

On carrying this motion, the national representatives, as had been
concerted, sent an invitation to the two chambers, to unite with them in
a national character, and proceed to business. A majority of the clergy,
chiefly of the parish priests, withdrew from the clerical chamber, and
joined the nation; and forty-five from the other chamber joined in
like manner. There is a sort of secret history belonging to this last
circumstance, which is necessary to its explanation; it was not judged
prudent that all the patriotic members of the chamber styling itself the
Nobles, should quit it at once; and in consequence of this arrangement,
they drew off by degrees, always leaving some, as well to reason the
case, as to watch the suspected. In a little time the numbers increased
from forty-five to eighty, and soon after to a greater number;
which, with the majority of the clergy, and the whole of the national
representatives, put the malcontents in a very diminutive condition.

The King, who, very different from the general class called by that
name, is a man of a good heart, showed himself disposed to recommend
a union of the three chambers, on the ground the National Assembly had
taken; but the malcontents exerted themselves to prevent it, and began
now to have another project in view. Their numbers consisted of a
majority of the aristocratical chamber, and the minority of the clerical
chamber, chiefly of bishops and high-beneficed clergy; and these men
were determined to put everything to issue, as well by strength as by
stratagem. They had no objection to a constitution; but it must be such
a one as themselves should dictate, and suited to their own views and
particular situations. On the other hand, the Nation disowned knowing
anything of them but as citizens, and was determined to shut out all
such up-start pretensions. The more aristocracy appeared, the more it
was despised; there was a visible imbecility and want of intellects in
the majority, a sort of je ne sais quoi, that while it affected to be
more than citizen, was less than man. It lost ground from contempt more
than from hatred; and was rather jeered at as an ass, than dreaded as a
lion. This is the general character of aristocracy, or what are called
Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability, in all countries.

The plan of the malcontents consisted now of two things; either to
deliberate and vote by chambers (or orders), more especially on all
questions respecting a Constitution (by which the aristocratical chamber
would have had a negative on any article of the Constitution); or, in
case they could not accomplish this object, to overthrow the National
Assembly entirely.

To effect one or other of these objects they began to cultivate a
friendship with the despotism they had hitherto attempted to rival, and
the Count D'Artois became their chief. The king (who has since declared
himself deceived into their measures) held, according to the old form,
a Bed of Justice, in which he accorded to the deliberation and vote par
tete (by head) upon several subjects; but reserved the deliberation and
vote upon all questions respecting a constitution to the three chambers
separately. This declaration of the king was made against the advice of
M. Neckar, who now began to perceive that he was growing out of fashion
at Court, and that another minister was in contemplation.

As the form of sitting in separate chambers was yet apparently kept up,
though essentially destroyed, the national representatives immediately
after this declaration of the King resorted to their own chambers
to consult on a protest against it; and the minority of the chamber
(calling itself the Nobles), who had joined the national cause, retired
to a private house to consult in like manner. The malcontents had by
this time concerted their measures with the court, which the Count
D'Artois undertook to conduct; and as they saw from the discontent which
the declaration excited, and the opposition making against it, that they
could not obtain a control over the intended constitution by a
separate vote, they prepared themselves for their final object--that of
conspiring against the National Assembly, and overthrowing it.

The next morning the door of the chamber of the National Assembly was
shut against them, and guarded by troops; and the members were
refused admittance. On this they withdrew to a tennis-ground in the
neighbourhood of Versailles, as the most convenient place they could
find, and, after renewing their session, took an oath never to separate
from each other, under any circumstance whatever, death excepted, until
they had established a constitution. As the experiment of shutting up
the house had no other effect than that of producing a closer connection
in the members, it was opened again the next day, and the public
business recommenced in the usual place.

We are now to have in view the forming of the new ministry, which was to
accomplish the overthrow of the National Assembly. But as force would
be necessary, orders were issued to assemble thirty thousand troops, the
command of which was given to Broglio, one of the intended new ministry,
who was recalled from the country for this purpose. But as some
management was necessary to keep this plan concealed till the moment it
should be ready for execution, it is to this policy that a declaration
made by Count D'Artois must be attributed, and which is here proper to
be introduced.

It could not but occur while the malcontents continued to resort to
their chambers separate from the National Assembly, more jealousy would
be excited than if they were mixed with it, and that the plot might be
suspected. But as they had taken their ground, and now wanted a pretence
for quitting it, it was necessary that one should be devised. This was
effectually accomplished by a declaration made by the Count D'Artois:
"That if they took not a Part in the National Assembly, the life of the
king would be endangered": on which they quitted their chambers, and
mixed with the Assembly, in one body.

At the time this declaration was made, it was generally treated as a
piece of absurdity in Count D'Artois calculated merely to relieve the
outstanding members of the two chambers from the diminutive situation
they were put in; and if nothing more had followed, this conclusion
would have been good. But as things best explain themselves by their
events, this apparent union was only a cover to the machinations which
were secretly going on; and the declaration accommodated itself to
answer that purpose. In a little time the National Assembly found itself
surrounded by troops, and thousands more were daily arriving. On this a
very strong declaration was made by the National Assembly to the King,
remonstrating on the impropriety of the measure, and demanding the
reason. The King, who was not in the secret of this business, as himself
afterwards declared, gave substantially for answer, that he had no other
object in view than to preserve the public tranquility, which appeared
to be much disturbed.

But in a few days from this time the plot unravelled itself M. Neckar
and the ministry were displaced, and a new one formed of the enemies
of the Revolution; and Broglio, with between twenty-five and thirty
thousand foreign troops, was arrived to support them. The mask was now
thrown off, and matters were come to a crisis. The event was that in a
space of three days the new ministry and their abettors found it prudent
to fly the nation; the Bastille was taken, and Broglio and his foreign
troops dispersed, as is already related in the former part of this work.

There are some curious circumstances in the history of this short-lived
ministry, and this short-lived attempt at a counter-revolution. The
Palace of Versailles, where the Court was sitting, was not more than
four hundred yards distant from the hall where the National Assembly
was sitting. The two places were at this moment like the separate
headquarters of two combatant armies; yet the Court was as perfectly
ignorant of the information which had arrived from Paris to the National
Assembly, as if it had resided at an hundred miles distance. The then
Marquis de la Fayette, who (as has been already mentioned) was chosen to
preside in the National Assembly on this particular occasion, named by
order of the Assembly three successive deputations to the king, on the
day and up to the evening on which the Bastille was taken, to inform and
confer with him on the state of affairs; but the ministry, who knew not
so much as that it was attacked, precluded all communication, and were
solacing themselves how dextrously they had succeeded; but in a few
hours the accounts arrived so thick and fast that they had to start from
their desks and run. Some set off in one disguise, and some in another,
and none in their own character. Their anxiety now was to outride the
news, lest they should be stopt, which, though it flew fast, flew not so
fast as themselves.

It is worth remarking that the National Assembly neither pursued those
fugitive conspirators, nor took any notice of them, nor sought
to retaliate in any shape whatever. Occupied with establishing a
constitution founded on the Rights of Man and the Authority of the
People, the only authority on which Government has a right to exist
in any country, the National Assembly felt none of those mean passions
which mark the character of impertinent governments, founding themselves
on their own authority, or on the absurdity of hereditary succession. It
is the faculty of the human mind to become what it contemplates, and to
act in unison with its object.

The conspiracy being thus dispersed, one of the first works of the
National Assembly, instead of vindictive proclamations, as has been the
case with other governments, was to publish a declaration of the Rights
of Man, as the basis on which the new constitution was to be built, and
which is here subjoined:


                             Declaration

                                Of The

                    Rights Of Man And Of Citizens

                  By The National Assembly Of France

The representatives of the people of France, formed into a National
Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of human
rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes and corruptions of
Government, have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, these
natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable rights: that this declaration
being constantly present to the minds of the members of the body social,
they may be forever kept attentive to their rights and their duties;
that the acts of the legislative and executive powers of Government,
being capable of being every moment compared with the end of political
institutions, may be more respected; and also, that the future claims of
the citizens, being directed by simple and incontestable principles,
may always tend to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the general
happiness.

For these reasons the National Assembly doth recognize and declare, in
the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of his blessing and
favour, the following sacred rights of men and of citizens:

One: Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their Rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
Public Utility.

Two: The end of all Political associations is the Preservation of the
Natural and Imprescriptible Rights of Man; and these rights are Liberty,
Property, Security, and Resistance of Oppression.

Three: The Nation is essentially the source of all Sovereignty; nor can
any individual, or any body of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it.

Four: Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not
Injure another. The exercise of the Natural Rights of every Man, has no
other limits than those which are necessary to secure to every other Man
the Free exercise of the same Rights; and these limits are determinable
only by the Law.

Five: The Law ought to Prohibit only actions hurtful to Society. What is
not Prohibited by the Law should not be hindered; nor should anyone be
compelled to that which the Law does not Require.

Six: the Law is an expression of the Will of the Community. All Citizens
have a right to concur, either personally or by their Representatives,
in its formation. It Should be the same to all, whether it protects or
punishes; and all being equal in its sight, are equally eligible to
all Honours, Places, and employments, according to their different
abilities, without any other distinction than that created by their
Virtues and talents.

Seven: No Man should be accused, arrested, or held in confinement,
except in cases determined by the Law, and according to the forms which
it has prescribed. All who promote, solicit, execute, or cause to be
executed, arbitrary orders, ought to be punished, and every Citizen
called upon, or apprehended by virtue of the Law, ought immediately to
obey, and renders himself culpable by resistance.

Eight: The Law ought to impose no other penalties but such as are
absolutely and evidently necessary; and no one ought to be punished, but
in virtue of a Law promulgated before the offence, and Legally applied.

Nine: Every Man being presumed innocent till he has been convicted,
whenever his detention becomes indispensable, all rigour to him, more
than is necessary to secure his person, ought to be provided against by
the Law.

Ten: No Man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on
account of his Religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not
disturb the Public Order established by the Law.

Eleven: The unrestrained communication of thoughts and opinions being
one of the Most Precious Rights of Man, every Citizen may speak, write,
and publish freely, provided he is responsible for the abuse of this
Liberty, in cases determined by the Law.

Twelve: A Public force being necessary to give security to the Rights
of Men and of Citizens, that force is instituted for the benefit of the
Community and not for the particular benefit of the persons to whom it
is intrusted.

Thirteen: A common contribution being necessary for the support of the
Public force, and for defraying the other expenses of Government,
it ought to be divided equally among the Members of the Community,
according to their abilities.

Fourteen: every Citizen has a Right, either by himself or his
Representative, to a free voice in determining the necessity of Public
Contributions, the appropriation of them, and their amount, mode of
assessment, and duration.

Fifteen: every Community has a Right to demand of all its agents an
account of their conduct.

Sixteen: every Community in which a Separation of Powers and a Security
of Rights is not Provided for, wants a Constitution.

Seventeen: The Right to Property being inviolable and sacred, no one
ought to be deprived of it, except in cases of evident Public necessity,
legally ascertained, and on condition of a previous just Indemnity.




OBSERVATIONS ON THE DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

The first three articles comprehend in general terms the whole of a
Declaration of Rights, all the succeeding articles either originate
from them or follow as elucidations. The 4th, 5th, and 6th define more
particularly what is only generally expressed in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th articles are declaratory of principles
upon which laws shall be constructed, conformable to rights already
declared. But it is questioned by some very good people in France,
as well as in other countries, whether the 10th article sufficiently
guarantees the right it is intended to accord with; besides which it
takes off from the divine dignity of religion, and weakens its operative
force upon the mind, to make it a subject of human laws. It then
presents itself to man like light intercepted by a cloudy medium, in
which the source of it is obscured from his sight, and he sees nothing
to reverence in the dusky ray.*[10]

The remaining articles, beginning with the twelfth, are substantially
contained in the principles of the preceding articles; but in the
particular situation in which France then was, having to undo what was
wrong, as well as to set up what was right, it was proper to be more
particular than what in another condition of things would be necessary.

While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of
its members remarked that if a declaration of rights were published
it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation
discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting
far enough. A Declaration of Rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of
Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another;
and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

The three first articles are the base of Liberty, as well individual as
national; nor can any country be called free whose government does not
take its beginning from the principles they contain, and continue to
preserve them pure; and the whole of the Declaration of Rights is of
more value to the world, and will do more good, than all the laws and
statutes that have yet been promulgated.

In the declaratory exordium which prefaces the Declaration of Rights
we see the solemn and majestic spectacle of a nation opening its
commission, under the auspices of its Creator, to establish a
Government, a scene so new, and so transcendantly unequalled by anything
in the European world, that the name of a Revolution is diminutive of
its character, and it rises into a Regeneration of man. What are the
present Governments of Europe but a scene of iniquity and oppression?
What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say it is a market
where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic
at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French
Revolution is traduced. Had it confined itself merely to the destruction
of flagrant despotism perhaps Mr. Burke and some others had been silent.
Their cry now is, "It has gone too far"--that is, it has gone too far
for them. It stares corruption in the face, and the venal tribe are all
alarmed. Their fear discovers itself in their outrage, and they are but
publishing the groans of a wounded vice. But from such opposition the
French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage. The more it
is struck the more sparks it will emit; and the fear is it will not be
struck enough. It has nothing to dread from attacks; truth has given it
an establishment, and time will record it with a name as lasting as his
own.

Having now traced the progress of the French Revolution through most
of its principal stages, from its commencement to the taking of the
Bastille, and its establishment by the Declaration of Rights, I will
close the subject with the energetic apostrophe of M. de la Fayette,
"May this great monument, raised to Liberty, serve as a lesson to the
oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!"*[11]


                        MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER

To prevent interrupting the argument in the preceding part of this work,
or the narrative that follows it, I reserved some observations to be
thrown together in a Miscellaneous Chapter; by which variety might
not be censured for confusion. Mr. Burke's book is all Miscellany. His
intention was to make an attack on the French Revolution; but instead of
proceeding with an orderly arrangement, he has stormed it with a mob of
ideas tumbling over and destroying one another.

But this confusion and contradiction in Mr. Burke's Book is easily
accounted for.--When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course
by anything else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be
lost. It is beyond the compass of his capacity to keep all the parts
of an argument together, and make them unite in one issue, by any
other means than having this guide always in view. Neither memory nor
invention will supply the want of it. The former fails him, and the
latter betrays him.

Notwithstanding the nonsense, for it deserves no better name, that Mr.
Burke has asserted about hereditary rights, and hereditary succession,
and that a Nation has not a right to form a Government of itself; it
happened to fall in his way to give some account of what Government is.
"Government," says he, "is a contrivance of human wisdom."

Admitting that government is a contrivance of human wisdom, it must
necessarily follow, that hereditary succession, and hereditary rights
(as they are called), can make no part of it, because it is impossible
to make wisdom hereditary; and on the other hand, that cannot be a
wise contrivance, which in its operation may commit the government of a
nation to the wisdom of an idiot. The ground which Mr. Burke now
takes is fatal to every part of his cause. The argument changes from
hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the
wisest man? He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary
succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king. What a
stroke has Mr. Burke now made! To use a sailor's phrase, he has swabbed
the deck, and scarcely left a name legible in the list of Kings; and
he has mowed down and thinned the House of Peers, with a scythe as
formidable as Death and Time.

But Mr. Burke appears to have been aware of this retort; and he has
taken care to guard against it, by making government to be not only
a contrivance of human wisdom, but a monopoly of wisdom. He puts the
nation as fools on one side, and places his government of wisdom, all
wise men of Gotham, on the other side; and he then proclaims, and says
that "Men have a Right that their Wants should be provided for by this
wisdom." Having thus made proclamation, he next proceeds to explain to
them what their wants are, and also what their rights are. In this
he has succeeded dextrously, for he makes their wants to be a want of
wisdom; but as this is cold comfort, he then informs them, that they
have a right (not to any of the wisdom) but to be governed by it; and
in order to impress them with a solemn reverence for this
monopoly-government of wisdom, and of its vast capacity for all
purposes, possible or impossible, right or wrong, he proceeds with
astrological mysterious importance, to tell to them its powers in these
words: "The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these
are often in balance between differences of good; and in compromises
sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between
evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle;
adding--subtracting--multiplying--and dividing, morally and not
metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations."

As the wondering audience, whom Mr. Burke supposes himself talking to,
may not understand all this learned jargon, I will undertake to be
its interpreter. The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That
government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil
good, or good evil, just as it pleases. In short, that government is
arbitrary power.

But there are some things which Mr. Burke has forgotten. First, he has
not shown where the wisdom originally came from: and secondly, he has
not shown by what authority it first began to act. In the manner he
introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or
wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers
without authority. In short, it is usurpation.

Whether it be from a sense of shame, or from a consciousness of some
radical defect in a government necessary to be kept out of sight, or
from both, or from any other cause, I undertake not to determine, but
so it is, that a monarchical reasoner never traces government to its
source, or from its source. It is one of the shibboleths by which he
may be known. A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or
France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their
government, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors! But
what can a monarchical talker say? What has he to exult in? Alas he has
nothing. A certain something forbids him to look back to a beginning,
lest some robber, or some Robin Hood, should rise from the long
obscurity of time and say, I am the origin. Hard as Mr. Burke laboured
at the Regency Bill and Hereditary Succession two years ago, and much
as he dived for precedents, he still had not boldness enough to bring
up William of Normandy, and say, There is the head of the list! there
is the fountain of honour! the son of a prostitute, and the plunderer of
the English nation.

The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all
countries. The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of
light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of
governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when
once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a
peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of
knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made
ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it
acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has
been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition
it was in before it saw it. Those who talk of a counter-revolution in
France, show how little they understand of man. There does not exist in
the compass of language an arrangement of words to express so much
as the means of effecting a counter-revolution. The means must be an
obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to
make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.

Mr. Burke is labouring in vain to stop the progress of knowledge; and it
comes with the worse grace from him, as there is a certain transaction
known in the city which renders him suspected of being a pensioner in
a fictitious name. This may account for some strange doctrine he has
advanced in his book, which though he points it at the Revolution
Society, is effectually directed against the whole nation.

"The King of England," says he, "holds his crown (for it does not belong
to the Nation, according to Mr. Burke) in contempt of the choice of the
Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king among them
either individually or collectively; and his Majesty's heirs each in
their time and order, will come to the Crown with the same contempt of
their choice, with which his Majesty has succeeded to that which he now
wears."

As to who is King in England, or elsewhere, or whether there is any
King at all, or whether the people choose a Cherokee chief, or a Hessian
hussar for a King, it is not a matter that I trouble myself about--be
that to themselves; but with respect to the doctrine, so far as it
relates to the Rights of Men and Nations, it is as abominable as
anything ever uttered in the most enslaved country under heaven.
Whether it sounds worse to my ear, by not being accustomed to hear such
despotism, than what it does to another person, I am not so well a judge
of; but of its abominable principle I am at no loss to judge.

It is not the Revolution Society that Mr. Burke means; it is the Nation,
as well in its original as in its representative character; and he has
taken care to make himself understood, by saying that they have not
a vote either collectively or individually. The Revolution Society is
composed of citizens of all denominations, and of members of both the
Houses of Parliament; and consequently, if there is not a right to a
vote in any of the characters, there can be no right to any either in
the nation or in its Parliament. This ought to be a caution to every
country how to import foreign families to be kings. It is somewhat
curious to observe, that although the people of England had been in the
habit of talking about kings, it is always a Foreign House of Kings;
hating Foreigners yet governed by them.--It is now the House of
Brunswick, one of the petty tribes of Germany.

It has hitherto been the practice of the English Parliaments to regulate
what was called the succession (taking it for granted that the Nation
then continued to accord to the form of annexing a monarchical branch
of its government; for without this the Parliament could not have had
authority to have sent either to Holland or to Hanover, or to impose
a king upon the nation against its will). And this must be the utmost
limit to which Parliament can go upon this case; but the right of the
Nation goes to the whole case, because it has the right of changing its
whole form of government. The right of a Parliament is only a right in
trust, a right by delegation, and that but from a very small part of the
Nation; and one of its Houses has not even this. But the right of the
Nation is an original right, as universal as taxation. The nation is
the paymaster of everything, and everything must conform to its general
will.

I remember taking notice of a speech in what is called the English House
of Peers, by the then Earl of Shelburne, and I think it was at the time
he was Minister, which is applicable to this case. I do not directly
charge my memory with every particular; but the words and the purport,
as nearly as I remember, were these: "That the form of a Government was
a matter wholly at the will of the Nation at all times, that if it chose
a monarchical form, it had a right to have it so; and if it afterwards
chose to be a Republic, it had a right to be a Republic, and to say to a
King, 'We have no longer any occasion for you.'"

When Mr. Burke says that "His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in
their time and order, will come to the crown with the same content of
their choice with which His Majesty had succeeded to that he wears," it
is saying too much even to the humblest individual in the country;
part of whose daily labour goes towards making up the million sterling
a-year, which the country gives the person it styles a king. Government
with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes
worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery. This species
of government comes from Germany; and reminds me of what one of the
Brunswick soldiers told me, who was taken prisoner by, the Americans
in the late war: "Ah!" said he, "America is a fine free country, it is
worth the people's fighting for; I know the difference by knowing my
own: in my country, if the prince says eat straw, we eat straw."
God help that country, thought I, be it England or elsewhere, whose
liberties are to be protected by German principles of government, and
Princes of Brunswick!

As Mr. Burke sometimes speaks of England, sometimes of France, and
sometimes of the world, and of government in general, it is difficult
to answer his book without apparently meeting him on the same ground.
Although principles of Government are general subjects, it is next to
impossible, in many cases, to separate them from the idea of place and
circumstance, and the more so when circumstances are put for arguments,
which is frequently the case with Mr. Burke.

In the former part of his book, addressing himself to the people of
France, he says: "No experience has taught us (meaning the English),
that in any other course or method than that of a hereditary crown,
can our liberties be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our
hereditary right." I ask Mr. Burke, who is to take them away? M. de la
Fayette, in speaking to France, says: "For a Nation to be free, it
is sufficient that she wills it." But Mr. Burke represents England as
wanting capacity to take care of itself, and that its liberties must be
taken care of by a King holding it in "contempt." If England is sunk
to this, it is preparing itself to eat straw, as in Hanover, or in
Brunswick. But besides the folly of the declaration, it happens that
the facts are all against Mr. Burke. It was by the government being
hereditary, that the liberties of the people were endangered. Charles I.
and James II. are instances of this truth; yet neither of them went so
far as to hold the Nation in contempt.

As it is sometimes of advantage to the people of one country to hear
what those of other countries have to say respecting it, it is possible
that the people of France may learn something from Mr. Burke's book, and
that the people of England may also learn something from the answers
it will occasion. When Nations fall out about freedom, a wide field of
debate is opened. The argument commences with the rights of war, without
its evils, and as knowledge is the object contended for, the party that
sustains the defeat obtains the prize.

Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an hereditary crown, as if it
were some production of Nature; or as if, like Time, it had a power to
operate, not only independently, but in spite of man; or as if it were a
thing or a subject universally consented to. Alas! it has none of
those properties, but is the reverse of them all. It is a thing in
imagination, the propriety of which is more than doubted, and the
legality of which in a few years will be denied.

But, to arrange this matter in a clearer view than what general
expression can heads under which (what is called) an hereditary crown,
or more properly speaking, an hereditary succession to the Government of
a Nation, can be considered; which are:

First, The right of a particular Family to establish itself.

Secondly, The right of a Nation to establish a particular Family.

With respect to the first of these heads, that of a Family establishing
itself with hereditary powers on its own authority, and independent of
the consent of a Nation, all men will concur in calling it despotism;
and it would be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove
it.

But the second head, that of a Nation establishing a particular Family
with hereditary powers, does not present itself as despotism on the
first reflection; but if men will permit it a second reflection to take
place, and carry that reflection forward but one remove out of their own
persons to that of their offspring, they will then see that hereditary
succession becomes in its consequences the same despotism to others,
which they reprobated for themselves. It operates to preclude the
consent of the succeeding generations; and the preclusion of consent is
despotism. When the person who at any time shall be in possession of
a Government, or those who stand in succession to him, shall say to a
Nation, I hold this power in "contempt" of you, it signifies not on what
authority he pretends to say it. It is no relief, but an aggravation to
a person in slavery, to reflect that he was sold by his parent; and as
that which heightens the criminality of an act cannot be produced to
prove the legality of it, hereditary succession cannot be established as
a legal thing.

In order to arrive at a more perfect decision on this head, it will be
proper to consider the generation which undertakes to establish a Family
with hereditary powers, apart and separate from the generations which
are to follow; and also to consider the character in which the first
generation acts with respect to succeeding generations.

The generation which first selects a person, and puts him at the head of
its Government, either with the title of King, or any other distinction,
acts on its own choice, be it wise or foolish, as a free agent for
itself The person so set up is not hereditary, but selected and
appointed; and the generation who sets him up, does not live under a
hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice and
establishment. Were the generation who sets him up, and the person so
set up, to live for ever, it never could become hereditary succession;
and of consequence hereditary succession can only follow on the death of
the first parties.

As, therefore, hereditary succession is out of the question with respect
to the first generation, we have now to consider the character in which
that generation acts with respect to the commencing generation, and to
all succeeding ones.

It assumes a character, to which it has neither right nor title. It
changes itself from a Legislator to a Testator, and effects to make
its Will, which is to have operation after the demise of the makers, to
bequeath the Government; and it not only attempts to bequeath, but to
establish on the succeeding generation, a new and different form of
Government under which itself lived. Itself, as already observed, lived
not under a hereditary Government but under a Government of its own
choice and establishment; and it now attempts, by virtue of a will and
testament (and which it has not authority to make), to take from the
commencing generation, and all future ones, the rights and free agency
by which itself acted.

But, exclusive of the right which any generation has to act collectively
as a testator, the objects to which it applies itself in this case, are
not within the compass of any law, or of any will or testament.

The rights of men in society, are neither devisable or transferable, nor
annihilable, but are descendable only, and it is not in the power of any
generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent. If the present
generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen
the right of the succeeding generation to be free. Wrongs cannot have
a legal descent. When Mr. Burke attempts to maintain that the English
nation did at the Revolution of 1688, most solemnly renounce and
abdicate their rights for themselves, and for all their posterity for
ever, he speaks a language that merits not reply, and which can
only excite contempt for his prostitute principles, or pity for his
ignorance.

In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will
and testament of some former generation, presents itself, it is an
absurdity. A cannot make a will to take from B the property of B,
and give it to C; yet this is the manner in which (what is called)
hereditary succession by law operates. A certain former generation made
a will, to take away the rights of the commencing generation, and all
future ones, and convey those rights to a third person, who afterwards
comes forward, and tells them, in Mr. Burke's language, that they have
no rights, that their rights are already bequeathed to him and that
he will govern in contempt of them. From such principles, and such
ignorance, good Lord deliver the world!

But, after all, what is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what
is monarchy? Is it a thing, or is it a name, or is it a fraud? Is it a
"contrivance of human wisdom," or of human craft to obtain money from a
nation under specious pretences? Is it a thing necessary to a nation?
If it is, in what does that necessity consist, what service does it
perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue
consist in the metaphor, or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes
the crown, make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's
wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer?
In fine, what is it? It appears to be something going much out of
fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as
unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity;
and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man,
and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that
preserve the appearance of its existence.

If government be what Mr. Burke describes it, "a contrivance of human
wisdom" I might ask him, if wisdom was at such a low ebb in England,
that it was become necessary to import it from Holland and from Hanover?
But I will do the country the justice to say, that was not the case; and
even if it was it mistook the cargo. The wisdom of every country, when
properly exerted, is sufficient for all its purposes; and there
could exist no more real occasion in England to have sent for a Dutch
Stadtholder, or a German Elector, than there was in America to have done
a similar thing. If a country does not understand its own affairs,
how is a foreigner to understand them, who knows neither its laws, its
manners, nor its language? If there existed a man so transcendently wise
above all others, that his wisdom was necessary to instruct a nation,
some reason might be offered for monarchy; but when we cast our eyes
about a country, and observe how every part understands its own affairs;
and when we look around the world, and see that of all men in it, the
race of kings are the most insignificant in capacity, our reason cannot
fail to ask us--What are those men kept for?

If there is anything in monarchy which we people of America do not
understand, I wish Mr. Burke would be so kind as to inform us. I see
in America, a government extending over a country ten times as large
as England, and conducted with regularity, for a fortieth part of the
expense which Government costs in England. If I ask a man in America if
he wants a King, he retorts, and asks me if I take him for an idiot?
How is it that this difference happens? are we more or less wise than
others? I see in America the generality of people living in a style of
plenty unknown in monarchical countries; and I see that the principle
of its government, which is that of the equal Rights of Man, is making a
rapid progress in the world.

If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept up anywhere? and if a
necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with? That civil government
is necessary, all civilized nations will agree; but civil government is
republican government. All that part of the government of England which
begins with the office of constable, and proceeds through the department
of magistrate, quarter-sessions, and general assize, including trial by
jury, is republican government. Nothing of monarchy appears in any part
of it, except in the name which William the Conqueror imposed upon the
English, that of obliging them to call him "Their Sovereign Lord the
King."

It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as Placemen,
Pensioners, Lords of the bed-chamber, Lords of the kitchen, Lords of
the necessary-house, and the Lord knows what besides, can find as many
reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the
country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the
merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to
the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no
answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like
a sinecure.

Notwithstanding the taxes of England amount to almost seventeen millions
a year, said to be for the expenses of Government, it is still evident
that the sense of the Nation is left to govern itself, and does
govern itself, by magistrates and juries, almost at its own charge, on
republican principles, exclusive of the expense of taxes. The salaries
of the judges are almost the only charge that is paid out of the
revenue. Considering that all the internal government is executed by the
people, the taxes of England ought to be the lightest of any nation
in Europe; instead of which, they are the contrary. As this cannot be
accounted for on the score of civil government, the subject necessarily
extends itself to the monarchical part.

When the people of England sent for George the First (and it would
puzzle a wiser man than Mr. Burke to discover for what he could be
wanted, or what service he could render), they ought at least to have
conditioned for the abandonment of Hanover. Besides the endless German
intrigues that must follow from a German Elector being King of England,
there is a natural impossibility of uniting in the same person the
principles of Freedom and the principles of Despotism, or as it is
usually called in England Arbitrary Power. A German Elector is in his
electorate a despot; how then could it be expected that he should be
attached to principles of liberty in one country, while his interest in
another was to be supported by despotism? The union cannot exist; and it
might easily have been foreseen that German Electors would make German
Kings, or in Mr. Burke's words, would assume government with "contempt."
The English have been in the habit of considering a King of England only
in the character in which he appears to them; whereas the same person,
while the connection lasts, has a home-seat in another country, the
interest of which is different to their own, and the principles of the
governments in opposition to each other. To such a person England
will appear as a town-residence, and the Electorate as the estate. The
English may wish, as I believe they do, success to the principles of
liberty in France, or in Germany; but a German Elector trembles for
the fate of despotism in his electorate; and the Duchy of Mecklenburgh,
where the present Queen's family governs, is under the same wretched
state of arbitrary power, and the people in slavish vassalage.

There never was a time when it became the English to watch continental
intrigues more circumspectly than at the present moment, and to
distinguish the politics of the Electorate from the politics of the
Nation. The Revolution of France has entirely changed the ground with
respect to England and France, as nations; but the German despots, with
Prussia at their head, are combining against liberty; and the
fondness of Mr. Pitt for office, and the interest which all his family
connections have obtained, do not give sufficient security against this
intrigue.

As everything which passes in the world becomes matter for history, I
will now quit this subject, and take a concise review of the state of
parties and politics in England, as Mr. Burke has done in France.

Whether the present reign commenced with contempt, I leave to Mr. Burke:
certain, however, it is, that it had strongly that appearance. The
animosity of the English nation, it is very well remembered, ran high;
and, had the true principles of Liberty been as well understood then
as they now promise to be, it is probable the Nation would not have
patiently submitted to so much. George the First and Second were
sensible of a rival in the remains of the Stuarts; and as they could not
but consider themselves as standing on their good behaviour, they had
prudence to keep their German principles of government to themselves;
but as the Stuart family wore away, the prudence became less necessary.

The contest between rights, and what were called prerogatives, continued
to heat the nation till some time after the conclusion of the American
War, when all at once it fell a calm--Execration exchanged itself for
applause, and Court popularity sprung up like a mushroom in a night.

To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that
there are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit,
and the other by resentment. As the Nation had formed itself into
two parties, and each was extolling the merits of its parliamentary
champions for and against prerogative, nothing could operate to give
a more general shock than an immediate coalition of the champions
themselves. The partisans of each being thus suddenly left in the lurch,
and mutually heated with disgust at the measure, felt no other relief
than uniting in a common execration against both. A higher stimulus
or resentment being thus excited than what the contest on prerogatives
occasioned, the nation quitted all former objects of rights and wrongs,
and sought only that of gratification. The indignation at the Coalition
so effectually superseded the indignation against the Court as to
extinguish it; and without any change of principles on the part of the
Court, the same people who had reprobated its despotism united with it
to revenge themselves on the Coalition Parliament. The case was not,
which they liked best, but which they hated most; and the least hated
passed for love. The dissolution of the Coalition Parliament, as it
afforded the means of gratifying the resentment of the Nation, could not
fail to be popular; and from hence arose the popularity of the Court.

Transitions of this kind exhibit a Nation under the government of
temper, instead of a fixed and steady principle; and having once
committed itself, however rashly, it feels itself urged along to justify
by continuance its first proceeding. Measures which at other times
it would censure it now approves, and acts persuasion upon itself to
suffocate its judgment.

On the return of a new Parliament, the new Minister, Mr. Pitt, found
himself in a secure majority; and the Nation gave him credit, not out
of regard to himself, but because it had resolved to do it out of
resentment to another. He introduced himself to public notice by
a proposed Reform of Parliament, which in its operation would have
amounted to a public justification of corruption. The Nation was to be
at the expense of buying up the rotten boroughs, whereas it ought to
punish the persons who deal in the traffic.

Passing over the two bubbles of the Dutch business and the million
a-year to sink the national debt, the matter which most presents itself,
is the affair of the Regency. Never, in the course of my observation,
was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely
deceived. But, to make this appear, it will be necessary to go over the
circumstances.

Mr. Fox had stated in the House of Commons, that the Prince of Wales,
as heir in succession, had a right in himself to assume the Government.
This was opposed by Mr. Pitt; and, so far as the opposition was
confined to the doctrine, it was just. But the principles which Mr. Pitt
maintained on the contrary side were as bad, or worse in their extent,
than those of Mr. Fox; because they went to establish an aristocracy
over the nation, and over the small representation it has in the House
of Commons.

Whether the English form of Government be good or bad, is not in this
case the question; but, taking it as it stands, without regard to its
merits or demerits, Mr. Pitt was farther from the point than Mr. Fox.

It is supposed to consist of three parts:--while therefore the Nation
is disposed to continue this form, the parts have a national standing,
independent of each other, and are not the creatures of each other. Had
Mr. Fox passed through Parliament, and said that the person alluded to
claimed on the ground of the Nation, Mr. Pitt must then have contended
what he called the right of the Parliament against the right of the
Nation.

By the appearance which the contest made, Mr. Fox took the hereditary
ground, and Mr. Pitt the Parliamentary ground; but the fact is, they
both took hereditary ground, and Mr. Pitt took the worst of the two.

What is called the Parliament is made up of two Houses, one of which is
more hereditary, and more beyond the control of the Nation than what
the Crown (as it is called) is supposed to be. It is an hereditary
aristocracy, assuming and asserting indefeasible, irrevocable rights
and authority, wholly independent of the Nation. Where, then, was
the merited popularity of exalting this hereditary power over another
hereditary power less independent of the Nation than what itself assumed
to be, and of absorbing the rights of the Nation into a House over which
it has neither election nor control?

The general impulse of the Nation was right; but it acted without
reflection. It approved the opposition made to the right set up by
Mr. Fox, without perceiving that Mr. Pitt was supporting another
indefeasible right more remote from the Nation, in opposition to it.

With respect to the House of Commons, it is elected but by a small part
of the Nation; but were the election as universal as taxation, which it
ought to be, it would still be only the organ of the Nation, and cannot
possess inherent rights.--When the National Assembly of France resolves
a matter, the resolve is made in right of the Nation; but Mr. Pitt, on
all national questions, so far as they refer to the House of Commons,
absorbs the rights of the Nation into the organ, and makes the organ
into a Nation, and the Nation itself into a cypher.

In a few words, the question on the Regency was a question of a million
a-year, which is appropriated to the executive department: and Mr. Pitt
could not possess himself of any management of this sum, without setting
up the supremacy of Parliament; and when this was accomplished, it was
indifferent who should be Regent, as he must be Regent at his own cost.
Among the curiosities which this contentious debate afforded, was that
of making the Great Seal into a King, the affixing of which to an act
was to be royal authority. If, therefore, Royal Authority is a Great
Seal, it consequently is in itself nothing; and a good Constitution
would be of infinitely more value to the Nation than what the three
Nominal Powers, as they now stand, are worth.

The continual use of the word Constitution in the English Parliament
shows there is none; and that the whole is merely a form of government
without a Constitution, and constituting itself with what powers it
pleases. If there were a Constitution, it certainly could be referred
to; and the debate on any constitutional point would terminate by
producing the Constitution. One member says this is Constitution, and
another says that is Constitution--To-day it is one thing; and to-morrow
something else--while the maintaining of the debate proves there is
none. Constitution is now the cant word of Parliament, tuning itself
to the ear of the Nation. Formerly it was the universal supremacy of
Parliament--the omnipotence of Parliament: But since the progress of
Liberty in France, those phrases have a despotic harshness in their
note; and the English Parliament have catched the fashion from
the National Assembly, but without the substance, of speaking of
Constitution.

As the present generation of the people in England did not make the
Government, they are not accountable for any of its defects; but,
that sooner or later, it must come into their hands to undergo a
constitutional reformation, is as certain as that the same thing has
happened in France. If France, with a revenue of nearly twenty-four
millions sterling, with an extent of rich and fertile country above four
times larger than England, with a population of twenty-four millions
of inhabitants to support taxation, with upwards of ninety millions
sterling of gold and silver circulating in the nation, and with a debt
less than the present debt of England--still found it necessary, from
whatever cause, to come to a settlement of its affairs, it solves the
problem of funding for both countries.

It is out of the question to say how long what is called the English
constitution has lasted, and to argue from thence how long it is to
last; the question is, how long can the funding system last? It is a
thing but of modern invention, and has not yet continued beyond the
life of a man; yet in that short space it has so far accumulated, that,
together with the current expenses, it requires an amount of taxes at
least equal to the whole landed rental of the nation in acres to defray
the annual expenditure. That a government could not have always gone on
by the same system which has been followed for the last seventy years,
must be evident to every man; and for the same reason it cannot always
go on.

The funding system is not money; neither is it, properly speaking,
credit. It, in effect, creates upon paper the sum which it appears to
borrow, and lays on a tax to keep the imaginary capital alive by the
payment of interest and sends the annuity to market, to be sold for
paper already in circulation. If any credit is given, it is to the
disposition of the people to pay the tax, and not to the government,
which lays it on. When this disposition expires, what is supposed to be
the credit of Government expires with it. The instance of France under
the former Government shows that it is impossible to compel the payment
of taxes by force, when a whole nation is determined to take its stand
upon that ground.

Mr. Burke, in his review of the finances of France, states the quantity
of gold and silver in France, at about eighty-eight millions sterling.
In doing this, he has, I presume, divided by the difference of exchange,
instead of the standard of twenty-four livres to a pound sterling; for
M. Neckar's statement, from which Mr. Burke's is taken, is two thousand
two hundred millions of livres, which is upwards of ninety-one millions
and a half sterling.

M. Neckar in France, and Mr. George Chalmers at the Office of Trade and
Plantation in England, of which Lord Hawkesbury is president, published
nearly about the same time (1786) an account of the quantity of money in
each nation, from the returns of the Mint of each nation. Mr. Chalmers,
from the returns of the English Mint at the Tower of London, states
the quantity of money in England, including Scotland and Ireland, to be
twenty millions sterling.*[12]

M. Neckar*[13] says that the amount of money in France, recoined from
the old coin which was called in, was two thousand five hundred millions
of livres (upwards of one hundred and four millions sterling); and,
after deducting for waste, and what may be in the West Indies and other
possible circumstances, states the circulation quantity at home to be
ninety-one millions and a half sterling; but, taking it as Mr. Burke has
put it, it is sixty-eight millions more than the national quantity in
England.

That the quantity of money in France cannot be under this sum, may at
once be seen from the state of the French Revenue, without referring to
the records of the French Mint for proofs. The revenue of France, prior
to the Revolution, was nearly twenty-four millions sterling; and as
paper had then no existence in France the whole revenue was collected
upon gold and silver; and it would have been impossible to have
collected such a quantity of revenue upon a less national quantity than
M. Neckar has stated. Before the establishment of paper in England,
the revenue was about a fourth part of the national amount of gold
and silver, as may be known by referring to the revenue prior to King
William, and the quantity of money stated to be in the nation at that
time, which was nearly as much as it is now.

It can be of no real service to a nation, to impose upon itself, or to
permit itself to be imposed upon; but the prejudices of some, and
the imposition of others, have always represented France as a nation
possessing but little money--whereas the quantity is not only more than
four times what the quantity is in England, but is considerably greater
on a proportion of numbers. To account for this deficiency on the
part of England, some reference should be had to the English system of
funding. It operates to multiply paper, and to substitute it in the room
of money, in various shapes; and the more paper is multiplied, the
more opportunities are offered to export the specie; and it admits of
a possibility (by extending it to small notes) of increasing paper till
there is no money left.

I know this is not a pleasant subject to English readers; but the
matters I am going to mention, are so important in themselves, as to
require the attention of men interested in money transactions of a
public nature. There is a circumstance stated by M. Neckar, in his
treatise on the administration of the finances, which has never been
attended to in England, but which forms the only basis whereon to
estimate the quantity of money (gold and silver) which ought to be in
every nation in Europe, to preserve a relative proportion with other
nations.

Lisbon and Cadiz are the two ports into which (money) gold and silver
from South America are imported, and which afterwards divide and spread
themselves over Europe by means of commerce, and increase the quantity
of money in all parts of Europe. If, therefore, the amount of the annual
importation into Europe can be known, and the relative proportion of the
foreign commerce of the several nations by which it can be distributed
can be ascertained, they give a rule sufficiently true, to ascertain the
quantity of money which ought to be found in any nation, at any given
time.

M. Neckar shows from the registers of Lisbon and Cadiz, that the
importation of gold and silver into Europe, is five millions sterling
annually. He has not taken it on a single year, but on an average of
fifteen succeeding years, from 1763 to 1777, both inclusive; in which
time, the amount was one thousand eight hundred million livres, which is
seventy-five millions sterling.*[14]

From the commencement of the Hanover succession in 1714 to the time Mr.
Chalmers published, is seventy-two years; and the quantity imported
into Europe, in that time, would be three hundred and sixty millions
sterling.

If the foreign commerce of Great Britain be stated at a sixth part of
what the whole foreign commerce of Europe amounts to (which is probably
an inferior estimation to what the gentlemen at the Exchange would
allow) the proportion which Britain should draw by commerce of this sum,
to keep herself on a proportion with the rest of Europe, would be also
a sixth part which is sixty millions sterling; and if the same allowance
for waste and accident be made for England which M. Neckar makes for
France, the quantity remaining after these deductions would be fifty-two
millions; and this sum ought to have been in the nation (at the time Mr.
Chalmers published), in addition to the sum which was in the nation
at the commencement of the Hanover succession, and to have made in the
whole at least sixty-six millions sterling; instead of which there were
but twenty millions, which is forty-six millions below its proportionate
quantity.

As the quantity of gold and silver imported into Lisbon and Cadiz
is more exactly ascertained than that of any commodity imported into
England, and as the quantity of money coined at the Tower of London
is still more positively known, the leading facts do not admit of
controversy. Either, therefore, the commerce of England is unproductive
of profit, or the gold and silver which it brings in leak continually
away by unseen means at the average rate of about three-quarters of a
million a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years, accounts for
the deficiency; and its absence is supplied by paper.*[15]

The Revolution of France is attended with many novel circumstances, not
only in the political sphere, but in the circle of money transactions.
Among others, it shows that a government may be in a state of insolvency
and a nation rich. So far as the fact is confined to the late Government
of France, it was insolvent; because the nation would no longer support
its extravagance, and therefore it could no longer support itself--but
with respect to the nation all the means existed. A government may be
said to be insolvent every time it applies to the nation to discharge
its arrears. The insolvency of the late Government of France and the
present of England differed in no other respect than as the dispositions
of the people differ. The people of France refused their aid to the
old Government; and the people of England submit to taxation without
inquiry. What is called the Crown in England has been insolvent several
times; the last of which, publicly known, was in May, 1777, when it
applied to the nation to discharge upwards of L600,000 private debts,
which otherwise it could not pay.

It was the error of Mr. Pitt, Mr. Burke, and all those who were
unacquainted with the affairs of France to confound the French nation
with the French Government. The French nation, in effect, endeavoured
to render the late Government insolvent for the purpose of taking
government into its own hands: and it reserved its means for the support
of the new Government. In a country of such vast extent and population
as France the natural means cannot be wanting, and the political means
appear the instant the nation is disposed to permit them. When Mr.
Burke, in a speech last winter in the British Parliament, "cast his eyes
over the map of Europe, and saw a chasm that once was France," he talked
like a dreamer of dreams. The same natural France existed as before,
and all the natural means existed with it. The only chasm was that the
extinction of despotism had left, and which was to be filled up with
the Constitution more formidable in resources than the power which had
expired.

Although the French Nation rendered the late Government insolvent, it
did not permit the insolvency to act towards the creditors; and the
creditors, considering the Nation as the real pay-master, and the
Government only as the agent, rested themselves on the nation, in
preference to the Government. This appears greatly to disturb Mr.
Burke, as the precedent is fatal to the policy by which governments have
supposed themselves secure. They have contracted debts, with a view
of attaching what is called the monied interest of a Nation to their
support; but the example in France shows that the permanent security of
the creditor is in the Nation, and not in the Government; and that in
all possible revolutions that may happen in Governments, the means are
always with the Nation, and the Nation always in existence. Mr.
Burke argues that the creditors ought to have abided the fate of the
Government which they trusted; but the National Assembly considered
them as the creditors of the Nation, and not of the Government--of the
master, and not of the steward.

Notwithstanding the late government could not discharge the current
expenses, the present government has paid off a great part of the
capital. This has been accomplished by two means; the one by lessening
the expenses of government, and the other by the sale of the monastic
and ecclesiastical landed estates. The devotees and penitent debauchees,
extortioners and misers of former days, to ensure themselves a better
world than that they were about to leave, had bequeathed immense
property in trust to the priesthood for pious uses; and the priesthood
kept it for themselves. The National Assembly has ordered it to be sold
for the good of the whole nation, and the priesthood to be decently
provided for.

In consequence of the revolution, the annual interest of the debt of
France will be reduced at least six millions sterling, by paying off
upwards of one hundred millions of the capital; which, with lessening
the former expenses of government at least three millions, will place
France in a situation worthy the imitation of Europe.

Upon a whole review of the subject, how vast is the contrast! While Mr.
Burke has been talking of a general bankruptcy in France, the National
Assembly has been paying off the capital of its debt; and while taxes
have increased near a million a year in England, they have lowered
several millions a year in France. Not a word has either Mr. Burke
or Mr. Pitt said about the French affairs, or the state of the French
finances, in the present Session of Parliament. The subject begins to be
too well understood, and imposition serves no longer.

There is a general enigma running through the whole of Mr. Burke's
book. He writes in a rage against the National Assembly; but what is he
enraged about? If his assertions were as true as they are groundless,
and that France by her Revolution, had annihilated her power, and
become what he calls a chasm, it might excite the grief of a Frenchman
(considering himself as a national man), and provoke his rage against
the National Assembly; but why should it excite the rage of Mr. Burke?
Alas! it is not the nation of France that Mr. Burke means, but the
Court; and every Court in Europe, dreading the same fate, is in
mourning. He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an
Englishman, but in the fawning character of that creature known in all
countries, and a friend to none--a courtier. Whether it be the Court of
Versailles, or the Court of St. James, or Carlton-House, or the Court in
expectation, signifies not; for the caterpillar principle of all Courts
and Courtiers are alike. They form a common policy throughout Europe,
detached and separate from the interest of Nations: and while they
appear to quarrel, they agree to plunder. Nothing can be more terrible
to a Court or Courtier than the Revolution of France. That which is
a blessing to Nations is bitterness to them: and as their existence
depends on the duplicity of a country, they tremble at the approach of
principles, and dread the precedent that threatens their overthrow.

                              CONCLUSION

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the
great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently
extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on.
Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to
it.

The two modes of the Government which prevail in the world, are:

First, Government by election and representation.

Secondly, Government by hereditary succession.

The former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by
that of monarchy and aristocracy.

Those two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two
distinct and opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance.--As the exercise of
Government requires talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities
cannot have hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary succession
requires a belief from man to which his reason cannot subscribe, and
which can only be established upon his ignorance; and the more ignorant
any country is, the better it is fitted for this species of Government.

On the contrary, Government, in a well-constituted republic, requires no
belief from man beyond what his reason can give. He sees the rationale
of the whole system, its origin and its operation; and as it is best
supported when best understood, the human faculties act with boldness,
and acquire, under this form of government, a gigantic manliness.

As, therefore, each of those forms acts on a different base, the one
moving freely by the aid of reason, the other by ignorance; we have next
to consider, what it is that gives motion to that species of Government
which is called mixed Government, or, as it is sometimes ludicrously
styled, a Government of this, that and t' other.

The moving power in this species of Government is, of necessity,
Corruption. However imperfect election and representation may be in
mixed Governments, they still give exercise to a greater portion of
reason than is convenient to the hereditary Part; and therefore it
becomes necessary to buy the reason up. A mixed Government is an
imperfect everything, cementing and soldering the discordant parts
together by corruption, to act as a whole. Mr. Burke appears highly
disgusted that France, since she had resolved on a revolution, did not
adopt what he calls "A British Constitution"; and the regretful manner
in which he expresses himself on this occasion implies a suspicion
that the British Constitution needed something to keep its defects in
countenance.

In mixed Governments there is no responsibility: the parts cover each
other till responsibility is lost; and the corruption which moves the
machine, contrives at the same time its own escape. When it is laid down
as a maxim, that a King can do no wrong, it places him in a state
of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and
responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself. It then
descends upon the Minister, who shelters himself under a majority in
Parliament, which, by places, pensions, and corruption, he can always
command; and that majority justifies itself by the same authority with
which it protects the Minister. In this rotatory motion, responsibility
is thrown off from the parts, and from the whole.

When there is a Part in a Government which can do no wrong, it implies
that it does nothing; and is only the machine of another power, by whose
advice and direction it acts. What is supposed to be the King in the
mixed Governments, is the Cabinet; and as the Cabinet is always a part
of the Parliament, and the members justifying in one character what
they advise and act in another, a mixed Government becomes a continual
enigma; entailing upon a country by the quantity of corruption necessary
to solder the parts, the expense of supporting all the forms of
government at once, and finally resolving itself into a Government
by Committee; in which the advisers, the actors, the approvers, the
justifiers, the persons responsible, and the persons not responsible,
are the same persons.

By this pantomimical contrivance, and change of scene and character, the
parts help each other out in matters which neither of them singly
would assume to act. When money is to be obtained, the mass of variety
apparently dissolves, and a profusion of parliamentary praises passes
between the parts. Each admires with astonishment, the wisdom, the
liberality, the disinterestedness of the other: and all of them breathe
a pitying sigh at the burthens of the Nation.

But in a well-constituted republic, nothing of this soldering, praising,
and pitying, can take place; the representation being equal throughout
the country, and complete in itself, however it may be arranged into
legislative and executive, they have all one and the same natural
source. The parts are not foreigners to each other, like democracy,
aristocracy, and monarchy. As there are no discordant distinctions,
there is nothing to corrupt by compromise, nor confound by contrivance.
Public measures appeal of themselves to the understanding of the Nation,
and, resting on their own merits, disown any flattering applications to
vanity. The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however
successfully it may be practised in mixed Governments, is inconsistent
with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they
are of course advantageous; but if they require an apology, the apology
itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man thus imposed upon, or
why does he impose upon himself?

When men are spoken of as kings and subjects, or when Government
is mentioned under the distinct and combined heads of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, what is it that reasoning man is to
understand by the terms? If there really existed in the world two or
more distinct and separate elements of human power, we should then see
the several origins to which those terms would descriptively apply;
but as there is but one species of man, there can be but one element of
human power; and that element is man himself. Monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, are but creatures of imagination; and a thousand such may be
contrived as well as three.

From the Revolutions of America and France, and the symptoms that have
appeared in other countries, it is evident that the opinion of the world
is changing with respect to systems of Government, and that revolutions
are not within the compass of political calculations. The progress of
time and circumstances, which men assign to the accomplishment of great
changes, is too mechanical to measure the force of the mind, and the
rapidity of reflection, by which revolutions are generated: All the old
governments have received a shock from those that already appear, and
which were once more improbable, and are a greater subject of wonder,
than a general revolution in Europe would be now.

When we survey the wretched condition of man, under the monarchical and
hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power,
or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies,
it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general
revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is
necessary.

What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation?
It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular
man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is
supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped
into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things.
Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only,
and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent
indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds
inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest,
disposition and happiness. The romantic and barbarous distinction of men
into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers,
cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon
which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the
Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and
his obedience can be only to the laws.

When men think of what Government is, they must necessarily suppose it
to possess a knowledge of all the objects and matters upon which its
authority is to be exercised. In this view of Government, the republican
system, as established by America and France, operates to embrace the
whole of a Nation; and the knowledge necessary to the interest of
all the parts, is to be found in the center, which the parts by
representation form: But the old Governments are on a construction that
excludes knowledge as well as happiness; government by Monks, who knew
nothing of the world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as consistent as
government by Kings.

What were formerly called Revolutions, were little more than a change
of persons, or an alteration of local circumstances. They rose and fell
like things of course, and had nothing in their existence or their fate
that could influence beyond the spot that produced them. But what we
now see in the world, from the Revolutions of America and France, are
a renovation of the natural order of things, a system of principles as
universal as truth and the existence of man, and combining moral with
political happiness and national prosperity.

"I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of
their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on
public utility.

"II. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the
natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty,
property, security, and resistance of oppression.

"III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can
any Individual, or Any Body Of Men, be entitled to any authority which
is not expressly derived from it."

In these principles, there is nothing to throw a Nation into confusion
by inflaming ambition. They are calculated to call forth wisdom and
abilities, and to exercise them for the public good, and not for
the emolument or aggrandisement of particular descriptions of men or
families. Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of mankind, and the source
of misery, is abolished; and the sovereignty itself is restored to its
natural and original place, the Nation. Were this the case throughout
Europe, the cause of wars would be taken away.

It is attributed to Henry the Fourth of France, a man of enlarged and
benevolent heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, a plan for
abolishing war in Europe. The plan consisted in constituting an European
Congress, or as the French authors style it, a Pacific Republic; by
appointing delegates from the several Nations who were to act as a
Court of arbitration in any disputes that might arise between nation and
nation.

Had such a plan been adopted at the time it was proposed, the taxes of
England and France, as two of the parties, would have been at least ten
millions sterling annually to each Nation less than they were at the
commencement of the French Revolution.

To conceive a cause why such a plan has not been adopted (and that
instead of a Congress for the purpose of preventing war, it has been
called only to terminate a war, after a fruitless expense of several
years) it will be necessary to consider the interest of Governments as a
distinct interest to that of Nations.

Whatever is the cause of taxes to a Nation, becomes also the means of
revenue to Government. Every war terminates with an addition of taxes,
and consequently with an addition of revenue; and in any event of
war, in the manner they are now commenced and concluded, the power
and interest of Governments are increased. War, therefore, from its
productiveness, as it easily furnishes the pretence of necessity for
taxes and appointments to places and offices, becomes a principal part
of the system of old Governments; and to establish any mode to abolish
war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take
from such Government the most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous
matters upon which war is made, show the disposition and avidity of
Governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon
which they act.

Why are not Republics plunged into war, but because the nature of their
Government does not admit of an interest distinct from that of the
Nation? Even Holland, though an ill-constructed Republic, and with a
commerce extending over the world, existed nearly a century without
war: and the instant the form of Government was changed in France, the
republican principles of peace and domestic prosperity and economy arose
with the new Government; and the same consequences would follow the
cause in other Nations.

As war is the system of Government on the old construction, the
animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than
what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of
the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue,
and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective
Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of
man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead,
therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclamation
should be directed against the principle of such Governments; and
instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a Nation
should apply itself to reform the system.

Whether the forms and maxims of Governments which are still in practice,
were adapted to the condition of the world at the period they were
established, is not in this case the question. The older they are, the
less correspondence can they have with the present state of things.
Time, and change of circumstances and opinions, have the same
progressive effect in rendering modes of Government obsolete as they
have upon customs and manners.--Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and
the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of Nations is best promoted,
require a different system of Government, and a different species of
knowledge to direct its operations, than what might have been required
in the former condition of the world.

As it is not difficult to perceive, from the enlightened state of
mankind, that hereditary Governments are verging to their decline,
and that Revolutions on the broad basis of national sovereignty and
Government by representation, are making their way in Europe, it
would be an act of wisdom to anticipate their approach, and produce
Revolutions by reason and accommodation, rather than commit them to the
issue of convulsions.

From what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to
be held improbable. It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything
may be looked for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the system of war
is kept up, may provoke a confederation of Nations to abolish it: and
an European Congress to patronise the progress of free Government, and
promote the civilisation of Nations with each other, is an event nearer
in probability, than once were the revolutions and alliance of France
and America.

                            END OF PART I.




RIGHTS OF MAN. PART SECOND, COMBINING PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE.

By Thomas Paine.




FRENCH TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

(1792)

THE work of which we offer a translation to the public has created the
greatest sensation in England. Paine, that man of freedom, who seems
born to preach "Common Sense" to the whole world with the same success
as in America, explains in it to the people of England the theory of the
practice of the Rights of Man.

Owing to the prejudices that still govern that nation, the author has
been obliged to condescend to answer Mr. Burke. He has done so more
especially in an extended preface which is nothing but a piece of
very tedious controversy, in which he shows himself very sensitive to
criticisms that do not really affect him. To translate it seemed an
insult to the free French people, and similar reasons have led the
editors to suppress also a dedicatory epistle addressed by Paine to
Lafayette.

The French can no longer endure dedicatory epistles. A man should write
privately to those he esteems: when he publishes a book his thoughts
should be offered to the public alone. Paine, that uncorrupted friend
of freedom, believed too in the sincerity of Lafayette. So easy is it
to deceive men of single-minded purpose! Bred at a distance from courts,
that austere American does not seem any more on his guard against the
artful ways and speech of courtiers than some Frenchmen who resemble
him.


                                  TO

                          M. DE LA FAYETTE

After an acquaintance of nearly fifteen years in difficult situations
in America, and various consultations in Europe, I feel a pleasure in
presenting to you this small treatise, in gratitude for your services
to my beloved America, and as a testimony of my esteem for the virtues,
public and private, which I know you to possess.

The only point upon which I could ever discover that we differed was not
as to principles of government, but as to time. For my own part I think
it equally as injurious to good principles to permit them to linger,
as to push them on too fast. That which you suppose accomplishable in
fourteen or fifteen years, I may believe practicable in a much shorter
period. Mankind, as it appears to me, are always ripe enough to
understand their true interest, provided it be presented clearly to
their understanding, and that in a manner not to create suspicion by
anything like self-design, nor offend by assuming too much. Where we
would wish to reform we must not reproach.

When the American revolution was established I felt a disposition to
sit serenely down and enjoy the calm. It did not appear to me that any
object could afterwards arise great enough to make me quit tranquility
and feel as I had felt before. But when principle, and not place, is the
energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is everywhere the same.

I am now once more in the public world; and as I have not a right to
contemplate on so many years of remaining life as you have, I have
resolved to labour as fast as I can; and as I am anxious for your aid
and your company, I wish you to hasten your principles and overtake me.

If you make a campaign the ensuing spring, which it is most probable
there will be no occasion for, I will come and join you. Should the
campaign commence, I hope it will terminate in the extinction of German
despotism, and in establishing the freedom of all Germany. When France
shall be surrounded with revolutions she will be in peace and safety,
and her taxes, as well as those of Germany, will consequently become
less.

Your sincere,

   Affectionate Friend,

      Thomas Paine

London, Feb. 9, 1792




PREFACE

When I began the chapter entitled the "Conclusion" in the former part
of the RIGHTS OF MAN, published last year, it was my intention to have
extended it to a greater length; but in casting the whole matter in my
mind, which I wish to add, I found that it must either make the work too
bulky, or contract my plan too much. I therefore brought it to a close
as soon as the subject would admit, and reserved what I had further to
say to another opportunity.

Several other reasons contributed to produce this determination.
I wished to know the manner in which a work, written in a style of
thinking and expression different to what had been customary in England,
would be received before I proceeded farther. A great field was opening
to the view of mankind by means of the French Revolution. Mr. Burke's
outrageous opposition thereto brought the controversy into England. He
attacked principles which he knew (from information) I would contest
with him, because they are principles I believe to be good, and which I
have contributed to establish, and conceive myself bound to defend. Had
he not urged the controversy, I had most probably been a silent man.

Another reason for deferring the remainder of the work was, that Mr.
Burke promised in his first publication to renew the subject at another
opportunity, and to make a comparison of what he called the English and
French Constitutions. I therefore held myself in reserve for him. He has
published two works since, without doing this: which he certainly would
not have omitted, had the comparison been in his favour.

In his last work, his "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," he has
quoted about ten pages from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and having given himself
the trouble of doing this, says he "shall not attempt in the smallest
degree to refute them," meaning the principles therein contained. I am
enough acquainted with Mr. Burke to know that he would if he could. But
instead of contesting them, he immediately after consoles himself with
saying that "he has done his part."--He has not done his part. He has
not performed his promise of a comparison of constitutions. He started
the controversy, he gave the challenge, and has fled from it; and he is
now a case in point with his own opinion that "the age of chivalry is
gone!"

The title, as well as the substance of his last work, his "Appeal," is
his condemnation. Principles must stand on their own merits, and if they
are good they certainly will. To put them under the shelter of other
men's authority, as Mr. Burke has done, serves to bring them into
suspicion. Mr. Burke is not very fond of dividing his honours, but in
this case he is artfully dividing the disgrace.

But who are those to whom Mr. Burke has made his appeal? A set of
childish thinkers, and half-way politicians born in the last century,
men who went no farther with any principle than as it suited their
purposes as a party; the nation was always left out of the question; and
this has been the character of every party from that day to this.
The nation sees nothing of such works, or such politics, worthy its
attention. A little matter will move a party, but it must be something
great that moves a nation.

Though I see nothing in Mr. Burke's "Appeal" worth taking much notice
of, there is, however, one expression upon which I shall offer a few
remarks. After quoting largely from the RIGHTS OF MAN, and declining to
contest the principles contained in that work, he says: "This will most
probably be done (if such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice) by others, who may think with
Mr. Burke and with the same zeal."

In the first place, it has not yet been done by anybody. Not less, I
believe, than eight or ten pamphlets intended as answers to the former
part of the RIGHTS OF MAN have been published by different persons, and
not one of them to my knowledge, has extended to a second edition, nor
are even the titles of them so much as generally remembered. As I am
averse to unnecessary multiplying publications, I have answered none of
them. And as I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation
when nobody else can do it, I am careful to avoid that rock.

But as I would decline unnecessary publications on the one hand, so
would I avoid everything that might appear like sullen pride on the
other. If Mr. Burke, or any person on his side the question, will
produce an answer to the RIGHTS OF MAN that shall extend to a half, or
even to a fourth part of the number of copies to which the Rights Of Man
extended, I will reply to his work. But until this be done, I shall so
far take the sense of the public for my guide (and the world knows I am
not a flatterer) that what they do not think worth while to read, is not
worth mine to answer. I suppose the number of copies to which the
first part of the RIGHTS OF MAN extended, taking England, Scotland, and
Ireland, is not less than between forty and fifty thousand.

I now come to remark on the remaining part of the quotation I have made
from Mr. Burke.

"If," says he, "such writings shall be thought to deserve any other
refutation than that of criminal justice."

Pardoning the pun, it must be criminal justice indeed that should
condemn a work as a substitute for not being able to refute it.
The greatest condemnation that could be passed upon it would be a
refutation. But in proceeding by the method Mr. Burke alludes to, the
condemnation would, in the final event, pass upon the criminality of
the process and not upon the work, and in this case, I had rather be the
author, than be either the judge or the jury that should condemn it.

But to come at once to the point. I have differed from some professional
gentlemen on the subject of prosecutions, and I since find they are
falling into my opinion, which I will here state as fully, but as
concisely as I can.

I will first put a case with respect to any law, and then compare it
with a government, or with what in England is, or has been, called a
constitution.

It would be an act of despotism, or what in England is called arbitrary
power, to make a law to prohibit investigating the principles, good or
bad, on which such a law, or any other is founded.

If a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but it is
quite a different thing to expose its errors, to reason on its defects,
and to show cause why it should be repealed, or why another ought to be
substituted in its place. I have always held it an opinion (making it
also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the
same time of every argument to show its errors and procure its repeal,
than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law
might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those
which are good.

The case is the same with respect to principles and forms of government,
or to what are called constitutions and the parts of which they are,
composed.

It is for the good of nations and not for the emolument or
aggrandisement of particular individuals, that government ought to be
established, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it. The
defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and
form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the
defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to
point them out. When those defects, and the means of remedying them, are
generally seen by a nation, that nation will reform its government or
its constitution in the one case, as the government repealed or reformed
the law in the other. The operation of government is restricted to the
making and the administering of laws; but it is to a nation that the
right of forming or reforming, generating or regenerating constitutions
and governments belong; and consequently those subjects, as subjects
of investigation, are always before a country as a matter of right, and
cannot, without invading the general rights of that country, be made
subjects for prosecution. On this ground I will meet Mr. Burke whenever
he please. It is better that the whole argument should come out than to
seek to stifle it. It was himself that opened the controversy, and he
ought not to desert it.

I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years
longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe. If better reasons
can be shown for them than against them, they will stand; if the
contrary, they will not. Mankind are not now to be told they shall not
think, or they shall not read; and publications that go no farther than
to investigate principles of government, to invite men to reason and to
reflect, and to show the errors and excellences of different systems,
have a right to appear. If they do not excite attention, they are not
worth the trouble of a prosecution; and if they do, the prosecution will
amount to nothing, since it cannot amount to a prohibition of reading.
This would be a sentence on the public, instead of the author, and would
also be the most effectual mode of making or hastening revolution.

On all cases that apply universally to a nation, with respect to systems
of government, a jury of twelve men is not competent to decide. Where
there are no witnesses to be examined, no facts to be proved, and where
the whole matter is before the whole public, and the merits or demerits
of it resting on their opinion; and where there is nothing to be known
in a court, but what every body knows out of it, every twelve men is
equally as good a jury as the other, and would most probably reverse
each other's verdict; or, from the variety of their opinions, not be
able to form one. It is one case, whether a nation approve a work, or a
plan; but it is quite another case, whether it will commit to any such
jury the power of determining whether that nation have a right to, or
shall reform its government or not. I mention those cases that Mr. Burke
may see I have not written on Government without reflecting on what is
Law, as well as on what are Rights.--The only effectual jury in such
cases would be a convention of the whole nation fairly elected; for
in all such cases the whole nation is the vicinage. If Mr. Burke will
propose such a jury, I will waive all privileges of being the citizen
of another country, and, defending its principles, abide the issue,
provided he will do the same; for my opinion is, that his work and his
principles would be condemned instead of mine.

As to the prejudices which men have from education and habit, in favour
of any particular form or system of government, those prejudices have
yet to stand the test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices
are nothing. No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be
wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and
when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a
defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men
think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that
only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection. I offer
this remark, that Mr. Burke may not confide too much in what have been
the customary prejudices of the country.

I do not believe that the people of England have ever been fairly and
candidly dealt by. They have been imposed upon by parties, and by men
assuming the character of leaders. It is time that the nation should
rise above those trifles. It is time to dismiss that inattention which
has so long been the encouraging cause of stretching taxation to excess.
It is time to dismiss all those songs and toasts which are calculated to
enslave, and operate to suffocate reflection. On all such subjects men
have but to think, and they will neither act wrong nor be misled. To
say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their
choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not. If
such a case could be proved, it would equally prove that those who
govern are not fit to govern them, for they are a part of the same
national mass.

But admitting governments to be changed all over Europe; it certainly
may be done without convulsion or revenge. It is not worth making
changes or revolutions, unless it be for some great national benefit:
and when this shall appear to a nation, the danger will be, as in
America and France, to those who oppose; and with this reflection I
close my Preface.

                    THOMAS PAINE

London, Feb. 9, 1792




RIGHTS OF MAN PART II.




INTRODUCTION.

What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason
and Liberty. "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise
the world."

The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in
mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old
world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit
established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in
Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man.
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as
rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks,--and all
it wants,--is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription
to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American
governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock
and man began to contemplate redress.

The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from
England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it
not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of
governments. She made a stand, not for herself only, but for the
world, and looked beyond the advantages herself could receive. Even
the Hessian, though hired to fight against her, may live to bless his
defeat; and England, condemning the viciousness of its government,
rejoice in its miscarriage.

As America was the only spot in the political world where the principle
of universal reformation could begin, so also was it the best in the
natural world. An assemblage of circumstances conspired, not only to
give birth, but to add gigantic maturity to its principles. The scene
which that country presents to the eye of a spectator, has something in
it which generates and encourages great ideas. Nature appears to him in
magnitude. The mighty objects he beholds, act upon his mind by enlarging
it, and he partakes of the greatness he contemplates.--Its first
settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of
diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental
persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies,
but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation
of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries
long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had
neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He
sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as
kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go
back to Nature for information.

From the rapid progress which America makes in every species of
improvement, it is rational to conclude that, if the governments of
Asia, Africa, and Europe had begun on a principle similar to that of
America, or had not been very early corrupted therefrom, those countries
must by this time have been in a far superior condition to what they
are. Age after age has passed away, for no other purpose than to behold
their wretchedness. Could we suppose a spectator who knew nothing of the
world, and who was put into it merely to make his observations, he would
take a great part of the old world to be new, just struggling with the
difficulties and hardships of an infant settlement. He could not suppose
that the hordes of miserable poor with which old countries abound
could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for
themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in
such countries they call government.

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those
which are in an advanced stage of improvement we still find the greedy
hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice
of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is
continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation.
It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a
tribute.

As revolutions have begun (and as the probability is always greater
against a thing beginning, than of proceeding after it has begun), it
is natural to expect that other revolutions will follow. The amazing and
still increasing expenses with which old governments are conducted, the
numerous wars they engage in or provoke, the embarrassments they throw
in the way of universal civilisation and commerce, and the oppression
and usurpation acted at home, have wearied out the patience, and
exhausted the property of the world. In such a situation, and with such
examples already existing, revolutions are to be looked for. They are
become subjects of universal conversation, and may be considered as the
Order of the day.

If systems of government can be introduced less expensive and more
productive of general happiness than those which have existed, all
attempts to oppose their progress will in the end be fruitless. Reason,
like time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a combat
with interest. If universal peace, civilisation, and commerce are
ever to be the happy lot of man, it cannot be accomplished but by a
revolution in the system of governments. All the monarchical governments
are military. War is their trade, plunder and revenue their objects.
While such governments continue, peace has not the absolute security
of a day. What is the history of all monarchical governments but a
disgustful picture of human wretchedness, and the accidental respite of
a few years' repose? Wearied with war, and tired with human butchery,
they sat down to rest, and called it peace. This certainly is not the
condition that heaven intended for man; and if this be monarchy, well
might monarchy be reckoned among the sins of the Jews.

The revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in
them that interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change
of persons and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among
the common transactions of the moment. What we now behold may not
improperly be called a "counter-revolution." Conquest and tyranny,
at some earlier period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now
recovering them. And as the tide of all human affairs has its ebb
and flow in directions contrary to each other, so also is it in this.
Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on
the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west
to east by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved
from east to west. It interests not particular individuals, but nations
in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.

The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that
of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the
advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has
been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word
government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it
commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to
itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of
its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and
purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to
him as a social being.

It may therefore be of use in this day of revolutions to discriminate
between those things which are the effect of government, and those
which are not. This will best be done by taking a review of society
and civilisation, and the consequences resulting therefrom, as things
distinct from what are called governments. By beginning with this
investigation, we shall be able to assign effects to their proper causes
and analyse the mass of common errors.




CHAPTER I. OF SOCIETY AND CIVILISATION

Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect
of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the
natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and
would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual
dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the
parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain
of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer,
the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation,
prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the
whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law;
and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than
the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost
everything which is ascribed to government.

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man,
it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for
social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases
she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one
man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants,
and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them
into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.

But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by
a diversity of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply,
but she has implanted in him a system of social affections, which,
though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness.
There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It
begins and ends with our being.

If we examine with attention into the composition and constitution
of man, the diversity of his wants, and the diversity of talents in
different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other,
his propensity to society, and consequently to preserve the advantages
resulting from it, we shall easily discover, that a great part of what
is called government is mere imposition.

Government is no farther necessary than to supply the few cases to which
society and civilisation are not conveniently competent; and instances
are not wanting to show, that everything which government can usefully
add thereto, has been performed by the common consent of society,
without government.

For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War,
and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no
established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished,
and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention
in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and
harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There
is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces
a greater variety of abilities and resource, to accommodate itself to
whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished,
society begins to act: a general association takes place, and common
interest produces common security.

So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition
of any formal government is the dissolution of society, that it acts by
a contrary impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All
that part of its organisation which it had committed to its government,
devolves again upon itself, and acts through its medium. When men, as
well from natural instinct as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated
themselves to social and civilised life, there is always enough of its
principles in practice to carry them through any changes they may find
necessary or convenient to make in their government. In short, man is so
naturally a creature of society that it is almost impossible to put him
out of it.

Formal government makes but a small part of civilised life; and when
even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing
more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental
principles of society and civilisation--to the common usage universally
consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained--to the unceasing
circulation of interest, which, passing through its million channels,
invigorates the whole mass of civilised man--it is to these things,
infinitely more than to anything which even the best instituted
government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual
and of the whole depends.

The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for
government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and
govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the
reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion
they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilised life
requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are
enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly
the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense
men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual
intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is
called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by
the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of
consistency than he is aware, or than governments would wish him to
believe. All the great laws of society are laws of nature. Those
of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of
individuals or of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interest.
They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest of the parties
so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may
impose or interpose.

But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or
destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of
being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes
the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.

If we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have
happened in England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the
want of a government, but that government was itself the generating
cause; instead of consolidating society it divided it; it deprived it
of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents and disorders
which otherwise would not have existed. In those associations which men
promiscuously form for the purpose of trade, or of any concern in which
government is totally out of the question, and in which they act merely
on the principles of society, we see how naturally the various parties
unite; and this shows, by comparison, that governments, so far from
being always the cause or means of order, are often the destruction
of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those
prejudices which the government itself had encouraged. But with respect
to England there are also other causes.

Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never
fail to appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are
thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the
brink of commotion; and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the
means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the
apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of
happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government
that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.

But as a fact is superior to reasoning, the instance of America presents
itself to confirm these observations. If there is a country in the world
where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected,
it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations,*[16]
accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking
different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it
would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by
the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of
society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the
parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed,
the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid
extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few,
because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them
wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.

A metaphysical man, like Mr. Burke, would have tortured his invention
to discover how such a people could be governed. He would have supposed
that some must be managed by fraud, others by force, and all by some
contrivance; that genius must be hired to impose upon ignorance, and
show and parade to fascinate the vulgar. Lost in the abundance of
his researches, he would have resolved and re-resolved, and finally
overlooked the plain and easy road that lay directly before him.

One of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it
led to a discovery of the principles, and laid open the imposition, of
governments. All the revolutions till then had been worked within the
atmosphere of a court, and never on the grand floor of a nation. The
parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was
their rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the
profession.

In all cases they took care to represent government as a thing made up
of mysteries, which only themselves understood; and they hid from the
understanding of the nation the only thing that was beneficial to know,
namely, That government is nothing more than a national association
adding on the principles of society.

Having thus endeavoured to show that the social and civilised state of
man is capable of performing within itself almost everything necessary
to its protection and government, it will be proper, on the other hand,
to take a review of the present old governments, and examine whether
their principles and practice are correspondent thereto.




CHAPTER II. OF THE ORIGIN OF THE PRESENT OLD GOVERNMENTS

It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto existed in the
world, could have commenced by any other means than a total violation of
every principle sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin
of all the present old governments is buried, implies the iniquity and
disgrace with which they began. The origin of the present government of
America and France will ever be remembered, because it is honourable
to record it; but with respect to the rest, even Flattery has consigned
them to the tomb of time, without an inscription.

It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages
of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending
flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and
lay it under contributions. Their power being thus established, the
chief of the band contrived to lose the name of Robber in that of
Monarch; and hence the origin of Monarchy and Kings.

The origin of the Government of England, so far as relates to what is
called its line of monarchy, being one of the latest, is perhaps the
best recorded. The hatred which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat,
must have been deeply rooted in the nation, to have outlived the
contrivance to obliterate it. Though not a courtier will talk of the
curfew-bell, not a village in England has forgotten it.

Those bands of robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it
into dominions, began, as is naturally the case, to quarrel with each
other. What at first was obtained by violence was considered by others
as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first. They
alternately invaded the dominions which each had assigned to himself,
and the brutality with which they treated each other explains the
original character of monarchy. It was ruffian torturing ruffian.
The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his prisoner, but his
property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and doomed him, at
pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of their
beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the
entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the
same. What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and
the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a
continued system of war and extortion? It has established itself into a
trade. The vice is not peculiar to one more than to another, but is the
common principle of all. There does not exist within such governments
sufficient stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and
most effectual remedy is to begin anew on the ground of the nation.

What scenes of horror, what perfection of iniquity, present themselves
in contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such
governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of
heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and
humanity disown, it is kings, courts and cabinets that must sit for the
portrait. Man, naturally as he is, with all his faults about him, is not
up to the character.

Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right
principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world
could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen
it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay
aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another
country? or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to
them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any
man's estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of
the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence?--Though this
reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is
the Pharo-table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.

If there is anything to wonder at in this miserable scene of governments
more than might be expected, it is the progress which the peaceful arts
of agriculture, manufacture and commerce have made beneath such a long
accumulating load of discouragement and oppression. It serves to show
that instinct in animals does not act with stronger impulse than
the principles of society and civilisation operate in man. Under all
discouragements, he pursues his object, and yields to nothing but
impossibilities.




CHAPTER III. OF THE OLD AND NEW SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT

Nothing can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the
old governments began, and the condition to which society, civilisation
and commerce are capable of carrying mankind. Government, on the old
system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of itself; on
the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society.
The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter
promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation.
The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal
society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its
prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its
excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.

Mr. Burke has talked of old and new whigs. If he can amuse himself with
childish names and distinctions, I shall not interrupt his pleasure. It
is not to him, but to the Abbe Sieyes, that I address this chapter. I
am already engaged to the latter gentleman to discuss the subject of
monarchical government; and as it naturally occurs in comparing the old
and new systems, I make this the opportunity of presenting to him my
observations. I shall occasionally take Mr. Burke in my way.

Though it might be proved that the system of government now called the
New, is the most ancient in principle of all that have existed, being
founded on the original, inherent Rights of Man: yet, as tyranny and
the sword have suspended the exercise of those rights for many centuries
past, it serves better the purpose of distinction to call it the new,
than to claim the right of calling it the old.

The first general distinction between those two systems, is, that the
one now called the old is hereditary, either in whole or in part;
and the new is entirely representative. It rejects all hereditary
government:

First, As being an imposition on mankind.

Secondly, As inadequate to the purposes for which government is
necessary.

With respect to the first of these heads--It cannot be proved by what
right hereditary government could begin; neither does there exist
within the compass of mortal power a right to establish it. Man has no
authority over posterity in matters of personal right; and, therefore,
no man, or body of men, had, or can have, a right to set up hereditary
government. Were even ourselves to come again into existence, instead of
being succeeded by posterity, we have not now the right of taking from
ourselves the rights which would then be ours. On what ground, then, do
we pretend to take them from others?

All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown,
or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may
be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are
heritable property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people,
as if they were flocks and herds.

With respect to the second head, that of being inadequate to the
purposes for which government is necessary, we have only to consider
what government essentially is, and compare it with the circumstances to
which hereditary succession is subject.

Government ought to be a thing always in full maturity. It ought to
be so constructed as to be superior to all the accidents to which
individual man is subject; and, therefore, hereditary succession, by
being subject to them all, is the most irregular and imperfect of all
the systems of government.

We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the
only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the
hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling.
It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same
authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every
quality good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other,
not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or
moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of
the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is
formed on such an abject levelling system?--It has no fixed character.
To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with
the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the
varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and
accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood,
decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in
crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally
puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and
experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of
government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.

Could it be made a decree in nature, or an edict registered in heaven,
and man could know it, that virtue and wisdom should invariably
appertain to hereditary succession, the objection to it would be
removed; but when we see that nature acts as if she disowned and sported
with the hereditary system; that the mental character of successors, in
all countries, is below the average of human understanding; that one is
a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three together,
it is impossible to attach confidence to it, when reason in man has
power to act.

It is not to the Abbe Sieyes that I need apply this reasoning; he has
already saved me that trouble by giving his own opinion upon the
case. "If it be asked," says he, "what is my opinion with respect to
hereditary right, I answer without hesitation, That in good theory, an
hereditary transmission of any power of office, can never accord with
the laws of a true representation. Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as
much an attaint upon principle, as an outrage upon society. But let
us," continues he, "refer to the history of all elective monarchies and
principalities: is there one in which the elective mode is not worse
than the hereditary succession?"

As to debating on which is the worst of the two, it is admitting both
to be bad; and herein we are agreed. The preference which the Abbe has
given, is a condemnation of the thing that he prefers. Such a mode of
reasoning on such a subject is inadmissible, because it finally amounts
to an accusation upon Providence, as if she had left to man no other
choice with respect to government than between two evils, the best of
which he admits to be "an attaint upon principle, and an outrage upon
society."

Passing over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which
monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually
prove its uselessness in a state of civil government, than making it
hereditary. Would we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and
abilities to fill it? And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary,
such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.

Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the
most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or
idiot may fill. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but
to be a king requires only the animal figure of man--a sort of breathing
automaton. This sort of superstition may last a few years more, but it
cannot long resist the awakened reason and interest of man.

As to Mr. Burke, he is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a
pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, but as a political man. He
has taken up a contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are
taking up the same of him. He considers them as a herd of beings that
must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show; and an idol would be as
good a figure of monarchy with him, as a man. I will, however, do him
the justice to say that, with respect to America, he has been very
complimentary. He always contended, at least in my hearing, that the
people of America were more enlightened than those of England, or of
any country in Europe; and that therefore the imposition of show was not
necessary in their governments.

Though the comparison between hereditary and elective monarchy,
which the Abbe has made, is unnecessary to the case, because the
representative system rejects both: yet, were I to make the comparison,
I should decide contrary to what he has done.

The civil wars which have originated from contested hereditary
claims, are more numerous, and have been more dreadful, and of longer
continuance, than those which have been occasioned by election. All the
civil wars in France arose from the hereditary system; they were either
produced by hereditary claims, or by the imperfection of the hereditary
form, which admits of regencies or monarchy at nurse. With respect to
England, its history is full of the same misfortunes. The contests
for succession between the houses of York and Lancaster lasted a whole
century; and others of a similar nature have renewed themselves
since that period. Those of 1715 and 1745 were of the same kind. The
succession war for the crown of Spain embroiled almost half Europe. The
disturbances of Holland are generated from the hereditaryship of the
Stadtholder. A government calling itself free, with an hereditary
office, is like a thorn in the flesh, that produces a fermentation which
endeavours to discharge it.

But I might go further, and place also foreign wars, of whatever kind,
to the same cause. It is by adding the evil of hereditary succession
to that of monarchy, that a permanent family interest is created, whose
constant objects are dominion and revenue. Poland, though an elective
monarchy, has had fewer wars than those which are hereditary; and it is
the only government that has made a voluntary essay, though but a small
one, to reform the condition of the country.

Having thus glanced at a few of the defects of the old, or hereditary
systems of government, let us compare it with the new, or representative
system.

The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis;
nature, reason, and experience, for its guide.

Experience, in all ages, and in all countries, has demonstrated that it
is impossible to control Nature in her distribution of mental powers.
She gives them as she pleases. Whatever is the rule by which she,
apparently to us, scatters them among mankind, that rule remains
a secret to man. It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the
hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom. Whatever wisdom
constituently is, it is like a seedless plant; it may be reared when
it appears, but it cannot be voluntarily produced. There is always a
sufficiency somewhere in the general mass of society for all purposes;
but with respect to the parts of society, it is continually changing
its place. It rises in one to-day, in another to-morrow, and has most
probably visited in rotation every family of the earth, and again
withdrawn.

As this is in the order of nature, the order of government must
necessarily follow it, or government will, as we see it does, degenerate
into ignorance. The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to
human wisdom as to human rights; and is as absurd as it is unjust.

As the republic of letters brings forward the best literary productions,
by giving to genius a fair and universal chance; so the representative
system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by
collecting wisdom from where it can be found. I smile to myself when I
contemplate the ridiculous insignificance into which literature and all
the sciences would sink, were they made hereditary; and I carry the same
idea into governments. An hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an
hereditary author. I know not whether Homer or Euclid had sons; but
I will venture an opinion that if they had, and had left their works
unfinished, those sons could not have completed them.

Do we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of hereditary government
than is seen in the descendants of those men, in any line of life, who
once were famous? Is there scarcely an instance in which there is not
a total reverse of the character? It appears as if the tide of mental
faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then
forsook its course, and arose in others. How irrational then is the
hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company
with which wisdom refuses to flow! By continuing this absurdity, man is
perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a
chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for
a constable.

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and
talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is
existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which,
unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that
condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that
the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of
government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular
operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in
revolutions.

This cannot take place in the insipid state of hereditary government,
not only because it prevents, but because it operates to benumb. When
the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its
government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable
portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects. Hereditary
succession requires the same obedience to ignorance, as to wisdom;
and when once the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate
reverence, it descends below the stature of mental manhood. It is fit
to be great only in little things. It acts a treachery upon itself, and
suffocates the sensations that urge the detection.

Though the ancient governments present to us a miserable picture of the
condition of man, there is one which above all others exempts itself
from the general description. I mean the democracy of the Athenians. We
see more to admire, and less to condemn, in that great, extraordinary
people, than in anything which history affords.

Mr. Burke is so little acquainted with constituent principles of
government, that he confounds democracy and representation together.
Representation was a thing unknown in the ancient democracies. In those
the mass of the people met and enacted laws (grammatically speaking) in
the first person. Simple democracy was no other than the common hall of
the ancients. It signifies the form, as well as the public principle of
the government. As those democracies increased in population, and the
territory extended, the simple democratical form became unwieldy and
impracticable; and as the system of representation was not known, the
consequence was, they either degenerated convulsively into monarchies,
or became absorbed into such as then existed. Had the system of
representation been then understood, as it now is, there is no reason
to believe that those forms of government, now called monarchical or
aristocratical, would ever have taken place. It was the want of
some method to consolidate the parts of society, after it became too
populous, and too extensive for the simple democratical form, and also
the lax and solitary condition of shepherds and herdsmen in other parts
of the world, that afforded opportunities to those unnatural modes of
government to begin.

As it is necessary to clear away the rubbish of errors, into which the
subject of government has been thrown, I will proceed to remark on some
others.

It has always been the political craft of courtiers and
court-governments, to abuse something which they called republicanism;
but what republicanism was, or is, they never attempt to explain. Let us
examine a little into this case.

The only forms of government are the democratical, the aristocratical,
the monarchical, and what is now called the representative.

What is called a republic is not any particular form of government. It
is wholly characteristical of the purport, matter or object for which
government ought to be instituted, and on which it is to be employed,
Res-Publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally
translated, the public thing. It is a word of a good original, referring
to what ought to be the character and business of government; and in
this sense it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which has a
base original signification. It means arbitrary power in an individual
person; in the exercise of which, himself, and not the res-publica, is
the object.

Every government that does not act on the principle of a Republic, or
in other words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole
object, is not a good government. Republican government is no other than
government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as
well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected
with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the
representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for
which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.

Various forms of government have affected to style themselves a
republic. Poland calls itself a republic, which is an hereditary
aristocracy, with what is called an elective monarchy. Holland calls
itself a republic, which is chiefly aristocratical, with an hereditary
stadtholdership. But the government of America, which is wholly on the
system of representation, is the only real Republic, in character and in
practice, that now exists. Its government has no other object than the
public business of the nation, and therefore it is properly a republic;
and the Americans have taken care that This, and no other, shall
always be the object of their government, by their rejecting everything
hereditary, and establishing governments on the system of representation
only. Those who have said that a republic is not a form of government
calculated for countries of great extent, mistook, in the first
place, the business of a government, for a form of government; for
the res-publica equally appertains to every extent of territory and
population. And, in the second place, if they meant anything with
respect to form, it was the simple democratical form, such as was the
mode of government in the ancient democracies, in which there was no
representation. The case, therefore, is not, that a republic cannot be
extensive, but that it cannot be extensive on the simple democratical
form; and the question naturally presents itself, What is the best form
of government for conducting the Res-Publica, or the Public Business
of a nation, after it becomes too extensive and populous for the simple
democratical form? It cannot be monarchy, because monarchy is subject
to an objection of the same amount to which the simple democratical form
was subject.

It is possible that an individual may lay down a system of principles,
on which government shall be constitutionally established to any extent
of territory. This is no more than an operation of the mind, acting by
its own powers. But the practice upon those principles, as applying to
the various and numerous circumstances of a nation, its agriculture,
manufacture, trade, commerce, etc., etc., a knowledge of a different
kind, and which can be had only from the various parts of society. It is
an assemblage of practical knowledge, which no individual can possess;
and therefore the monarchical form is as much limited, in useful
practice, from the incompetency of knowledge, as was the democratical
form, from the multiplicity of population. The one degenerates, by
extension, into confusion; the other, into ignorance and incapacity, of
which all the great monarchies are an evidence. The monarchical form,
therefore, could not be a substitute for the democratical, because it
has equal inconveniences.

Much less could it when made hereditary. This is the most effectual of
all forms to preclude knowledge. Neither could the high democratical
mind have voluntarily yielded itself to be governed by children and
idiots, and all the motley insignificance of character, which attends
such a mere animal system, the disgrace and the reproach of reason and
of man.

As to the aristocratical form, it has the same vices and defects with
the monarchical, except that the chance of abilities is better from the
proportion of numbers, but there is still no security for the right use
and application of them.*[17]

Referring them to the original simple democracy, it affords the true
data from which government on a large scale can begin. It is incapable
of extension, not from its principle, but from the inconvenience of its
form; and monarchy and aristocracy, from their incapacity. Retaining,
then, democracy as the ground, and rejecting the corrupt systems of
monarchy and aristocracy, the representative system naturally presents
itself; remedying at once the defects of the simple democracy as to
form, and the incapacity of the other two with respect to knowledge.

Simple democracy was society governing itself without the aid of
secondary means. By ingrafting representation upon democracy, we arrive
at a system of government capable of embracing and confederating all the
various interests and every extent of territory and population; and that
also with advantages as much superior to hereditary government, as the
republic of letters is to hereditary literature.

It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is
representation ingrafted upon democracy. It has fixed the form by a
scale parallel in all cases to the extent of the principle. What Athens
was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of
the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present.
It is the easiest of all the forms of government to be understood and
the most eligible in practice; and excludes at once the ignorance and
insecurity of the hereditary mode, and the inconvenience of the simple
democracy.

It is impossible to conceive a system of government capable of acting
over such an extent of territory, and such a circle of interests, as is
immediately produced by the operation of representation. France, great
and populous as it is, is but a spot in the capaciousness of the system.
It is preferable to simple democracy even in small territories. Athens,
by representation, would have outrivalled her own democracy.

That which is called government, or rather that which we ought to
conceive government to be, is no more than some common center in which
all the parts of society unite. This cannot be accomplished by any
method so conducive to the various interests of the community, as by the
representative system. It concentrates the knowledge necessary to the
interest of the parts, and of the whole. It places government in a state
of constant maturity. It is, as has already been observed, never young,
never old. It is subject neither to nonage, nor dotage. It is never
in the cradle, nor on crutches. It admits not of a separation between
knowledge and power, and is superior, as government always ought to be,
to all the accidents of individual man, and is therefore superior to
what is called monarchy.

A nation is not a body, the figure of which is to be represented by
the human body; but is like a body contained within a circle, having a
common center, in which every radius meets; and that center is formed by
representation. To connect representation with what is called monarchy,
is eccentric government. Representation is of itself the delegated
monarchy of a nation, and cannot debase itself by dividing it with
another.

Mr. Burke has two or three times, in his parliamentary speeches, and in
his publications, made use of a jingle of words that convey no ideas.
Speaking of government, he says, "It is better to have monarchy for its
basis, and republicanism for its corrective, than republicanism for its
basis, and monarchy for its corrective."--If he means that it is
better to correct folly with wisdom, than wisdom with folly, I will no
otherwise contend with him, than that it would be much better to reject
the folly entirely.

But what is this thing which Mr. Burke calls monarchy? Will he explain
it? All men can understand what representation is; and that it must
necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents. But what
security is there for the same qualities on the part of monarchy? or,
when the monarchy is a child, where then is the wisdom? What does
it know about government? Who then is the monarch, or where is the
monarchy? If it is to be performed by regency, it proves to be a farce.
A regency is a mock species of republic, and the whole of monarchy
deserves no better description. It is a thing as various as imagination
can paint. It has none of the stable character that government ought
to possess. Every succession is a revolution, and every regency a
counter-revolution. The whole of it is a scene of perpetual court cabal
and intrigue, of which Mr. Burke is himself an instance. To render
monarchy consistent with government, the next in succession should
not be born a child, but a man at once, and that man a Solomon. It is
ridiculous that nations are to wait and government be interrupted till
boys grow to be men.

Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon;
whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else,
I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called
monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it
to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of
bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by
any accident, the curtain happens to be open--and the company see what
it is, they burst into laughter.

In the representative system of government, nothing of this can happen.
Like the nation itself, it possesses a perpetual stamina, as well of
body as of mind, and presents itself on the open theatre of the world in
a fair and manly manner. Whatever are its excellences or defects, they
are visible to all. It exists not by fraud and mystery; it deals not in
cant and sophistry; but inspires a language that, passing from heart to
heart, is felt and understood.

We must shut our eyes against reason, we must basely degrade our
understanding, not to see the folly of what is called monarchy. Nature
is orderly in all her works; but this is a mode of government that
counteracts nature. It turns the progress of the human faculties upside
down. It subjects age to be governed by children, and wisdom by folly.

On the contrary, the representative system is always parallel with the
order and immutable laws of nature, and meets the reason of man in every
part. For example:

In the American Federal Government, more power is delegated to the
President of the United States than to any other individual member of
Congress. He cannot, therefore, be elected to this office under the
age of thirty-five years. By this time the judgment of man becomes more
matured, and he has lived long enough to be acquainted with men and
things, and the country with him.--But on the monarchial plan (exclusive
of the numerous chances there are against every man born into the world,
of drawing a prize in the lottery of human faculties), the next in
succession, whatever he may be, is put at the head of a nation, and of
a government, at the age of eighteen years. Does this appear like an
action of wisdom? Is it consistent with the proper dignity and the manly
character of a nation? Where is the propriety of calling such a lad the
father of the people?--In all other cases, a person is a minor until the
age of twenty-one years. Before this period, he is not trusted with the
management of an acre of land, or with the heritable property of a flock
of sheep, or an herd of swine; but, wonderful to tell! he may, at the
age of eighteen years, be trusted with a nation.

That monarchy is all a bubble, a mere court artifice to procure money,
is evident (at least to me) in every character in which it can be
viewed. It would be impossible, on the rational system of representative
government, to make out a bill of expenses to such an enormous amount
as this deception admits. Government is not of itself a very chargeable
institution. The whole expense of the federal government of America,
founded, as I have already said, on the system of representation, and
extending over a country nearly ten times as large as England, is but
six hundred thousand dollars, or one hundred and thirty-five thousand
pounds sterling.

I presume that no man in his sober senses will compare the character
of any of the kings of Europe with that of General Washington. Yet, in
France, and also in England, the expense of the civil list only, for the
support of one man, is eight times greater than the whole expense of
the federal government in America. To assign a reason for this, appears
almost impossible. The generality of people in America, especially the
poor, are more able to pay taxes, than the generality of people either
in France or England.

But the case is, that the representative system diffuses such a body
of knowledge throughout a nation, on the subject of government, as to
explode ignorance and preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be
acted on that ground. There is no place for mystery; nowhere for it
to begin. Those who are not in the representation, know as much of
the nature of business as those who are. An affectation of mysterious
importance would there be scouted. Nations can have no secrets; and the
secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always their defects.

In the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly
appear. Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a
necessary part of his business to understand. It concerns his interest,
because it affects his property. He examines the cost, and compares it
with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom
of following what in other governments are called Leaders.

It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him
believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that
excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure
this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the
ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the
persons, but in the laws. The enacting of those requires no great
expense; and when they are administered, the whole of civil government
is performed--the rest is all court contrivance.




CHAPTER IV. OF CONSTITUTIONS

That men mean distinct and separate things when they speak of
constitutions and of governments, is evident; or why are those terms
distinctly and separately used? A constitution is not the act of a
government, but of a people constituting a government; and government
without a constitution, is power without a right.

All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It
must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All
delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does
not alter the nature and quality of either.

In viewing this subject, the case and circumstances of America present
themselves as in the beginning of a world; and our enquiry into the
origin of government is shortened, by referring to the facts that have
arisen in our own day. We have no occasion to roam for information into
the obscure field of antiquity, nor hazard ourselves upon conjecture.
We are brought at once to the point of seeing government begin, as if we
had lived in the beginning of time. The real volume, not of history,
but of facts, is directly before us, unmutilated by contrivance, or the
errors of tradition.

I will here concisely state the commencement of the American
constitutions; by which the difference between constitutions and
governments will sufficiently appear.

It may not appear improper to remind the reader that the United
States of America consist of thirteen separate states, each of
which established a government for itself, after the declaration of
independence, done the 4th of July, 1776. Each state acted independently
of the rest, in forming its governments; but the same general principle
pervades the whole. When the several state governments were formed, they
proceeded to form the federal government, that acts over the whole in
all matters which concern the interest of the whole, or which relate to
the intercourse of the several states with each other, or with foreign
nations. I will begin with giving an instance from one of the state
governments (that of Pennsylvania) and then proceed to the federal
government.

The state of Pennsylvania, though nearly of the same extent of territory
as England, was then divided into only twelve counties. Each of those
counties had elected a committee at the commencement of the dispute with
the English government; and as the city of Philadelphia, which also
had its committee, was the most central for intelligence, it became
the center of communication to the several country committees. When
it became necessary to proceed to the formation of a government, the
committee of Philadelphia proposed a conference of all the committees,
to be held in that city, and which met the latter end of July, 1776.

Though these committees had been duly elected by the people, they were
not elected expressly for the purpose, nor invested with the authority
of forming a constitution; and as they could not, consistently with the
American idea of rights, assume such a power, they could only confer
upon the matter, and put it into a train of operation. The conferees,
therefore, did no more than state the case, and recommend to the several
counties to elect six representatives for each county, to meet in
convention at Philadelphia, with powers to form a constitution, and
propose it for public consideration.

This convention, of which Benjamin Franklin was president, having met
and deliberated, and agreed upon a constitution, they next ordered it to
be published, not as a thing established, but for the consideration of
the whole people, their approbation or rejection, and then adjourned to
a stated time. When the time of adjournment was expired, the convention
re-assembled; and as the general opinion of the people in approbation of
it was then known, the constitution was signed, sealed, and proclaimed
on the authority of the people and the original instrument deposited
as a public record. The convention then appointed a day for the general
election of the representatives who were to compose the government, and
the time it should commence; and having done this they dissolved, and
returned to their several homes and occupations.

In this constitution were laid down, first, a declaration of rights;
then followed the form which the government should have, and the powers
it should possess--the authority of the courts of judicature, and of
juries--the manner in which elections should be conducted, and the
proportion of representatives to the number of electors--the time which
each succeeding assembly should continue, which was one year--the mode
of levying, and of accounting for the expenditure, of public money--of
appointing public officers, etc., etc., etc.

No article of this constitution could be altered or infringed at
the discretion of the government that was to ensue. It was to that
government a law. But as it would have been unwise to preclude the
benefit of experience, and in order also to prevent the accumulation of
errors, if any should be found, and to preserve an unison of government
with the circumstances of the state at all times, the constitution
provided that, at the expiration of every seven years, a convention
should be elected, for the express purpose of revising the constitution,
and making alterations, additions, or abolitions therein, if any such
should be found necessary.

Here we see a regular process--a government issuing out of a
constitution, formed by the people in their original character; and that
constitution serving, not only as an authority, but as a law of control
to the government. It was the political bible of the state. Scarcely a
family was without it. Every member of the government had a copy; and
nothing was more common, when any debate arose on the principle of a
bill, or on the extent of any species of authority, than for the members
to take the printed constitution out of their pocket, and read the
chapter with which such matter in debate was connected.

Having thus given an instance from one of the states, I will show the
proceedings by which the federal constitution of the United States arose
and was formed.

Congress, at its two first meetings, in September 1774, and May 1775,
was nothing more than a deputation from the legislatures of the several
provinces, afterwards states; and had no other authority than what arose
from common consent, and the necessity of its acting as a public body.
In everything which related to the internal affairs of America, congress
went no further than to issue recommendations to the several provincial
assemblies, who at discretion adopted them or not. Nothing on the
part of congress was compulsive; yet, in this situation, it was more
faithfully and affectionately obeyed than was any government in
Europe. This instance, like that of the national assembly in France,
sufficiently shows, that the strength of government does not consist in
any thing itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest
which a people feel in supporting it. When this is lost, government is
but a child in power; and though, like the old government in France, it
may harass individuals for a while, it but facilitates its own fall.

After the declaration of independence, it became consistent with the
principle on which representative government is founded, that the
authority of congress should be defined and established. Whether that
authority should be more or less than congress then discretionarily
exercised was not the question. It was merely the rectitude of the
measure.

For this purpose, the act, called the act of confederation (which was a
sort of imperfect federal constitution), was proposed, and, after long
deliberation, was concluded in the year 1781. It was not the act of
congress, because it is repugnant to the principles of representative
government that a body should give power to itself. Congress first
informed the several states, of the powers which it conceived were
necessary to be invested in the union, to enable it to perform the
duties and services required from it; and the states severally agreed
with each other, and concentrated in congress those powers.

It may not be improper to observe that in both those instances (the one
of Pennsylvania, and the other of the United States), there is no such
thing as the idea of a compact between the people on one side, and the
government on the other. The compact was that of the people with each
other, to produce and constitute a government. To suppose that any
government can be a party in a compact with the whole people, is to
suppose it to have existence before it can have a right to exist. The
only instance in which a compact can take place between the people and
those who exercise the government, is, that the people shall pay them,
while they choose to employ them.

Government is not a trade which any man, or any body of men, has a right
to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust,
in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is
always resumeable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether
duties.

Having thus given two instances of the original formation of a
constitution, I will show the manner in which both have been changed
since their first establishment.

The powers vested in the governments of the several states, by the state
constitutions, were found, upon experience, to be too great; and those
vested in the federal government, by the act of confederation, too
little. The defect was not in the principle, but in the distribution of
power.

Numerous publications, in pamphlets and in the newspapers, appeared,
on the propriety and necessity of new modelling the federal government.
After some time of public discussion, carried on through the channel
of the press, and in conversations, the state of Virginia, experiencing
some inconvenience with respect to commerce, proposed holding a
continental conference; in consequence of which, a deputation from five
or six state assemblies met at Annapolis, in Maryland, in 1786. This
meeting, not conceiving itself sufficiently authorised to go into the
business of a reform, did no more than state their general opinions of
the propriety of the measure, and recommend that a convention of all the
states should be held the year following.

The convention met at Philadelphia in May, 1787, of which General
Washington was elected president. He was not at that time connected
with any of the state governments, or with congress. He delivered up
his commission when the war ended, and since then had lived a private
citizen.

The convention went deeply into all the subjects; and having, after a
variety of debate and investigation, agreed among themselves upon the
several parts of a federal constitution, the next question was, the
manner of giving it authority and practice.

For this purpose they did not, like a cabal of courtiers, send for a
Dutch Stadtholder, or a German Elector; but they referred the whole
matter to the sense and interest of the country.

They first directed that the proposed constitution should be published.
Secondly, that each state should elect a convention, expressly for the
purpose of taking it into consideration, and of ratifying or rejecting
it; and that as soon as the approbation and ratification of any nine
states should be given, that those states shall proceed to the election
of their proportion of members to the new federal government; and that
the operation of it should then begin, and the former federal government
cease.

The several states proceeded accordingly to elect their conventions.
Some of those conventions ratified the constitution by very large
majorities, and two or three unanimously. In others there were much
debate and division of opinion. In the Massachusetts convention, which
met at Boston, the majority was not above nineteen or twenty, in
about three hundred members; but such is the nature of representative
government, that it quietly decides all matters by majority. After the
debate in the Massachusetts convention was closed, and the vote taken,
the objecting members rose and declared, "That though they had argued
and voted against it, because certain parts appeared to them in a
different light to what they appeared to other members; yet, as the vote
had decided in favour of the constitution as proposed, they should give
it the same practical support as if they had for it."

As soon as nine states had concurred (and the rest followed in the
order their conventions were elected), the old fabric of the federal
government was taken down, and the new one erected, of which General
Washington is president.--In this place I cannot help remarking, that
the character and services of this gentleman are sufficient to put all
those men called kings to shame. While they are receiving from the sweat
and labours of mankind, a prodigality of pay, to which neither their
abilities nor their services can entitle them, he is rendering every
service in his power, and refusing every pecuniary reward. He accepted
no pay as commander-in-chief; he accepts none as president of the United
States.

After the new federal constitution was established, the state of
Pennsylvania, conceiving that some parts of its own constitution
required to be altered, elected a convention for that purpose. The
proposed alterations were published, and the people concurring therein,
they were established.

In forming those constitutions, or in altering them, little or no
inconvenience took place. The ordinary course of things was not
interrupted, and the advantages have been much. It is always the
interest of a far greater number of people in a nation to have things
right, than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open
to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong,
unless it decides too hastily.

In the two instances of changing the constitutions, the governments then
in being were not actors either way. Government has no right to make
itself a party in any debate respecting the principles or modes of
forming, or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of
those who exercise the powers of government that constitutions, and the
governments issuing from them, are established. In all those matters the
right of judging and acting are in those who pay, and not in those who
receive.

A constitution is the property of a nation, and not of those who
exercise the government. All the constitutions of America are declared
to be established on the authority of the people. In France, the word
nation is used instead of the people; but in both cases, a constitution
is a thing antecedent to the government, and always distinct there from.

In England it is not difficult to perceive that everything has a
constitution, except the nation. Every society and association that is
established, first agreed upon a number of original articles, digested
into form, which are its constitution. It then appointed its officers,
whose powers and authorities are described in that constitution, and the
government of that society then commenced. Those officers, by whatever
name they are called, have no authority to add to, alter, or abridge the
original articles. It is only to the constituting power that this right
belongs.

From the want of understanding the difference between a constitution
and a government, Dr. Johnson, and all writers of his description, have
always bewildered themselves. They could not but perceive, that there
must necessarily be a controlling power existing somewhere, and they
placed this power in the discretion of the persons exercising the
government, instead of placing it in a constitution formed by the
nation. When it is in a constitution, it has the nation for its support,
and the natural and the political controlling powers are together. The
laws which are enacted by governments, control men only as individuals,
but the nation, through its constitution, controls the whole government,
and has a natural ability to do so. The final controlling power,
therefore, and the original constituting power, are one and the same
power.

Dr. Johnson could not have advanced such a position in any country where
there was a constitution; and he is himself an evidence that no such
thing as a constitution exists in England. But it may be put as a
question, not improper to be investigated, that if a constitution does
not exist, how came the idea of its existence so generally established?

In order to decide this question, it is necessary to consider a
constitution in both its cases:--First, as creating a government and
giving it powers. Secondly, as regulating and restraining the powers so
given.

If we begin with William of Normandy, we find that the government of
England was originally a tyranny, founded on an invasion and conquest of
the country. This being admitted, it will then appear, that the exertion
of the nation, at different periods, to abate that tyranny, and render
it less intolerable, has been credited for a constitution.

Magna Charta, as it was called (it is now like an almanack of the same
date), was no more than compelling the government to renounce a part of
its assumptions. It did not create and give powers to government in a
manner a constitution does; but was, as far as it went, of the nature of
a re-conquest, and not a constitution; for could the nation have totally
expelled the usurpation, as France has done its despotism, it would then
have had a constitution to form.

The history of the Edwards and the Henries, and up to the commencement
of the Stuarts, exhibits as many instances of tyranny as could be acted
within the limits to which the nation had restricted it. The Stuarts
endeavoured to pass those limits, and their fate is well known. In
all those instances we see nothing of a constitution, but only of
restrictions on assumed power.

After this, another William, descended from the same stock, and claiming
from the same origin, gained possession; and of the two evils, James
and William, the nation preferred what it thought the least; since, from
circumstances, it must take one. The act, called the Bill of Rights,
comes here into view. What is it, but a bargain, which the parts of
the government made with each other to divide powers, profits, and
privileges? You shall have so much, and I will have the rest; and with
respect to the nation, it said, for your share, You shall have the right
of petitioning. This being the case, the bill of rights is more properly
a bill of wrongs, and of insult. As to what is called the convention
parliament, it was a thing that made itself, and then made the authority
by which it acted. A few persons got together, and called themselves by
that name. Several of them had never been elected, and none of them for
the purpose.

From the time of William a species of government arose, issuing out
of this coalition bill of rights; and more so, since the corruption
introduced at the Hanover succession by the agency of Walpole; that can
be described by no other name than a despotic legislation. Though the
parts may embarrass each other, the whole has no bounds; and the only
right it acknowledges out of itself, is the right of petitioning. Where
then is the constitution either that gives or restrains power?

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it
less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a
parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated
from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.

I cannot believe that any nation, reasoning on its own rights, would
have thought of calling these things a constitution, if the cry of
constitution had not been set up by the government. It has got into
circulation like the words bore and quoz [quiz], by being chalked up in
the speeches of parliament, as those words were on window shutters and
doorposts; but whatever the constitution may be in other respects, it
has undoubtedly been the most productive machine of taxation that was
ever invented. The taxes in France, under the new constitution, are not
quite thirteen shillings per head,*[18] and the taxes in England, under
what is called its present constitution, are forty-eight shillings
and sixpence per head--men, women, and children--amounting to nearly
seventeen millions sterling, besides the expense of collecting, which is
upwards of a million more.

In a country like England, where the whole of the civil Government is
executed by the people of every town and county, by means of parish
officers, magistrates, quarterly sessions, juries, and assize; without
any trouble to what is called the government or any other expense to the
revenue than the salary of the judges, it is astonishing how such a mass
of taxes can be employed. Not even the internal defence of the country
is paid out of the revenue. On all occasions, whether real or contrived,
recourse is continually had to new loans and new taxes. No wonder,
then, that a machine of government so advantageous to the advocates of
a court, should be so triumphantly extolled! No wonder, that St. James's
or St. Stephen's should echo with the continual cry of constitution;
no wonder, that the French revolution should be reprobated, and the
res-publica treated with reproach! The red book of England, like the red
book of France, will explain the reason.*[19]

I will now, by way of relaxation, turn a thought or two to Mr. Burke. I
ask his pardon for neglecting him so long.

"America," says he (in his speech on the Canada Constitution bill),
"never dreamed of such absurd doctrine as the Rights of Man."

Mr. Burke is such a bold presumer, and advances his assertions and his
premises with such a deficiency of judgment, that, without troubling
ourselves about principles of philosophy or politics, the mere logical
conclusions they produce, are ridiculous. For instance,

If governments, as Mr. Burke asserts, are not founded on the Rights of
Man, and are founded on any rights at all, they consequently must be
founded on the right of something that is not man. What then is that
something?

Generally speaking, we know of no other creatures that inhabit the
earth than man and beast; and in all cases, where only two things offer
themselves, and one must be admitted, a negation proved on any one,
amounts to an affirmative on the other; and therefore, Mr. Burke, by
proving against the Rights of Man, proves in behalf of the beast; and
consequently, proves that government is a beast; and as difficult things
sometimes explain each other, we now see the origin of keeping wild
beasts in the Tower; for they certainly can be of no other use than
to show the origin of the government. They are in the place of a
constitution. O John Bull, what honours thou hast lost by not being a
wild beast. Thou mightest, on Mr. Burke's system, have been in the Tower
for life.

If Mr. Burke's arguments have not weight enough to keep one serious, the
fault is less mine than his; and as I am willing to make an apology to
the reader for the liberty I have taken, I hope Mr. Burke will also make
his for giving the cause.

Having thus paid Mr. Burke the compliment of remembering him, I return
to the subject.

From the want of a constitution in England to restrain and regulate the
wild impulse of power, many of the laws are irrational and tyrannical,
and the administration of them vague and problematical.

The attention of the government of England (for I rather choose to
call it by this name than the English government) appears, since its
political connection with Germany, to have been so completely engrossed
and absorbed by foreign affairs, and the means of raising taxes, that it
seems to exist for no other purposes. Domestic concerns are neglected;
and with respect to regular law, there is scarcely such a thing.

Almost every case must now be determined by some precedent, be that
precedent good or bad, or whether it properly applies or not; and
the practice is become so general as to suggest a suspicion, that it
proceeds from a deeper policy than at first sight appears.

Since the revolution of America, and more so since that of France,
this preaching up the doctrines of precedents, drawn from times and
circumstances antecedent to those events, has been the studied practice
of the English government. The generality of those precedents are
founded on principles and opinions, the reverse of what they ought; and
the greater distance of time they are drawn from, the more they are to
be suspected. But by associating those precedents with a superstitious
reverence for ancient things, as monks show relics and call them holy,
the generality of mankind are deceived into the design. Governments now
act as if they were afraid to awaken a single reflection in man. They
are softly leading him to the sepulchre of precedents, to deaden his
faculties and call attention from the scene of revolutions. They feel
that he is arriving at knowledge faster than they wish, and their policy
of precedents is the barometer of their fears. This political popery,
like the ecclesiastical popery of old, has had its day, and is hastening
to its exit. The ragged relic and the antiquated precedent, the monk and
the monarch, will moulder together.

Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the
precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous
instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an
example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated; but instead of
this, precedents are taken in the lump, and put at once for constitution
and for law.

Either the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep a man in a state of
ignorance, or it is a practical confession that wisdom degenerates in
governments as governments increase in age, and can only hobble along by
the stilts and crutches of precedents. How is it that the same persons
who would proudly be thought wiser than their predecessors, appear at
the same time only as the ghosts of departed wisdom? How strangely is
antiquity treated! To some purposes it is spoken of as the times of
darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of
the world.

If the doctrine of precedents is to be followed, the expenses of
government need not continue the same. Why pay men extravagantly, who
have but little to do? If everything that can happen is already in
precedent, legislation is at an end, and precedent, like a dictionary,
determines every case. Either, therefore, government has arrived at
its dotage, and requires to be renovated, or all the occasions for
exercising its wisdom have occurred.

We now see all over Europe, and particularly in England, the curious
phenomenon of a nation looking one way, and the government the
other--the one forward and the other backward. If governments are to go
on by precedent, while nations go on by improvement, they must at last
come to a final separation; and the sooner, and the more civilly they
determine this point, the better.*[20]

Having thus spoken of constitutions generally, as things distinct from
actual governments, let us proceed to consider the parts of which a
constitution is composed.

Opinions differ more on this subject than with respect to the whole.
That a nation ought to have a constitution, as a rule for the conduct
of its government, is a simple question in which all men, not directly
courtiers, will agree. It is only on the component parts that questions
and opinions multiply.

But this difficulty, like every other, will diminish when put into a
train of being rightly understood.

The first thing is, that a nation has a right to establish a
constitution.

Whether it exercises this right in the most judicious manner at first
is quite another case. It exercises it agreeably to the judgment it
possesses; and by continuing to do so, all errors will at last be
exploded.

When this right is established in a nation, there is no fear that it
will be employed to its own injury. A nation can have no interest in
being wrong.

Though all the constitutions of America are on one general principle,
yet no two of them are exactly alike in their component parts, or in the
distribution of the powers which they give to the actual governments.
Some are more, and others less complex.

In forming a constitution, it is first necessary to consider what are
the ends for which government is necessary? Secondly, what are the best
means, and the least expensive, for accomplishing those ends?

Government is nothing more than a national association; and the
object of this association is the good of all, as well individually as
collectively. Every man wishes to pursue his occupation, and to enjoy
the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace
and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things
are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be
established are answered.

It has been customary to consider government under three distinct
general heads. The legislative, the executive, and the judicial.

But if we permit our judgment to act unincumbered by the habit of
multiplied terms, we can perceive no more than two divisions of power,
of which civil government is composed, namely, that of legislating or
enacting laws, and that of executing or administering them. Everything,
therefore, appertaining to civil government, classes itself under one or
other of these two divisions.

So far as regards the execution of the laws, that which is called the
judicial power, is strictly and properly the executive power of every
country. It is that power to which every individual has appeal, and
which causes the laws to be executed; neither have we any other clear
idea with respect to the official execution of the laws. In England, and
also in America and France, this power begins with the magistrate, and
proceeds up through all the courts of judicature.

I leave to courtiers to explain what is meant by calling monarchy the
executive power. It is merely a name in which acts of government are
done; and any other, or none at all, would answer the same purpose. Laws
have neither more nor less authority on this account. It must be from
the justness of their principles, and the interest which a nation feels
therein, that they derive support; if they require any other than this,
it is a sign that something in the system of government is imperfect.
Laws difficult to be executed cannot be generally good.

With respect to the organization of the legislative power, different
modes have been adopted in different countries. In America it is
generally composed of two houses. In France it consists but of one, but
in both countries, it is wholly by representation.

The case is, that mankind (from the long tyranny of assumed power) have
had so few opportunities of making the necessary trials on modes and
principles of government, in order to discover the best, that government
is but now beginning to be known, and experience is yet wanting to
determine many particulars.

The objections against two houses are, first, that there is an
inconsistency in any part of a whole legislature, coming to a final
determination by vote on any matter, whilst that matter, with respect
to that whole, is yet only in a train of deliberation, and consequently
open to new illustrations.

Secondly, That by taking the vote on each, as a separate body, it always
admits of the possibility, and is often the case in practice, that the
minority governs the majority, and that, in some instances, to a degree
of great inconsistency.

Thirdly, That two houses arbitrarily checking or controlling each other
is inconsistent; because it cannot be proved on the principles of just
representation, that either should be wiser or better than the other.
They may check in the wrong as well as in the right therefore to give
the power where we cannot give the wisdom to use it, nor be assured
of its being rightly used, renders the hazard at least equal to the
precaution.*[21]

The objection against a single house is, that it is always in a
condition of committing itself too soon.--But it should at the same
time be remembered, that when there is a constitution which defines the
power, and establishes the principles within which a legislature
shall act, there is already a more effectual check provided, and more
powerfully operating, than any other check can be. For example,

Were a Bill to be brought into any of the American legislatures similar
to that which was passed into an act by the English parliament, at
the commencement of George the First, to extend the duration of the
assemblies to a longer period than they now sit, the check is in the
constitution, which in effect says, Thus far shalt thou go and no
further.

But in order to remove the objection against a single house (that of
acting with too quick an impulse), and at the same time to avoid the
inconsistencies, in some cases absurdities, arising from two houses, the
following method has been proposed as an improvement upon both.

First, To have but one representation.

Secondly, To divide that representation, by lot, into two or three
parts.

Thirdly, That every proposed bill shall be first debated in those parts
by succession, that they may become the hearers of each other, but
without taking any vote. After which the whole representation to
assemble for a general debate and determination by vote.

To this proposed improvement has been added another, for the purpose of
keeping the representation in the state of constant renovation; which
is, that one-third of the representation of each county, shall go out at
the expiration of one year, and the number be replaced by new elections.
Another third at the expiration of the second year replaced in like
manner, and every third year to be a general election.*[22]

But in whatever manner the separate parts of a constitution may be
arranged, there is one general principle that distinguishes freedom from
slavery, which is, that all hereditary government over a people is to
them a species of slavery, and representative government is freedom.

Considering government in the only light in which it should be
considered, that of a National Association, it ought to be so
constructed as not to be disordered by any accident happening among the
parts; and, therefore, no extraordinary power, capable of producing such
an effect, should be lodged in the hands of any individual. The death,
sickness, absence or defection, of any one individual in a government,
ought to be a matter of no more consequence, with respect to the nation,
than if the same circumstance had taken place in a member of the English
Parliament, or the French National Assembly.

Scarcely anything presents a more degrading character of national
greatness, than its being thrown into confusion, by anything happening
to or acted by any individual; and the ridiculousness of the scene is
often increased by the natural insignificance of the person by whom it
is occasioned. Were a government so constructed, that it could not go on
unless a goose or a gander were present in the senate, the difficulties
would be just as great and as real, on the flight or sickness of
the goose, or the gander, as if it were called a King. We laugh at
individuals for the silly difficulties they make to themselves, without
perceiving that the greatest of all ridiculous things are acted in
governments.*[23]

All the constitutions of America are on a plan that excludes the
childish embarrassments which occur in monarchical countries. No
suspension of government can there take place for a moment, from any
circumstances whatever. The system of representation provides for
everything, and is the only system in which nations and governments can
always appear in their proper character.

As extraordinary power ought not to be lodged in the hands of any
individual, so ought there to be no appropriations of public money
to any person, beyond what his services in a state may be worth. It
signifies not whether a man be called a president, a king, an emperor,
a senator, or by any other name which propriety or folly may devise or
arrogance assume; it is only a certain service he can perform in the
state; and the service of any such individual in the routine of office,
whether such office be called monarchical, presidential, senatorial, or
by any other name or title, can never exceed the value of ten thousand
pounds a year. All the great services that are done in the world are
performed by volunteer characters, who accept nothing for them; but
the routine of office is always regulated to such a general standard
of abilities as to be within the compass of numbers in every country
to perform, and therefore cannot merit very extraordinary recompense.
Government, says Swift, is a Plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of
many heads.

It is inhuman to talk of a million sterling a year, paid out of the
public taxes of any country, for the support of any individual, whilst
thousands who are forced to contribute thereto, are pining with want,
and struggling with misery. Government does not consist in a contrast
between prisons and palaces, between poverty and pomp; it is not
instituted to rob the needy of his mite, and increase the wretchedness
of the wretched.--But on this part of the subject I shall speak
hereafter, and confine myself at present to political observations.

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any
individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every
kind of corruption generates and forms. Give to any man a million a
year, and add thereto the power of creating and disposing of places,
at the expense of a country, and the liberties of that country are no
longer secure. What is called the splendour of a throne is no other
than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites,
living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.

When once such a vicious system is established it becomes the guard and
protection of all inferior abuses. The man who is in the receipt of a
million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest,
in the event, it should reach to himself. It is always his interest to
defend inferior abuses, as so many outworks to protect the citadel; and
on this species of political fortification, all the parts have such a
common dependence that it is never to be expected they will attack each
other.*[24]

Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world, had it not
been for the abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud, which shelters
all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes itself
friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the idol of
courtiers.

As the principle on which constitutions are now formed rejects all
hereditary pretensions to government, it also rejects all that catalogue
of assumptions known by the name of prerogatives.

If there is any government where prerogatives might with apparent safety
be entrusted to any individual, it is in the federal government of
America. The president of the United States of America is elected only
for four years. He is not only responsible in the general sense of the
word, but a particular mode is laid down in the constitution for trying
him. He cannot be elected under thirty-five years of age; and he must be
a native of the country.

In a comparison of these cases with the Government of England, the
difference when applied to the latter amounts to an absurdity. In
England the person who exercises prerogative is often a foreigner;
always half a foreigner, and always married to a foreigner. He is
never in full natural or political connection with the country, is not
responsible for anything, and becomes of age at eighteen years; yet
such a person is permitted to form foreign alliances, without even the
knowledge of the nation, and to make war and peace without its consent.

But this is not all. Though such a person cannot dispose of the
government in the manner of a testator, he dictates the marriage
connections, which, in effect, accomplish a great part of the same end.
He cannot directly bequeath half the government to Prussia, but he can
form a marriage partnership that will produce almost the same thing.
Under such circumstances, it is happy for England that she is not
situated on the Continent, or she might, like Holland, fall under
the dictatorship of Prussia. Holland, by marriage, is as effectually
governed by Prussia, as if the old tyranny of bequeathing the government
had been the means.

The presidency in America (or, as it is sometimes called, the executive)
is the only office from which a foreigner is excluded, and in England it
is the only one to which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a member
of Parliament, but he may be what is called a king. If there is any
reason for excluding foreigners, it ought to be from those offices where
mischief can most be acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest
and attachment, the trust is best secured. But as nations proceed in
the great business of forming constitutions, they will examine with
more precision into the nature and business of that department which is
called the executive. What the legislative and judicial departments are
every one can see; but with respect to what, in Europe, is called
the executive, as distinct from those two, it is either a political
superfluity or a chaos of unknown things.

Some kind of official department, to which reports shall be made from
the different parts of a nation, or from abroad, to be laid before the
national representatives, is all that is necessary; but there is no
consistency in calling this the executive; neither can it be considered
in any other light than as inferior to the legislative. The sovereign
authority in any country is the power of making laws, and everything
else is an official department.

Next to the arrangement of the principles and the organization of the
several parts of a constitution, is the provision to be made for
the support of the persons to whom the nation shall confide the
administration of the constitutional powers.

A nation can have no right to the time and services of any person at his
own expense, whom it may choose to employ or entrust in any department
whatever; neither can any reason be given for making provision for the
support of any one part of a government and not for the other.

But admitting that the honour of being entrusted with any part of a
government is to be considered a sufficient reward, it ought to be so to
every person alike. If the members of the legislature of any country
are to serve at their own expense that which is called the executive,
whether monarchical or by any other name, ought to serve in like manner.
It is inconsistent to pay the one, and accept the service of the other
gratis.

In America, every department in the government is decently provided for;
but no one is extravagantly paid. Every member of Congress, and of
the Assemblies, is allowed a sufficiency for his expenses. Whereas in
England, a most prodigal provision is made for the support of one part
of the Government, and none for the other, the consequence of which is
that the one is furnished with the means of corruption and the other is
put into the condition of being corrupted. Less than a fourth part of
such expense, applied as it is in America, would remedy a great part of
the corruption.

Another reform in the American constitution is the exploding all oaths
of personality. The oath of allegiance in America is to the nation only.
The putting any individual as a figure for a nation is improper.
The happiness of a nation is the superior object, and therefore the
intention of an oath of allegiance ought not to be obscured by being
figuratively taken, to, or in the name of, any person. The oath, called
the civic oath, in France, viz., "the nation, the law, and the king," is
improper. If taken at all, it ought to be as in America, to the nation
only. The law may or may not be good; but, in this place, it can have no
other meaning, than as being conducive to the happiness of a nation, and
therefore is included in it. The remainder of the oath is improper, on
the ground, that all personal oaths ought to be abolished. They are the
remains of tyranny on one part and slavery on the other; and the name of
the Creator ought not to be introduced to witness the degradation of
his creation; or if taken, as is already mentioned, as figurative of the
nation, it is in this place redundant. But whatever apology may be made
for oaths at the first establishment of a government, they ought not to
be permitted afterwards. If a government requires the support of oaths,
it is a sign that it is not worth supporting, and ought not to be
supported. Make government what it ought to be, and it will support
itself.

To conclude this part of the subject:--One of the greatest improvements
that have been made for the perpetual security and progress of
constitutional liberty, is the provision which the new constitutions
make for occasionally revising, altering, and amending them.

The principle upon which Mr. Burke formed his political creed, that of
"binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, and of renouncing
and abdicating the rights of all posterity, for ever," is now become too
detestable to be made a subject of debate; and therefore, I pass it over
with no other notice than exposing it.

Government is but now beginning to be known. Hitherto it has been the
mere exercise of power, which forbade all effectual enquiry into rights,
and grounded itself wholly on possession. While the enemy of liberty was
its judge, the progress of its principles must have been small indeed.

The constitutions of America, and also that of France, have either
affixed a period for their revision, or laid down the mode by which
improvement shall be made. It is perhaps impossible to establish
anything that combines principles with opinions and practice, which the
progress of circumstances, through a length of years, will not in some
measure derange, or render inconsistent; and, therefore, to prevent
inconveniences accumulating, till they discourage reformations or
provoke revolutions, it is best to provide the means of regulating them
as they occur. The Rights of Man are the rights of all generations of
men, and cannot be monopolised by any. That which is worth following,
will be followed for the sake of its worth, and it is in this that
its security lies, and not in any conditions with which it may be
encumbered. When a man leaves property to his heirs, he does not connect
it with an obligation that they shall accept it. Why, then, should we
do otherwise with respect to constitutions? The best constitution that
could now be devised, consistent with the condition of the present
moment, may be far short of that excellence which a few years may
afford. There is a morning of reason rising upon man on the subject
of government, that has not appeared before. As the barbarism of the
present old governments expires, the moral conditions of nations with
respect to each other will be changed. Man will not be brought up with
the savage idea of considering his species as his enemy, because
the accident of birth gave the individuals existence in countries
distinguished by different names; and as constitutions have always some
relation to external as well as to domestic circumstances, the means of
benefitting by every change, foreign or domestic, should be a part
of every constitution. We already see an alteration in the national
disposition of England and France towards each other, which, when we
look back to only a few years, is itself a Revolution. Who could have
foreseen, or who could have believed, that a French National Assembly
would ever have been a popular toast in England, or that a friendly
alliance of the two nations should become the wish of either? It shows
that man, were he not corrupted by governments, is naturally the friend
of man, and that human nature is not of itself vicious. That spirit
of jealousy and ferocity, which the governments of the two countries
inspired, and which they rendered subservient to the purpose of
taxation, is now yielding to the dictates of reason, interest, and
humanity. The trade of courts is beginning to be understood, and the
affectation of mystery, with all the artificial sorcery by which
they imposed upon mankind, is on the decline. It has received its
death-wound; and though it may linger, it will expire. Government ought
to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man,
instead of which it has been monopolised from age to age, by the most
ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their
wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every
nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the
world? Just emerging from such a barbarous condition, it is too soon to
determine to what extent of improvement government may yet be carried.
For what we can foresee, all Europe may form but one great Republic, and
man be free of the whole.




CHAPTER V. WAYS AND MEANS OF IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF EUROPE

INTERSPERSED WITH MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS

In contemplating a subject that embraces with equatorial magnitude the
whole region of humanity it is impossible to confine the pursuit in one
single direction. It takes ground on every character and condition that
appertains to man, and blends the individual, the nation, and the world.
From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be
extinguished. Without consuming, like the Ultima Ratio Regum, it winds
its progress from nation to nation, and conquers by a silent operation.
Man finds himself changed, he scarcely perceives how. He acquires
a knowledge of his rights by attending justly to his interest, and
discovers in the event that the strength and powers of despotism consist
wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order "to be free, it
is sufficient that he wills it."

Having in all the preceding parts of this work endeavoured to establish
a system of principles as a basis on which governments ought to be
erected, I shall proceed in this, to the ways and means of rendering
them into practice. But in order to introduce this part of the subject
with more propriety, and stronger effect, some preliminary observations,
deducible from, or connected with, those principles, are necessary.

Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have
no other object than the general happiness. When, instead of this, it
operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts
of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.
Customary language has classed the condition of man under the two
descriptions of civilised and uncivilised life. To the one it has
ascribed felicity and affluence; to the other hardship and want. But,
however our imagination may be impressed by painting and comparison,
it is nevertheless true, that a great portion of mankind, in what are
called civilised countries, are in a state of poverty and wretchedness,
far below the condition of an Indian. I speak not of one country, but of
all. It is so in England, it is so all over Europe. Let us enquire into
the cause.

It lies not in any natural defect in the principles of civilisation,
but in preventing those principles having a universal operation; the
consequence of which is, a perpetual system of war and expense,
that drains the country, and defeats the general felicity of which
civilisation is capable. All the European governments (France
now excepted) are constructed not on the principle of universal
civilisation, but on the reverse of it. So far as those governments
relate to each other, they are in the same condition as we conceive of
savage uncivilised life; they put themselves beyond the law as well
of God as of man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal
conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants
of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise
together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost
continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life
produces to carry on the uncivilised part to a greater extent. By thus
engrafting the barbarism of government upon the internal civilisation of
a country, it draws from the latter, and more especially from the poor,
a great portion of those earnings, which should be applied to their
own subsistence and comfort. Apart from all reflections of morality and
philosophy, it is a melancholy fact that more than one-fourth of the
labour of mankind is annually consumed by this barbarous system. What
has served to continue this evil, is the pecuniary advantage which
all the governments of Europe have found in keeping up this state of
uncivilisation. It affords to them pretences for power, and revenue,
for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle
of civilisation were rendered complete. Civil government alone, or the
government of laws, is not productive of pretences for many taxes; it
operates at home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes
the possibility of much imposition. But when the scene is laid in
the uncivilised contention of governments, the field of pretences is
enlarged, and the country, being no longer a judge, is open to every
imposition, which governments please to act. Not a thirtieth, scarcely
a fortieth, part of the taxes which are raised in England are either
occasioned by, or applied to, the purpose of civil government. It is
not difficult to see, that the whole which the actual government does
in this respect, is to enact laws, and that the country administers
and executes them, at its own expense, by means of magistrates, juries,
sessions, and assize, over and above the taxes which it pays. In this
view of the case, we have two distinct characters of government; the one
the civil government, or the government of laws, which operates at home,
the other the court or cabinet government, which operates abroad, on the
rude plan of uncivilised life; the one attended with little charge, the
other with boundless extravagance; and so distinct are the two, that if
the latter were to sink, as it were, by a sudden opening of the earth,
and totally disappear, the former would not be deranged. It would still
proceed, because it is the common interest of the nation that it should,
and all the means are in practice. Revolutions, then, have for their
object a change in the moral condition of governments, and with this
change the burthen of public taxes will lessen, and civilisation will be
left to the enjoyment of that abundance, of which it is now deprived.
In contemplating the whole of this subject, I extend my views into the
department of commerce. In all my publications, where the matter would
admit, I have been an advocate for commerce, because I am a friend to
its effects. It is a pacific system, operating to cordialise mankind, by
rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other. As to
the mere theoretical reformation, I have never preached it up. The most
effectual process is that of improving the condition of man by means of
his interest; and it is on this ground that I take my stand. If commerce
were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would
extirpate the system of war, and produce a revolution in the uncivilised
state of governments. The invention of commerce has arisen since those
governments began, and is the greatest approach towards universal
civilisation that has yet been made by any means not immediately flowing
from moral principles. Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil
intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits, is a subject as
worthy of philosophy as of politics. Commerce is no other than the
traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of numbers; and by the
same rule that nature intended for the intercourse of two, she intended
that of all. For this purpose she has distributed the materials of
manufactures and commerce, in various and distant parts of a nation and
of the world; and as they cannot be procured by war so cheaply or so
commodiously as by commerce, she has rendered the latter the means
of extirpating the former. As the two are nearly the opposite of each
other, consequently, the uncivilised state of the European governments
is injurious to commerce. Every kind of destruction or embarrassment
serves to lessen the quantity, and it matters but little in what part
of the commercial world the reduction begins. Like blood, it cannot be
taken from any of the parts, without being taken from the whole mass in
circulation, and all partake of the loss. When the ability in any
nation to buy is destroyed, it equally involves the seller. Could the
government of England destroy the commerce of all other nations, she
would most effectually ruin her own. It is possible that a nation may be
the carrier for the world, but she cannot be the merchant. She cannot
be the seller and buyer of her own merchandise. The ability to buy must
reside out of herself; and, therefore, the prosperity of any commercial
nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest. If they are poor she
cannot be rich, and her condition, be what it may, is an index of the
height of the commercial tide in other nations. That the principles
of commerce, and its universal operation may be understood, without
understanding the practice, is a position that reason will not deny; and
it is on this ground only that I argue the subject. It is one thing
in the counting-house, in the world it is another. With respect to its
operation it must necessarily be contemplated as a reciprocal thing;
that only one-half its powers resides within the nation, and that
the whole is as effectually destroyed by the destroying the half that
resides without, as if the destruction had been committed on that which
is within; for neither can act without the other. When in the last, as
well as in former wars, the commerce of England sunk, it was because the
quantity was lessened everywhere; and it now rises, because commerce is
in a rising state in every nation. If England, at this day, imports
and exports more than at any former period, the nations with which she
trades must necessarily do the same; her imports are their exports, and
vice versa. There can be no such thing as a nation flourishing alone
in commerce: she can only participate; and the destruction of it in any
part must necessarily affect all. When, therefore, governments are
at war, the attack is made upon a common stock of commerce, and the
consequence is the same as if each had attacked his own. The present
increase of commerce is not to be attributed to ministers, or to any
political contrivances, but to its own natural operation in consequence
of peace. The regular markets had been destroyed, the channels of trade
broken up, the high road of the seas infested with robbers of every
nation, and the attention of the world called to other objects. Those
interruptions have ceased, and peace has restored the deranged condition
of things to their proper order.*[25] It is worth remarking that every
nation reckons the balance of trade in its own favour; and therefore
something must be irregular in the common ideas upon this subject. The
fact, however, is true, according to what is called a balance; and it
is from this cause that commerce is universally supported. Every nation
feels the advantage, or it would abandon the practice: but the deception
lies in the mode of making up the accounts, and in attributing what are
called profits to a wrong cause. Mr. Pitt has sometimes amused himself,
by showing what he called a balance of trade from the custom-house
books. This mode of calculating not only affords no rule that is true,
but one that is false. In the first place, Every cargo that departs from
the custom-house appears on the books as an export; and, according to
the custom-house balance, the losses at sea, and by foreign failures,
are all reckoned on the side of profit because they appear as exports.

Secondly, Because the importation by the smuggling trade does not appear
on the custom-house books, to arrange against the exports.

No balance, therefore, as applying to superior advantages, can be
drawn from these documents; and if we examine the natural operation of
commerce, the idea is fallacious; and if true, would soon be injurious.
The great support of commerce consists in the balance being a level of
benefits among all nations.

Two merchants of different nations trading together, will both become
rich, and each makes the balance in his own favour; consequently, they
do not get rich of each other; and it is the same with respect to the
nations in which they reside. The case must be, that each nation must
get rich out of its own means, and increases that riches by something
which it procures from another in exchange.

If a merchant in England sends an article of English manufacture abroad
which costs him a shilling at home, and imports something which sells
for two, he makes a balance of one shilling in his favour; but this is
not gained out of the foreign nation or the foreign merchant, for he
also does the same by the articles he receives, and neither has the
advantage upon the other. The original value of the two articles in
their proper countries was but two shillings; but by changing their
places, they acquire a new idea of value, equal to double what they had
first, and that increased value is equally divided.

There is no otherwise a balance on foreign than on domestic commerce.
The merchants of London and Newcastle trade on the same principles, as
if they resided in different nations, and make their balances in the
same manner: yet London does not get rich out of Newcastle, any more
than Newcastle out of London: but coals, the merchandize of Newcastle,
have an additional value at London, and London merchandize has the same
at Newcastle.

Though the principle of all commerce is the same, the domestic, in a
national view, is the part the most beneficial; because the whole of the
advantages, an both sides, rests within the nation; whereas, in foreign
commerce, it is only a participation of one-half.

The most unprofitable of all commerce is that connected with foreign
dominion. To a few individuals it may be beneficial, merely because it
is commerce; but to the nation it is a loss. The expense of maintaining
dominion more than absorbs the profits of any trade. It does not
increase the general quantity in the world, but operates to lessen it;
and as a greater mass would be afloat by relinquishing dominion, the
participation without the expense would be more valuable than a greater
quantity with it.

But it is impossible to engross commerce by dominion; and therefore
it is still more fallacious. It cannot exist in confined channels, and
necessarily breaks out by regular or irregular means, that defeat
the attempt: and to succeed would be still worse. France, since the
Revolution, has been more indifferent as to foreign possessions, and
other nations will become the same when they investigate the subject
with respect to commerce.

To the expense of dominion is to be added that of navies, and when the
amounts of the two are subtracted from the profits of commerce, it will
appear, that what is called the balance of trade, even admitting it to
exist, is not enjoyed by the nation, but absorbed by the Government.

The idea of having navies for the protection of commerce is delusive.
It is putting means of destruction for the means of protection. Commerce
needs no other protection than the reciprocal interest which every
nation feels in supporting it--it is common stock--it exists by a
balance of advantages to all; and the only interruption it meets, is
from the present uncivilised state of governments, and which it is its
common interest to reform.*[26]

Quitting this subject, I now proceed to other matters.--As it is
necessary to include England in the prospect of a general reformation,
it is proper to inquire into the defects of its government. It is only
by each nation reforming its own, that the whole can be improved, and
the full benefit of reformation enjoyed. Only partial advantages can
flow from partial reforms.

France and England are the only two countries in Europe where a
reformation in government could have successfully begun. The one secure
by the ocean, and the other by the immensity of its internal strength,
could defy the malignancy of foreign despotism. But it is with
revolutions as with commerce, the advantages increase by their becoming
general, and double to either what each would receive alone.

As a new system is now opening to the view of the world, the European
courts are plotting to counteract it. Alliances, contrary to all former
systems, are agitating, and a common interest of courts is forming
against the common interest of man. This combination draws a line that
runs throughout Europe, and presents a cause so entirely new as to
exclude all calculations from former circumstances. While despotism
warred with despotism, man had no interest in the contest; but in a
cause that unites the soldier with the citizen, and nation with nation,
the despotism of courts, though it feels the danger and meditates
revenge, is afraid to strike.

No question has arisen within the records of history that pressed with
the importance of the present. It is not whether this or that party
shall be in or not, or Whig or Tory, high or low shall prevail; but
whether man shall inherit his rights, and universal civilisation take
place? Whether the fruits of his labours shall be enjoyed by himself
or consumed by the profligacy of governments? Whether robbery shall be
banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries?

When, in countries that are called civilised, we see age going to the
workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the
system of government. It would seem, by the exterior appearance of such
countries, that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of
common observation, a mass of wretchedness, that has scarcely any other
chance, than to expire in poverty or infamy. Its entrance into life is
marked with the presage of its fate; and until this is remedied, it is
in vain to punish.

Civil government does not exist in executions; but in making such
provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to
exclude, as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from
the other. Instead of this, the resources of a country are lavished upon
kings, upon courts, upon hirelings, impostors and prostitutes; and even
the poor themselves, with all their wants upon them, are compelled to
support the fraud that oppresses them.

Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor? The fact is a
proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition. Bred up
without morals, and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are
the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity. The millions that are
superfluously wasted upon governments are more than sufficient to reform
those evils, and to benefit the condition of every man in a nation, not
included within the purlieus of a court. This I hope to make appear in
the progress of this work.

It is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune. In taking
up this subject I seek no recompense--I fear no consequence. Fortified
with that proud integrity, that disdains to triumph or to yield, I will
advocate the Rights of Man.

It is to my advantage that I have served an apprenticeship to life. I
know the value of moral instruction, and I have seen the danger of the
contrary.

At an early period--little more than sixteen years of age, raw and
adventurous, and heated with the false heroism of a master*[27] who
had served in a man-of-war--I began the carver of my own fortune,
and entered on board the Terrible Privateer, Captain Death. From
this adventure I was happily prevented by the affectionate and moral
remonstrance of a good father, who, from his own habits of life, being
of the Quaker profession, must begin to look upon me as lost. But the
impression, much as it effected at the time, began to wear away, and I
entered afterwards in the King of Prussia Privateer, Captain Mendez,
and went with her to sea. Yet, from such a beginning, and with all the
inconvenience of early life against me, I am proud to say, that with
a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a disinterestedness that
compelled respect, I have not only contributed to raise a new empire in
the world, founded on a new system of government, but I have arrived at
an eminence in political literature, the most difficult of all lines to
succeed and excel in, which aristocracy with all its aids has not been
able to reach or to rival.*[28]

Knowing my own heart and feeling myself as I now do, superior to all the
skirmish of party, the inveteracy of interested or mistaken opponents,
I answer not to falsehood or abuse, but proceed to the defects of the
English Government.

I begin with charters and corporations.

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It
operates by a contrary effect--that of taking rights away. Rights are
inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those
rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of
a few. If charters were constructed so as to express in direct terms,
"that every inhabitant, who is not a member of a corporation, shall
not exercise the right of voting," such charters would, in the face, be
charters not of rights, but of exclusion. The effect is the same under
the form they now stand; and the only persons on whom they operate are
the persons whom they exclude. Those whose rights are guaranteed, by
not being taken away, exercise no other rights than as members of the
community they are entitled to without a charter; and, therefore, all
charters have no other than an indirect negative operation. They do not
give rights to A, but they make a difference in favour of A by taking
away the right of B, and consequently are instruments of injustice.

But charters and corporations have a more extensive evil effect
than what relates merely to elections. They are sources of endless
contentions in the places where they exist, and they lessen the common
rights of national society. A native of England, under the operation of
these charters and corporations, cannot be said to be an Englishman in
the full sense of the word. He is not free of the nation, in the same
manner that a Frenchman is free of France, and an American of America.
His rights are circumscribed to the town, and, in some cases, to the
parish of his birth; and all other parts, though in his native land, are
to him as a foreign country. To acquire a residence in these, he must
undergo a local naturalisation by purchase, or he is forbidden or
expelled the place. This species of feudality is kept up to aggrandise
the corporations at the ruin of towns; and the effect is visible.

The generality of corporation towns are in a state of solitary decay,
and prevented from further ruin only by some circumstance in their
situation, such as a navigable river, or a plentiful surrounding
country. As population is one of the chief sources of wealth (for
without it land itself has no value), everything which operates to
prevent it must lessen the value of property; and as corporations have
not only this tendency, but directly this effect, they cannot but be
injurious. If any policy were to be followed, instead of that of general
freedom, to every person to settle where he chose (as in France or
America) it would be more consistent to give encouragement to new comers
than to preclude their admission by exacting premiums from them.*[29]

The persons most immediately interested in the abolition of corporations
are the inhabitants of the towns where corporations are established. The
instances of Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield show, by contrast,
the injuries which those Gothic institutions are to property and
commerce. A few examples may be found, such as that of London, whose
natural and commercial advantage, owing to its situation on the Thames,
is capable of bearing up against the political evils of a corporation;
but in almost all other cases the fatality is too visible to be doubted
or denied.

Though the whole nation is not so directly affected by the depression of
property in corporation towns as the inhabitants themselves, it partakes
of the consequence. By lessening the value of property, the quantity of
national commerce is curtailed. Every man is a customer in proportion
to his ability; and as all parts of a nation trade with each other,
whatever affects any of the parts must necessarily communicate to the
whole.

As one of the Houses of the English Parliament is, in a great measure,
made up of elections from these corporations; and as it is unnatural
that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a
continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral honour and good
political principles cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful
arts, by which such elections are carried. To be a successful candidate,
he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator;
and being thus disciplined to corruption by the mode of entering into
Parliament, it is not to be expected that the representative should be
better than the man.

Mr. Burke, in speaking of the English representation, has advanced
as bold a challenge as ever was given in the days of chivalry. "Our
representation," says he, "has been found perfectly adequate to all
the purposes for which a representation of the people can be desired or
devised." "I defy," continues he, "the enemies of our constitution
to show the contrary."--This declaration from a man who has been in
constant opposition to all the measures of parliament the whole of his
political life, a year or two excepted, is most extraordinary; and,
comparing him with himself, admits of no other alternative, than that he
acted against his judgment as a member, or has declared contrary to it
as an author.

But it is not in the representation only that the defects lie, and
therefore I proceed in the next place to the aristocracy.

What is called the House of Peers, is constituted on a ground very
similar to that, against which there is no law in other cases. It
amounts to a combination of persons in one common interest. No better
reason can be given, why a house of legislation should be composed
entirely of men whose occupation consists in letting landed property,
than why it should be composed of those who hire, or of brewers, or
bakers, or any other separate class of men. Mr. Burke calls this house
"the great ground and pillar of security to the landed interest." Let us
examine this idea.

What pillar of security does the landed interest require more than any
other interest in the state, or what right has it to a distinct and
separate representation from the general interest of a nation? The only
use to be made of this power (and which it always has made), is to ward
off taxes from itself, and throw the burthen upon those articles of
consumption by which itself would be least affected.

That this has been the consequence (and will always be the consequence)
of constructing governments on combinations, is evident with respect to
England, from the history of its taxes.

Notwithstanding taxes have increased and multiplied upon every article
of common consumption, the land-tax, which more particularly affects
this "pillar," has diminished. In 1778 the amount of the land-tax was
L1,950,000, which is half-a-million less than it produced almost
a hundred years ago,*[30] notwithstanding the rentals are in many
instances doubled since that period.

Before the coming of the Hanoverians, the taxes were divided in nearly
equal proportions between the land and articles of consumption, the land
bearing rather the largest share: but since that era nearly thirteen
millions annually of new taxes have been thrown upon consumption. The
consequence of which has been a constant increase in the number and
wretchedness of the poor, and in the amount of the poor-rates. Yet here
again the burthen does not fall in equal proportions on the aristocracy
with the rest of the community. Their residences, whether in town or
country, are not mixed with the habitations of the poor. They live apart
from distress, and the expense of relieving it. It is in manufacturing
towns and labouring villages that those burthens press the heaviest; in
many of which it is one class of poor supporting another.

Several of the most heavy and productive taxes are so contrived, as to
give an exemption to this pillar, thus standing in its own defence. The
tax upon beer brewed for sale does not affect the aristocracy, who brew
their own beer free from this duty. It falls only on those who have
not conveniency or ability to brew, and who must purchase it in small
quantities. But what will mankind think of the justice of taxation,
when they know that this tax alone, from which the aristocracy are from
circumstances exempt, is nearly equal to the whole of the land-tax,
being in the year 1788, and it is not less now, L1,666,152, and with its
proportion of the taxes on malt and hops, it exceeds it.--That a single
article, thus partially consumed, and that chiefly by the working part,
should be subject to a tax, equal to that on the whole rental of a
nation, is, perhaps, a fact not to be paralleled in the histories of
revenues.

This is one of the circumstances resulting from a house of legislation,
composed on the ground of a combination of common interest; for whatever
their separate politics as to parties may be, in this they are united.
Whether a combination acts to raise the price of any article for sale,
or rate of wages; or whether it acts to throw taxes from itself upon
another class of the community, the principle and the effect are the
same; and if the one be illegal, it will be difficult to show that the
other ought to exist.

It is no use to say that taxes are first proposed in the House of
Commons; for as the other house has always a negative, it can
always defend itself; and it would be ridiculous to suppose that its
acquiescence in the measures to be proposed were not understood
before hand. Besides which, it has obtained so much influence by
borough-traffic, and so many of its relations and connections are
distributed on both sides the commons, as to give it, besides an
absolute negative in one house, a preponderancy in the other, in all
matters of common concern.

It is difficult to discover what is meant by the landed interest, if
it does not mean a combination of aristocratical landholders, opposing
their own pecuniary interest to that of the farmer, and every branch of
trade, commerce, and manufacture. In all other respects it is the
only interest that needs no partial protection. It enjoys the general
protection of the world. Every individual, high or low, is interested
in the fruits of the earth; men, women, and children, of all ages and
degrees, will turn out to assist the farmer, rather than a harvest
should not be got in; and they will not act thus by any other property.
It is the only one for which the common prayer of mankind is put up,
and the only one that can never fail from the want of means. It is the
interest, not of the policy, but of the existence of man, and when it
ceases, he must cease to be.

No other interest in a nation stands on the same united support.
Commerce, manufactures, arts, sciences, and everything else, compared
with this, are supported but in parts. Their prosperity or their decay
has not the same universal influence. When the valleys laugh and sing,
it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoice. It is a
prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything
else.

Why then, does Mr. Burke talk of his house of peers as the pillar of
the landed interest? Were that pillar to sink into the earth, the same
landed property would continue, and the same ploughing, sowing, and
reaping would go on. The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the
land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and
when compared with the active world are the drones, a seraglio of males,
who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy
enjoyment.

Mr. Burke, in his first essay, called aristocracy "the Corinthian
capital of polished society." Towards completing the figure, he has now
added the pillar; but still the base is wanting; and whenever a nation
choose to act a Samson, not blind, but bold, down will go the temple of
Dagon, the Lords and the Philistines.

If a house of legislation is to be composed of men of one class, for
the purpose of protecting a distinct interest, all the other interests
should have the same. The inequality, as well as the burthen of
taxation, arises from admitting it in one case, and not in all. Had
there been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws; or a house
of merchants and manufacturers, the taxes had neither been so unequal
nor so excessive. It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of
those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that
it has raged without a check.

Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being
thrown on articles of consumption, than they are eased by warding it
from landed property, for the following reasons:

First, They consume more of the productive taxable articles, in
proportion to their property, than those of large estates.

Secondly, Their residence is chiefly in towns, and their property in
houses; and the increase of the poor-rates, occasioned by taxes on
consumption, is in much greater proportion than the land-tax has
been favoured. In Birmingham, the poor-rates are not less than
seven shillings in the pound. From this, as is already observed, the
aristocracy are in a great measure exempt.

These are but a part of the mischiefs flowing from the wretched scheme
of an house of peers.

As a combination, it can always throw a considerable portion of taxes
from itself; and as an hereditary house, accountable to nobody, it
resembles a rotten borough, whose consent is to be courted by interest.
There are but few of its members, who are not in some mode or
other participators, or disposers of the public money. One turns a
candle-holder, or a lord in waiting; another a lord of the bed-chamber,
a groom of the stole, or any insignificant nominal office to which a
salary is annexed, paid out of the public taxes, and which avoids the
direct appearance of corruption. Such situations are derogatory to the
character of man; and where they can be submitted to, honour cannot
reside.

To all these are to be added the numerous dependants, the long list of
younger branches and distant relations, who are to be provided for
at the public expense: in short, were an estimation to be made of the
charge of aristocracy to a nation, it will be found nearly equal to that
of supporting the poor. The Duke of Richmond alone (and there are cases
similar to his) takes away as much for himself as would maintain two
thousand poor and aged persons. Is it, then, any wonder, that under such
a system of government, taxes and rates have multiplied to their present
extent?

In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language,
dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only
refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined
rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that
meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness,
and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my
country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Mr. Burke, in speaking of the aristocratical law of primogeniture, says,
"it is the standing law of our landed inheritance; and which, without
question, has a tendency, and I think," continues he, "a happy tendency,
to preserve a character of weight and consequence."

Mr. Burke may call this law what he pleases, but humanity and impartial
reflection will denounce it as a law of brutal injustice. Were we not
accustomed to the daily practice, and did we only hear of it as the
law of some distant part of the world, we should conclude that
the legislators of such countries had not arrived at a state of
civilisation.

As to its preserving a character of weight and consequence, the case
appears to me directly the reverse. It is an attaint upon character;
a sort of privateering on family property. It may have weight among
dependent tenants, but it gives none on a scale of national, and much
less of universal character. Speaking for myself, my parents were not
able to give me a shilling, beyond what they gave me in education; and
to do this they distressed themselves: yet, I possess more of what is
called consequence, in the world, than any one in Mr. Burke's catalogue
of aristocrats.

Having thus glanced at some of the defects of the two houses of
parliament, I proceed to what is called the crown, upon which I shall be
very concise.

It signifies a nominal office of a million sterling a year, the business
of which consists in receiving the money. Whether the person be wise
or foolish, sane or insane, a native or a foreigner, matters not. Every
ministry acts upon the same idea that Mr. Burke writes, namely, that the
people must be hood-winked, and held in superstitious ignorance by some
bugbear or other; and what is called the crown answers this purpose, and
therefore it answers all the purposes to be expected from it. This is
more than can be said of the other two branches.

The hazard to which this office is exposed in all countries, is not from
anything that can happen to the man, but from what may happen to the
nation--the danger of its coming to its senses.

It has been customary to call the crown the executive power, and the
custom is continued, though the reason has ceased.

It was called the executive, because the person whom it signified
used, formerly, to act in the character of a judge, in administering
or executing the laws. The tribunals were then a part of the court. The
power, therefore, which is now called the judicial, is what was called
the executive and, consequently, one or other of the terms is redundant,
and one of the offices useless. When we speak of the crown now, it means
nothing; it signifies neither a judge nor a general: besides which it
is the laws that govern, and not the man. The old terms are kept up, to
give an appearance of consequence to empty forms; and the only effect
they have is that of increasing expenses.

Before I proceed to the means of rendering governments more conducive to
the general happiness of mankind, than they are at present, it will not
be improper to take a review of the progress of taxation in England.

It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never
taken off. However true this may have been of late, it was not always
so. Either, therefore, the people of former times were more watchful
over government than those of the present, or government was
administered with less extravagance.

It is now seven hundred years since the Norman conquest, and the
establishment of what is called the crown. Taking this portion of time
in seven separate periods of one hundred years each, the amount of the
annual taxes, at each period, will be as follows:

    Annual taxes levied by William the Conqueror,
                           beginning in the year 1066    L400,000
    Annual taxes at 100 years from the conquest (1166)    200,000
    Annual taxes at 200 years from the conquest (1266)    150,000
    Annual taxes at 300 years from the conquest (1366)    130,000
    Annual taxes at 400 years from the conquest (1466)    100,000

These statements and those which follow, are taken from Sir John
Sinclair's History of the Revenue; by which it appears, that taxes
continued decreasing for four hundred years, at the expiration of which
time they were reduced three-fourths, viz., from four hundred thousand
pounds to one hundred thousand. The people of England of the present
day, have a traditionary and historical idea of the bravery of their
ancestors; but whatever their virtues or their vices might have been,
they certainly were a people who would not be imposed upon, and who kept
governments in awe as to taxation, if not as to principle. Though they
were not able to expel the monarchical usurpation, they restricted it to
a republican economy of taxes.

Let us now review the remaining three hundred years:

Annual amount of taxes at:

             500 years from the conquest (1566)      500,000
             600 years from the conquest (1666)    1,800,000
             the present time (1791)              17,000,000

The difference between the first four hundred years and the last three,
is so astonishing, as to warrant an opinion, that the national character
of the English has changed. It would have been impossible to have
dragooned the former English, into the excess of taxation that now
exists; and when it is considered that the pay of the army, the navy,
and of all the revenue officers, is the same now as it was about a
hundred years ago, when the taxes were not above a tenth part of what
they are at present, it appears impossible to account for the enormous
increase and expenditure on any other ground, than extravagance,
corruption, and intrigue.*[31]

With the Revolution of 1688, and more so since the Hanover succession,
came the destructive system of continental intrigues, and the rage for
foreign wars and foreign dominion; systems of such secure mystery that
the expenses admit of no accounts; a single line stands for millions. To
what excess taxation might have extended had not the French revolution
contributed to break up the system, and put an end to pretences, is
impossible to say. Viewed, as that revolution ought to be, as the
fortunate means of lessening the load of taxes of both countries, it is
of as much importance to England as to France; and, if properly improved
to all the advantages of which it is capable, and to which it leads,
deserves as much celebration in one country as the other.

In pursuing this subject, I shall begin with the matter that first
presents itself, that of lessening the burthen of taxes; and shall then
add such matter and propositions, respecting the three countries of
England, France, and America, as the present prospect of things appears
to justify: I mean, an alliance of the three, for the purposes that will
be mentioned in their proper place.

What has happened may happen again. By the statement before shown of
the progress of taxation, it is seen that taxes have been lessened to
a fourth part of what they had formerly been. Though the present
circumstances do not admit of the same reduction, yet they admit of such
a beginning, as may accomplish that end in less time than in the former
case.

The amount of taxes for the year ending at Michaelmas 1788, was as
follows:

     Land-tax                             L 1,950,000
     Customs                                3,789,274
     Excise (including old and new malt)    6,751,727
     Stamps                                 1,278,214
     Miscellaneous taxes and incidents      1,803,755
                                          -----------
                                          L15,572,755

Since the year 1788, upwards of one million new taxes have been laid on,
besides the produce of the lotteries; and as the taxes have in general
been more productive since than before, the amount may be taken, in
round numbers, at L17,000,000. (The expense of collection and the
drawbacks, which together amount to nearly two millions, are paid out of
the gross amount; and the above is the net sum paid into the exchequer).
This sum of seventeen millions is applied to two different purposes; the
one to pay the interest of the National Debt, the other to the current
expenses of each year. About nine millions are appropriated to the
former; and the remainder, being nearly eight millions, to the latter.
As to the million, said to be applied to the reduction of the debt, it
is so much like paying with one hand and taking out with the other, as
not to merit much notice. It happened, fortunately for France, that
she possessed national domains for paying off her debt, and thereby
lessening her taxes; but as this is not the case with England, her
reduction of taxes can only take place by reducing the current expenses,
which may now be done to the amount of four or five millions annually,
as will hereafter appear. When this is accomplished it will more than
counter-balance the enormous charge of the American war; and the saving
will be from the same source from whence the evil arose. As to the
national debt, however heavy the interest may be in taxes, yet, as it
serves to keep alive a capital useful to commerce, it balances by its
effects a considerable part of its own weight; and as the quantity
of gold and silver is, by some means or other, short of its proper
proportion, being not more than twenty millions, whereas it should be
sixty (foreign intrigue, foreign wars, foreign dominions, will in
a great measure account for the deficiency), it would, besides the
injustice, be bad policy to extinguish a capital that serves to supply
that defect. But with respect to the current expense, whatever is saved
therefrom is gain. The excess may serve to keep corruption alive, but it
has no re-action on credit and commerce, like the interest of the debt.

It is now very probable that the English Government (I do not mean
the nation) is unfriendly to the French Revolution. Whatever serves to
expose the intrigue and lessen the influence of courts, by lessening
taxation, will be unwelcome to those who feed upon the spoil. Whilst the
clamour of French intrigue, arbitrary power, popery, and wooden shoes
could be kept up, the nation was easily allured and alarmed into taxes.
Those days are now past: deception, it is to be hoped, has reaped its
last harvest, and better times are in prospect for both countries, and
for the world.

Taking it for granted that an alliance may be formed between England,
France, and America for the purposes hereafter to be mentioned, the
national expenses of France and England may consequently be lessened.
The same fleets and armies will no longer be necessary to either, and
the reduction can be made ship for ship on each side. But to accomplish
these objects the governments must necessarily be fitted to a common
and correspondent principle. Confidence can never take place while an
hostile disposition remains in either, or where mystery and secrecy on
one side is opposed to candour and openness on the other.

These matters admitted, the national expenses might be put back, for the
sake of a precedent, to what they were at some period when France and
England were not enemies. This, consequently, must be prior to the
Hanover succession, and also to the Revolution of 1688.*[32] The first
instance that presents itself, antecedent to those dates, is in the
very wasteful and profligate times of Charles the Second; at which time
England and France acted as allies. If I have chosen a period of great
extravagance, it will serve to show modern extravagance in a still worse
light; especially as the pay of the navy, the army, and the revenue
officers has not increased since that time.

The peace establishment was then as follows (see Sir John Sinclair's
History of the Revenue):

              Navy                 L  300,000
              Army                    212,000
              Ordnance                 40,000
              Civil List              462,115
                                      -------
                                   L1,014,115

The parliament, however, settled the whole annual peace establishment
at $1,200,000.*[33] If we go back to the time of Elizabeth the amount of
all the taxes was but half a million, yet the nation sees nothing during
that period that reproaches it with want of consequence.

All circumstances, then, taken together, arising from the French
revolution, from the approaching harmony and reciprocal interest of the
two nations, the abolition of the court intrigue on both sides, and
the progress of knowledge in the science of government, the annual
expenditure might be put back to one million and a half, viz.:

             Navy                    L 500,000
             Army                      500,000
             Expenses of Government    500,000
                                     ----------
                                     L1,500,000

Even this sum is six times greater than the expenses of government are
in America, yet the civil internal government in England (I mean that
administered by means of quarter sessions, juries and assize, and which,
in fact, is nearly the whole, and performed by the nation), is
less expense upon the revenue, than the same species and portion of
government is in America.

It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like
animals, for the pleasure of their riders. To read the history of kings,
a man would be almost inclined to suppose that government consisted in
stag-hunting, and that every nation paid a million a-year to a huntsman.
Man ought to have pride, or shame enough to blush at being thus imposed
upon, and when he feels his proper character he will. Upon all subjects
of this nature, there is often passing in the mind, a train of ideas he
has not yet accustomed himself to encourage and communicate. Restrained
by something that puts on the character of prudence, he acts the
hypocrite upon himself as well as to others. It is, however, curious
to observe how soon this spell can be dissolved. A single expression,
boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes put a whole company into
their proper feelings: and whole nations are acted on in the same
manner.

As to the offices of which any civil government may be composed, it
matters but little by what names they are described. In the routine of
business, as before observed, whether a man be styled a president, a
king, an emperor, a senator, or anything else, it is impossible that any
service he can perform, can merit from a nation more than ten thousand
pounds a year; and as no man should be paid beyond his services, so
every man of a proper heart will not accept more. Public money ought to
be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honour. It is
not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labour and
poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not
a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that
mass.

Were it possible that the Congress of America could be so lost to their
duty, and to the interest of their constituents, as to offer General
Washington, as president of America, a million a year, he would not, and
he could not, accept it. His sense of honour is of another kind. It
has cost England almost seventy millions sterling, to maintain a family
imported from abroad, of very inferior capacity to thousands in the
nation; and scarcely a year has passed that has not produced some new
mercenary application. Even the physicians' bills have been sent to
the public to be paid. No wonder that jails are crowded, and taxes and
poor-rates increased. Under such systems, nothing is to be looked for
but what has already happened; and as to reformation, whenever it come,
it must be from the nation, and not from the government.

To show that the sum of five hundred thousand pounds is more than
sufficient to defray all the expenses of the government, exclusive of
navies and armies, the following estimate is added, for any country, of
the same extent as England.

In the first place, three hundred representatives fairly elected, are
sufficient for all the purposes to which legislation can apply, and
preferable to a larger number. They may be divided into two or three
houses, or meet in one, as in France, or in any manner a constitution
shall direct.

As representation is always considered, in free countries, as the most
honourable of all stations, the allowance made to it is merely to defray
the expense which the representatives incur by that service, and not to
it as an office.

  If an allowance, at the rate of five hundred pounds per
    annum, be made to every representative, deducting for
    non-attendance, the expense, if the whole number
    attended for six months, each year, would be           L 75,00

  The official departments cannot reasonably exceed the
    following number, with the salaries annexed:

    Three offices at ten thousand pounds each             L 30,000
    Ten ditto, at five thousand pounds each                 50,000
    Twenty ditto, at two thousand pounds each               40,000
    Forty ditto, at one thousand pounds each                40,000
    Two hundred ditto, at five hundred pounds each         100,000
    Three hundred ditto, at two hundred pounds each         60,000
    Five hundred ditto, at one hundred pounds each          50,000
    Seven hundred ditto, at seventy-five pounds each        52,500
                                                          --------
                                                          L497,500

If a nation choose, it can deduct four per cent. from all offices, and
make one of twenty thousand per annum.

All revenue officers are paid out of the monies they collect, and
therefore, are not in this estimation.

The foregoing is not offered as an exact detail of offices, but to show
the number of rate of salaries which five hundred thousand pounds will
support; and it will, on experience, be found impracticable to find
business sufficient to justify even this expense. As to the manner in
which office business is now performed, the Chiefs, in several offices,
such as the post-office, and certain offices in the exchequer, etc., do
little more than sign their names three or four times a year; and the
whole duty is performed by under-clerks.

Taking, therefore, one million and a half as a sufficient peace
establishment for all the honest purposes of government, which is
three hundred thousand pounds more than the peace establishment in the
profligate and prodigal times of Charles the Second (notwithstanding, as
has been already observed, the pay and salaries of the army, navy,
and revenue officers, continue the same as at that period), there will
remain a surplus of upwards of six millions out of the present current
expenses. The question then will be, how to dispose of this surplus.

Whoever has observed the manner in which trade and taxes twist
themselves together, must be sensible of the impossibility of separating
them suddenly.

First. Because the articles now on hand are already charged with the
duty, and the reduction cannot take place on the present stock.

Secondly. Because, on all those articles on which the duty is charged
in the gross, such as per barrel, hogshead, hundred weight, or ton, the
abolition of the duty does not admit of being divided down so as fully
to relieve the consumer, who purchases by the pint, or the pound. The
last duty laid on strong beer and ale was three shillings per barrel,
which, if taken off, would lessen the purchase only half a farthing per
pint, and consequently, would not reach to practical relief.

This being the condition of a great part of the taxes, it will be
necessary to look for such others as are free from this embarrassment
and where the relief will be direct and visible, and capable of
immediate operation.

In the first place, then, the poor-rates are a direct tax which every
house-keeper feels, and who knows also, to a farthing, the sum which
he pays. The national amount of the whole of the poor-rates is not
positively known, but can be procured. Sir John Sinclair, in his History
of the Revenue has stated it at L2,100,587. A considerable part of
which is expended in litigations, in which the poor, instead of being
relieved, are tormented. The expense, however, is the same to the parish
from whatever cause it arises.

In Birmingham, the amount of poor-rates is fourteen thousand pounds
a year. This, though a large sum, is moderate, compared with the
population. Birmingham is said to contain seventy thousand souls, and on
a proportion of seventy thousand to fourteen thousand pounds poor-rates,
the national amount of poor-rates, taking the population of England as
seven millions, would be but one million four hundred thousand pounds.
It is, therefore, most probable, that the population of Birmingham
is over-rated. Fourteen thousand pounds is the proportion upon fifty
thousand souls, taking two millions of poor-rates, as the national
amount.

Be it, however, what it may, it is no other than the consequence of
excessive burthen of taxes, for, at the time when the taxes were very
low, the poor were able to maintain themselves; and there were no
poor-rates.*[34] In the present state of things a labouring man, with a
wife or two or three children, does not pay less than between seven and
eight pounds a year in taxes. He is not sensible of this, because it is
disguised to him in the articles which he buys, and he thinks only of
their dearness; but as the taxes take from him, at least, a fourth part
of his yearly earnings, he is consequently disabled from providing for
a family, especially, if himself, or any of them, are afflicted with
sickness.

The first step, therefore, of practical relief, would be to abolish the
poor-rates entirely, and in lieu thereof, to make a remission of taxes
to the poor of double the amount of the present poor-rates, viz., four
millions annually out of the surplus taxes. By this measure, the poor
would be benefited two millions, and the house-keepers two millions.
This alone would be equal to a reduction of one hundred and twenty
millions of the National Debt, and consequently equal to the whole
expense of the American War.

It will then remain to be considered, which is the most effectual mode
of distributing this remission of four millions.

It is easily seen, that the poor are generally composed of large
families of children, and old people past their labour. If these two
classes are provided for, the remedy will so far reach to the full
extent of the case, that what remains will be incidental, and, in a
great measure, fall within the compass of benefit clubs, which, though
of humble invention, merit to be ranked among the best of modern
institutions.

Admitting England to contain seven millions of souls; if one-fifth
thereof are of that class of poor which need support, the number will be
one million four hundred thousand. Of this number, one hundred and forty
thousand will be aged poor, as will be hereafter shown, and for which a
distinct provision will be proposed.

There will then remain one million two hundred and sixty thousand
which, at five souls to each family, amount to two hundred and fifty-two
thousand families, rendered poor from the expense of children and the
weight of taxes.

The number of children under fourteen years of age, in each of those
families, will be found to be about five to every two families; some
having two, and others three; some one, and others four: some none,
and others five; but it rarely happens that more than five are under
fourteen years of age, and after this age they are capable of service or
of being apprenticed.

Allowing five children (under fourteen years) to every two families,

The number of children will be 630,000

The number of parents, were they all living, would be 504,000

It is certain, that if the children are provided for, the parents are
relieved of consequence, because it is from the expense of bringing up
children that their poverty arises.

Having thus ascertained the greatest number that can be supposed to need
support on account of young families, I proceed to the mode of relief or
distribution, which is,

To pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus
taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child
under fourteen years of age; enjoining the parents of such children to
send them to school, to learn reading, writing, and common arithmetic;
the ministers of every parish, of every denomination to certify jointly
to an office, for that purpose, that this duty is performed. The amount
of this expense will be,

    For six hundred and thirty thousand children
     at four pounds per annum each                    L2,520,000

By adopting this method, not only the poverty of the parents will be
relieved, but ignorance will be banished from the rising generation, and
the number of poor will hereafter become less, because their abilities,
by the aid of education, will be greater. Many a youth, with good
natural genius, who is apprenticed to a mechanical trade, such as
a carpenter, joiner, millwright, shipwright, blacksmith, etc., is
prevented getting forward the whole of his life from the want of a
little common education when a boy.

I now proceed to the case of the aged.

I divide age into two classes. First, the approach of age, beginning at
fifty. Secondly, old age commencing at sixty.

At fifty, though the mental faculties of man are in full vigour, and
his judgment better than at any preceding date, the bodily powers for
laborious life are on the decline. He cannot bear the same quantity of
fatigue as at an earlier period. He begins to earn less, and is
less capable of enduring wind and weather; and in those more retired
employments where much sight is required, he fails apace, and sees
himself, like an old horse, beginning to be turned adrift.

At sixty his labour ought to be over, at least from direct necessity.
It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called
civilised countries, for daily bread.

To form some judgment of the number of those above fifty years of age,
I have several times counted the persons I met in the streets of London,
men, women, and children, and have generally found that the average is
about one in sixteen or seventeen. If it be said that aged persons
do not come much into the streets, so neither do infants; and a great
proportion of grown children are in schools and in work-shops as
apprentices. Taking, then, sixteen for a divisor, the whole number of
persons in England of fifty years and upwards, of both sexes, rich and
poor, will be four hundred and twenty thousand.

The persons to be provided for out of this gross number will be
husbandmen, common labourers, journeymen of every trade and their wives,
sailors, and disbanded soldiers, worn out servants of both sexes, and
poor widows.

There will be also a considerable number of middling tradesmen,
who having lived decently in the former part of life, begin, as age
approaches, to lose their business, and at last fall to decay.

Besides these there will be constantly thrown off from the revolutions
of that wheel which no man can stop nor regulate, a number from every
class of life connected with commerce and adventure.

To provide for all those accidents, and whatever else may befall, I take
the number of persons who, at one time or other of their lives, after
fifty years of age, may feel it necessary or comfortable to be better
supported, than they can support themselves, and that not as a matter of
grace and favour, but of right, at one-third of the whole number, which
is one hundred and forty thousand, as stated in a previous page, and
for whom a distinct provision was proposed to be made. If there be more,
society, notwithstanding the show and pomposity of government, is in a
deplorable condition in England.

Of this one hundred and forty thousand, I take one half, seventy
thousand, to be of the age of fifty and under sixty, and the other half
to be sixty years and upwards. Having thus ascertained the probable
proportion of the number of aged persons, I proceed to the mode of
rendering their condition comfortable, which is:

To pay to every such person of the age of fifty years, and until he
shall arrive at the age of sixty, the sum of six pounds per annum out of
the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of
sixty. The expense of which will be,

    Seventy thousand persons, at L6 per annum      L  420,000
    Seventy thousand persons, at L10 per annum        700,000
                                                      -------
                                                   L1,120,000

This support, as already remarked, is not of the nature of a charity but
of a right. Every person in England, male and female, pays on an average
in taxes two pounds eight shillings and sixpence per annum from the day
of his (or her) birth; and, if the expense of collection be added, he
pays two pounds eleven shillings and sixpence; consequently, at the end
of fifty years he has paid one hundred and twenty-eight pounds fifteen
shillings; and at sixty one hundred and fifty-four pounds ten shillings.
Converting, therefore, his (or her) individual tax in a tontine, the
money he shall receive after fifty years is but little more than the
legal interest of the net money he has paid; the rest is made up from
those whose circumstances do not require them to draw such support, and
the capital in both cases defrays the expenses of government. It is on
this ground that I have extended the probable claims to one-third of
the number of aged persons in the nation.--Is it, then, better that
the lives of one hundred and forty thousand aged persons be rendered
comfortable, or that a million a year of public money be expended on
any one individual, and him often of the most worthless or insignificant
character? Let reason and justice, let honour and humanity, let even
hypocrisy, sycophancy and Mr. Burke, let George, let Louis,
Leopold, Frederic, Catherine, Cornwallis, or Tippoo Saib, answer the
question.*[35]

The sum thus remitted to the poor will be,

  To two hundred and fifty-two thousand poor families,
    containing six hundred and thirty thousand children  L2,520,000
  To one hundred and forty thousand aged persons          1,120,000
                                                         ----------
                                                         L3,640,000

There will then remain three hundred and sixty thousand pounds out of
the four millions, part of which may be applied as follows:--

After all the above cases are provided for there will still be a number
of families who, though not properly of the class of poor, yet find it
difficult to give education to their children; and such children, under
such a case, would be in a worse condition than if their parents were
actually poor. A nation under a well-regulated government should permit
none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical
government only that requires ignorance for its support.

Suppose, then, four hundred thousand children to be in this condition,
which is a greater number than ought to be supposed after the provisions
already made, the method will be:

To allow for each of those children ten shillings a year for the
expense of schooling for six years each, which will give them six months
schooling each year, and half a crown a year for paper and spelling
books.

The expense of this will be annually L250,000.*[36]

There will then remain one hundred and ten thousand pounds.

Notwithstanding the great modes of relief which the best instituted and
best principled government may devise, there will be a number of smaller
cases, which it is good policy as well as beneficence in a nation to
consider.

Were twenty shillings to be given immediately on the birth of a child,
to every woman who should make the demand, and none will make it whose
circumstances do not require it, it might relieve a great deal of
instant distress.

There are about two hundred thousand births yearly in England; and if
claimed by one fourth,

        The amount would be                    L50,000

And twenty shillings to every new-married couple who should claim in
like manner. This would not exceed the sum of L20,000.

Also twenty thousand pounds to be appropriated to defray the funeral
expenses of persons, who, travelling for work, may die at a distance
from their friends. By relieving parishes from this charge, the sick
stranger will be better treated.

I shall finish this part of the subject with a plan adapted to the
particular condition of a metropolis, such as London.

Cases are continually occurring in a metropolis, different from those
which occur in the country, and for which a different, or rather an
additional, mode of relief is necessary. In the country, even in large
towns, people have a knowledge of each other, and distress never rises
to that extreme height it sometimes does in a metropolis. There is no
such thing in the country as persons, in the literal sense of the word,
starved to death, or dying with cold from the want of a lodging. Yet
such cases, and others equally as miserable, happen in London.

Many a youth comes up to London full of expectations, and with little
or no money, and unless he get immediate employment he is already half
undone; and boys bred up in London without any means of a livelihood,
and as it often happens of dissolute parents, are in a still worse
condition; and servants long out of place are not much better off. In
short, a world of little cases is continually arising, which busy or
affluent life knows not of, to open the first door to distress. Hunger
is not among the postponable wants, and a day, even a few hours, in such
a condition is often the crisis of a life of ruin.

These circumstances which are the general cause of the little thefts
and pilferings that lead to greater, may be prevented. There yet remain
twenty thousand pounds out of the four millions of surplus taxes, which
with another fund hereafter to be mentioned, amounting to about twenty
thousand pounds more, cannot be better applied than to this purpose. The
plan will then be:

First, To erect two or more buildings, or take some already erected,
capable of containing at least six thousand persons, and to have in each
of these places as many kinds of employment as can be contrived, so that
every person who shall come may find something which he or she can do.

Secondly, To receive all who shall come, without enquiring who or what
they are. The only condition to be, that for so much, or so many hours'
work, each person shall receive so many meals of wholesome food, and a
warm lodging, at least as good as a barrack. That a certain portion of
what each person's work shall be worth shall be reserved, and given to
him or her, on their going away; and that each person shall stay as long
or as short a time, or come as often as he choose, on these conditions.

If each person stayed three months, it would assist by rotation
twenty-four thousand persons annually, though the real number, at all
times, would be but six thousand. By establishing an asylum of this
kind, such persons to whom temporary distresses occur, would have an
opportunity to recruit themselves, and be enabled to look out for better
employment.

Allowing that their labour paid but one half the expense of supporting
them, after reserving a portion of their earnings for themselves, the
sum of forty thousand pounds additional would defray all other charges
for even a greater number than six thousand.

The fund very properly convertible to this purpose, in addition to
the twenty thousand pounds, remaining of the former fund, will be the
produce of the tax upon coals, so iniquitously and wantonly applied to
the support of the Duke of Richmond. It is horrid that any man, more
especially at the price coals now are, should live on the distresses of
a community; and any government permitting such an abuse, deserves to
be dismissed. This fund is said to be about twenty thousand pounds per
annum.

I shall now conclude this plan with enumerating the several particulars,
and then proceed to other matters.

The enumeration is as follows:--

First, Abolition of two millions poor-rates.

Secondly, Provision for two hundred and fifty thousand poor families.

Thirdly, Education for one million and thirty thousand children.

Fourthly, Comfortable provision for one hundred and forty thousand aged
persons.

Fifthly, Donation of twenty shillings each for fifty thousand births.

Sixthly, Donation of twenty shillings each for twenty thousand
marriages.

Seventhly, Allowance of twenty thousand pounds for the funeral expenses
of persons travelling for work, and dying at a distance from their
friends.

Eighthly, Employment, at all times, for the casual poor in the cities of
London and Westminster.

By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments of civil
torture, will be superseded, and the wasteful expense of litigation
prevented. The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by ragged and
hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age, begging
for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to place to
breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows will
have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on the
death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children will
no longer be considered as increasing the distresses of their parents.
The haunts of the wretched will be known, because it will be to their
advantage; and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of distress and
poverty, will be lessened. The poor, as well as the rich, will then be
interested in the support of government, and the cause and apprehension
of riots and tumults will cease.--Ye who sit in ease, and solace
yourselves in plenty, and such there are in Turkey and Russia, as well
as in England, and who say to yourselves, "Are we not well off?" have ye
thought of these things? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and feel for
yourselves alone.

The plan is easy in practice. It does not embarrass trade by a sudden
interruption in the order of taxes, but effects the relief by changing
the application of them; and the money necessary for the purpose can be
drawn from the excise collections, which are made eight times a year in
every market town in England.

Having now arranged and concluded this subject, I proceed to the next.

Taking the present current expenses at seven millions and an half, which
is the least amount they are now at, there will remain (after the sum of
one million and an half be taken for the new current expenses and four
millions for the before-mentioned service) the sum of two millions; part
of which to be applied as follows:

Though fleets and armies, by an alliance with France, will, in a great
measure, become useless, yet the persons who have devoted themselves to
those services, and have thereby unfitted themselves for other lines of
life, are not to be sufferers by the means that make others happy. They
are a different description of men from those who form or hang about a
court.

A part of the army will remain, at least for some years, and also of the
navy, for which a provision is already made in the former part of this
plan of one million, which is almost half a million more than the peace
establishment of the army and navy in the prodigal times of Charles the
Second.

Suppose, then, fifteen thousand soldiers to be disbanded, and that an
allowance be made to each of three shillings a week during life, clear
of all deductions, to be paid in the same manner as the Chelsea College
pensioners are paid, and for them to return to their trades and their
friends; and also that an addition of fifteen thousand sixpences per
week be made to the pay of the soldiers who shall remain; the annual
expenses will be:

    To the pay of fifteen thousand disbanded soldiers
      at three shillings per week                        L117,000
    Additional pay to the remaining soldiers               19,500
    Suppose that the pay to the officers of the
      disbanded corps be the same amount as sum allowed
      to the men                                          117,000
                                                         --------                                                         L253,500

    To prevent bulky estimations, admit the same sum
      to the disbanded navy as to the army,
      and the same increase of pay                        253,500
                                                         --------
                                       Total             L507,000

Every year some part of this sum of half a million (I omit the odd seven
thousand pounds for the purpose of keeping the account unembarrassed)
will fall in, and the whole of it in time, as it is on the ground of
life annuities, except the increased pay of twenty-nine thousand
pounds. As it falls in, part of the taxes may be taken off; and as, for
instance, when thirty thousand pounds fall in, the duty on hops may be
wholly taken off; and as other parts fall in, the duties on candles and
soap may be lessened, till at last they will totally cease. There now
remains at least one million and a half of surplus taxes.

The tax on houses and windows is one of those direct taxes, which, like
the poor-rates, is not confounded with trade; and, when taken off, the
relief will be instantly felt. This tax falls heavy on the middle class
of people. The amount of this tax, by the returns of 1788, was:

   Houses and windows:                       L       s.    d.
    By the act of 1766                    385,459    11    7
    By the act be 1779                    130,739    14    5 1/2
                                          ----------------------
                             Total        516,199     6    0 1/2

If this tax be struck off, there will then remain about one million of
surplus taxes; and as it is always proper to keep a sum in reserve, for
incidental matters, it may be best not to extend reductions further in
the first instance, but to consider what may be accomplished by other
modes of reform.

Among the taxes most heavily felt is the commutation tax. I shall
therefore offer a plan for its abolition, by substituting another in its
place, which will effect three objects at once: 1, that of removing
the burthen to where it can best be borne; 2, restoring justice among
families by a distribution of property; 3, extirpating the overgrown
influence arising from the unnatural law of primogeniture, which is
one of the principal sources of corruption at elections. The amount of
commutation tax by the returns of 1788, was L771,657.

When taxes are proposed, the country is amused by the plausible language
of taxing luxuries. One thing is called a luxury at one time, and
something else at another; but the real luxury does not consist in the
article, but in the means of procuring it, and this is always kept out
of sight.

I know not why any plant or herb of the field should be a greater luxury
in one country than another; but an overgrown estate in either is a
luxury at all times, and, as such, is the proper object of taxation. It
is, therefore, right to take those kind tax-making gentlemen up on their
own word, and argue on the principle themselves have laid down, that of
taxing luxuries. If they or their champion, Mr. Burke, who, I fear, is
growing out of date, like the man in armour, can prove that an estate of
twenty, thirty, or forty thousand pounds a year is not a luxury, I will
give up the argument.

Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds,
is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the
second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so,
and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not
improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set
bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to
place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which
industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the
accumulation of it by bequest. It should pass in some other line. The
richest in every nation have poor relations, and those often very near
in consanguinity.

The following table of progressive taxation is constructed on the above
principles, and as a substitute for the commutation tax. It will reach
the point of prohibition by a regular operation, and thereby supersede
the aristocratical law of primogeniture.

                              TABLE I
     A tax on all estates of the clear yearly value of L50,
              after deducting the land tax, and up

           To L500                      0s   3d per pound
           From L500 to L1,000          0    6
           On the second   thousand     0    9
           On the third         "       1    0
           On the fourth        "       1    6
           On the fifth         "       2    0
           On the sixth         "       3    0
           On the seventh       "       4    0
           On the eighth        "       5    0
           On the ninth         "       6s   0d per pound
           On the tenth         "       7    0
           On the eleventh      "       8    0
           On the twelfth       "       9    0
           On the thirteenth    "      10    0
           On the fourteenth    "      11    0
           On the fifteenth     "      12    0
           On the sixteenth     "      13    0
           On the seventeenth   "      14    0
           On the eighteenth    "      15    0
           On the nineteenth    "      16    0
           On the twentieth     "      17    0
           On the twenty-first  "      18    0
           On the twenty-second "      19    0
           On the twenty-third  "      20    0

The foregoing table shows the progression per pound on every progressive
thousand. The following table shows the amount of the tax on every
thousand separately, and in the last column the total amount of all the
separate sums collected.

                               TABLE II
  An estate of:
    L 50 per annum      at 3d per pound pays      L0   12   6
     100  "    "           "             "         1    5   0
     200  "    "           "             "         2   10   0
     300  "    "           "             "         3   15   0
     400  "    "           "             "         5    0   0
     500  "    "           "             "         7    5   0

After L500, the tax of 6d. per pound takes place on the second L500;
consequently an estate of L1,000 per annum pays L2l, 15s., and so on.

                                                     Total amount
  For the 1st L500 at   0s   3d per pound   L7   5s
          2nd   "       0    6              14  10     L21   15s
          2nd 1000 at   0    9              37  11      59    5
          3rd   "       1    0              50   0     109    5
                                                    (Total amount)
          4th 1000 at   1s   6d per pound  L75   0s   L184    5s
          5th   "       2    0             100   0     284    5
          6th   "       3    0             150   0     434    5
          7th   "       4    0             200   0     634    5
          8th   "       5    0             250   0     880    5
          9th   "       6    0             300   0    1100    5
         10th   "       7    0             350   0    1530    5
         11th   "       8    0             400   0    1930    5
         12th   "       9    0             450   0    2380    5
         13th   "      10    0             500   0    2880    5
         14th   "      11    0             550   0    3430    5
         15th   "      12    0             600   0    4030    5
         16th   "      13    0             650   0    4680    5
         17th   "      14    0             700   0    5380    5
         18th   "      15    0             750   0    6130    5
         19th   "      16    0             800   0    6930    5
         20th   "      17    0             850   0    7780    5
         21st   "      18    0             900   0    8680    5
                                                    (Total amount)
         22nd 1000 at  19s   0d per pound L950   0s  L9630    5s
         23rd   "      20    0            1000   0   10630    5

At the twenty-third thousand the tax becomes 20s. in the pound, and
consequently every thousand beyond that sum can produce no profit but by
dividing the estate. Yet formidable as this tax appears, it will not, I
believe, produce so much as the commutation tax; should it produce more,
it ought to be lowered to that amount upon estates under two or three
thousand a year.

On small and middling estates it is lighter (as it is intended to be)
than the commutation tax. It is not till after seven or eight thousand
a year that it begins to be heavy. The object is not so much the produce
of the tax as the justice of the measure. The aristocracy has screened
itself too much, and this serves to restore a part of the lost
equilibrium.

As an instance of its screening itself, it is only necessary to look
back to the first establishment of the excise laws, at what is called
the Restoration, or the coming of Charles the Second. The aristocratical
interest then in power, commuted the feudal services itself was under,
by laying a tax on beer brewed for sale; that is, they compounded with
Charles for an exemption from those services for themselves and their
heirs, by a tax to be paid by other people. The aristocracy do not
purchase beer brewed for sale, but brew their own beer free of the duty,
and if any commutation at that time were necessary, it ought to have
been at the expense of those for whom the exemptions from those services
were intended;*[37] instead of which, it was thrown on an entirely
different class of men.

But the chief object of this progressive tax (besides the justice of
rendering taxes more equal than they are) is, as already stated, to
extirpate the overgrown influence arising from the unnatural law of
primogeniture, and which is one of the principal sources of corruption
at elections.

It would be attended with no good consequences to enquire how such vast
estates as thirty, forty, or fifty thousand a year could commence, and
that at a time when commerce and manufactures were not in a state to
admit of such acquisitions. Let it be sufficient to remedy the evil by
putting them in a condition of descending again to the community by the
quiet means of apportioning them among all the heirs and heiresses of
those families. This will be the more necessary, because hitherto the
aristocracy have quartered their younger children and connections upon
the public in useless posts, places and offices, which when abolished
will leave them destitute, unless the law of primogeniture be also
abolished or superseded.

A progressive tax will, in a great measure, effect this object, and that
as a matter of interest to the parties most immediately concerned, as
will be seen by the following table; which shows the net produce upon
every estate, after subtracting the tax. By this it will appear that
after an estate exceeds thirteen or fourteen thousand a year, the
remainder produces but little profit to the holder, and consequently,
Will pass either to the younger children, or to other kindred.

                            TABLE III
     Showing the net produce of every estate from one thousand
             to twenty-three thousand pounds a year

          No of thousand       Total tax
             per annum         subtracted       Net produce
               L1000              L21               L979
                2000               59               1941
                3000              109               2891
                4000              184               3816
                5000              284               4716
                6000              434               5566
                7000              634               6366
                8000              880               7120
                9000             1100               7900
              10,000             1530               8470
              11,000             1930               9070
              12,000             2380               9620
              13,000             2880             10,120
         (No of thousand      (Total tax
             per annum)        subtracted)     (Net produce)
              14,000             3430             10,570
              15,000             4030             10,970
              16,000             4680             11,320
              17,000             5380             11,620
              18,000             6130             11,870
              19,000             6930             12,170
              20,000             7780             12,220
              21,000             8680             12,320
              22,000             9630             12,370
              23,000           10,630             12,370

N.B. The odd shillings are dropped in this table.

According to this table, an estate cannot produce more than L12,370
clear of the land tax and the progressive tax, and therefore the
dividing such estates will follow as a matter of family interest. An
estate of L23,000 a year, divided into five estates of four thousand
each and one of three, will be charged only L1,129 which is but five per
cent., but if held by one possessor, will be charged L10,630.

Although an enquiry into the origin of those estates be unnecessary, the
continuation of them in their present state is another subject. It is a
matter of national concern. As hereditary estates, the law has created
the evil, and it ought also to provide the remedy. Primogeniture ought
to be abolished, not only because it is unnatural and unjust, but
because the country suffers by its operation. By cutting off (as before
observed) the younger children from their proper portion of inheritance,
the public is loaded with the expense of maintaining them; and the
freedom of elections violated by the overbearing influence which
this unjust monopoly of family property produces. Nor is this all. It
occasions a waste of national property. A considerable part of the land
of the country is rendered unproductive, by the great extent of parks
and chases which this law serves to keep up, and this at a time when
the annual production of grain is not equal to the national
consumption.*[38]--In short, the evils of the aristocratical system are
so great and numerous, so inconsistent with every thing that is just,
wise, natural, and beneficent, that when they are considered, there
ought not to be a doubt that many, who are now classed under that
description, will wish to see such a system abolished.

What pleasure can they derive from contemplating the exposed
condition, and almost certain beggary of their younger offspring? Every
aristocratical family has an appendage of family beggars hanging round
it, which in a few ages, or a few generations, are shook off, and
console themselves with telling their tale in almshouses, workhouses,
and prisons. This is the natural consequence of aristocracy. The peer
and the beggar are often of the same family. One extreme produces the
other: to make one rich many must be made poor; neither can the system
be supported by other means.

There are two classes of people to whom the laws of England are
particularly hostile, and those the most helpless; younger children,
and the poor. Of the former I have just spoken; of the latter I shall
mention one instance out of the many that might be produced, and with
which I shall close this subject.

Several laws are in existence for regulating and limiting work-men's
wages. Why not leave them as free to make their own bargains, as the
law-makers are to let their farms and houses? Personal labour is all
the property they have. Why is that little, and the little freedom they
enjoy, to be infringed? But the injustice will appear stronger, if we
consider the operation and effect of such laws. When wages are fixed
by what is called a law, the legal wages remain stationary, while every
thing else is in progression; and as those who make that law still
continue to lay on new taxes by other laws, they increase the expense of
living by one law, and take away the means by another.

But if these gentlemen law-makers and tax-makers thought it right to
limit the poor pittance which personal labour can produce, and on which
a whole family is to be supported, they certainly must feel themselves
happily indulged in a limitation on their own part, of not less than
twelve thousand a-year, and that of property they never acquired (nor
probably any of their ancestors), and of which they have made never
acquire so ill a use.

Having now finished this subject, I shall bring the several particulars
into one view, and then proceed to other matters.

The first eight articles, mentioned earlier, are;

1. Abolition of two millions poor-rates.

2. Provision for two hundred and fifty-two thousand poor families, at
the rate of four pounds per head for each child under fourteen years of
age; which, with the addition of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,
provides also education for one million and thirty thousand children.

3. Annuity of six pounds (per annum) each for all poor persons, decayed
tradesmen, and others (supposed seventy thousand) of the age of fifty
years, and until sixty.

4. Annuity of ten pounds each for life for all poor persons, decayed
tradesmen, and others (supposed seventy thousand) of the age of sixty
years.

5. Donation of twenty shillings each for fifty thousand births.

6. Donation of twenty shillings each for twenty thousand marriages.

7. Allowance of twenty thousand pounds for the funeral expenses of
persons travelling for work, and dying at a distance from their friends.

8. Employment at all times for the casual poor in the cities of London
and Westminster.

Second Enumeration

9. Abolition of the tax on houses and windows.

10. Allowance of three shillings per week for life to fifteen thousand
disbanded soldiers, and a proportionate allowance to the officers of the
disbanded corps.

11. Increase of pay to the remaining soldiers of L19,500 annually.

12. The same allowance to the disbanded navy, and the same increase of
pay, as to the army.

13. Abolition of the commutation tax.

14. Plan of a progressive tax, operating to extirpate the unjust
and unnatural law of primogeniture, and the vicious influence of the
aristocratical system.*[39]

There yet remains, as already stated, one million of surplus taxes. Some
part of this will be required for circumstances that do not immediately
present themselves, and such part as shall not be wanted, will admit of
a further reduction of taxes equal to that amount.

Among the claims that justice requires to be made, the condition of the
inferior revenue-officers will merit attention. It is a reproach to
any government to waste such an immensity of revenue in sinecures and
nominal and unnecessary places and officers, and not allow even a decent
livelihood to those on whom the labour falls. The salary of the inferior
officers of the revenue has stood at the petty pittance of less than
fifty pounds a year for upwards of one hundred years. It ought to be
seventy. About one hundred and twenty thousand pounds applied to this
purpose, will put all those salaries in a decent condition.

This was proposed to be done almost twenty years ago, but the
treasury-board then in being, startled at it, as it might lead to
similar expectations from the army and navy; and the event was, that the
King, or somebody for him, applied to parliament to have his own salary
raised an hundred thousand pounds a year, which being done, every thing
else was laid aside.

With respect to another class of men, the inferior clergy, I forbear to
enlarge on their condition; but all partialities and prejudices for,
or against, different modes and forms of religion aside, common justice
will determine, whether there ought to be an income of twenty or thirty
pounds a year to one man, and of ten thousand to another. I speak on
this subject with the more freedom, because I am known not to be a
Presbyterian; and therefore the cant cry of court sycophants, about
church and meeting, kept up to amuse and bewilder the nation, cannot be
raised against me.

Ye simple men on both sides the question, do you not see through this
courtly craft? If ye can be kept disputing and wrangling about church
and meeting, ye just answer the purpose of every courtier, who lives the
while on the spoils of the taxes, and laughs at your credulity. Every
religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that
instructs him to be bad.

All the before-mentioned calculations suppose only sixteen millions
and an half of taxes paid into the exchequer, after the expense of
collection and drawbacks at the custom-house and excise-office are
deducted; whereas the sum paid into the exchequer is very nearly, if not
quite, seventeen millions. The taxes raised in Scotland and Ireland are
expended in those countries, and therefore their savings will come out
of their own taxes; but if any part be paid into the English exchequer,
it might be remitted. This will not make one hundred thousand pounds a
year difference.

There now remains only the national debt to be considered. In the year
1789, the interest, exclusive of the tontine, was L9,150,138. How much
the capital has been reduced since that time the minister best knows.
But after paying the interest, abolishing the tax on houses and windows,
the commutation tax, and the poor-rates; and making all the provisions
for the poor, for the education of children, the support of the aged,
the disbanded part of the army and navy, and increasing the pay of the
remainder, there will be a surplus of one million.

The present scheme of paying off the national debt appears to me,
speaking as an indifferent person, to be an ill-concerted, if not a
fallacious job. The burthen of the national debt consists not in its
being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity
of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity
continues the same, the burthen of the national debt is the same to all
intents and purposes, be the capital more or less. The only knowledge
which the public can have of the reduction of the debt, must be through
the reduction of taxes for paying the interest. The debt, therefore,
is not reduced one farthing to the public by all the millions that
have been paid; and it would require more money now to purchase up the
capital, than when the scheme began.

Digressing for a moment at this point, to which I shall return again, I
look back to the appointment of Mr. Pitt, as minister.

I was then in America. The war was over; and though resentment had
ceased, memory was still alive.

When the news of the coalition arrived, though it was a matter of no
concern to I felt it as a man. It had something in it which shocked, by
publicly sporting with decency, if not with principle. It was impudence
in Lord North; it was a want of firmness in Mr. Fox.

Mr. Pitt was, at that time, what may be called a maiden character in
politics. So far from being hackneyed, he appeared not to be initiated
into the first mysteries of court intrigue. Everything was in his
favour. Resentment against the coalition served as friendship to him,
and his ignorance of vice was credited for virtue. With the return
of peace, commerce and prosperity would rise of itself; yet even this
increase was thrown to his account.

When he came to the helm, the storm was over, and he had nothing to
interrupt his course. It required even ingenuity to be wrong, and
he succeeded. A little time showed him the same sort of man as his
predecessors had been. Instead of profiting by those errors which had
accumulated a burthen of taxes unparalleled in the world, he sought,
I might almost say, he advertised for enemies, and provoked means to
increase taxation. Aiming at something, he knew not what, he ransacked
Europe and India for adventures, and abandoning the fair pretensions he
began with, he became the knight-errant of modern times.

It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away. It is more so to
see one's-self deceived. Mr. Pitt had merited nothing, but he promised
much. He gave symptoms of a mind superior to the meanness and corruption
of courts. His apparent candour encouraged expectations; and the public
confidence, stunned, wearied, and confounded by a chaos of parties,
revived and attached itself to him. But mistaking, as he has done, the
disgust of the nation against the coalition, for merit in himself,
he has rushed into measures which a man less supported would not have
presumed to act.

All this seems to show that change of ministers amounts to nothing.
One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and
extravagance are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect
lies in the system. The foundation and the superstructure of the
government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks into
court government, and ever will.

I return, as I promised, to the subject of the national debt, that
offspring of the Dutch-Anglo revolution, and its handmaid the Hanover
succession.

But it is now too late to enquire how it began. Those to whom it is
due have advanced the money; and whether it was well or ill spent, or
pocketed, is not their crime. It is, however, easy to see, that as
the nation proceeds in contemplating the nature and principles of
government, and to understand taxes, and make comparisons between those
of America, France, and England, it will be next to impossible to keep
it in the same torpid state it has hitherto been. Some reform must,
from the necessity of the case, soon begin. It is not whether these
principles press with little or much force in the present moment. They
are out. They are abroad in the world, and no force can stop them. Like
a secret told, they are beyond recall; and he must be blind indeed that
does not see that a change is already beginning.

Nine millions of dead taxes is a serious thing; and this not only for
bad, but in a great measure for foreign government. By putting the power
of making war into the hands of the foreigners who came for what they
could get, little else was to be expected than what has happened.

Reasons are already advanced in this work, showing that whatever the
reforms in the taxes may be, they ought to be made in the current
expenses of government, and not in the part applied to the interest
of the national debt. By remitting the taxes of the poor, they will be
totally relieved, and all discontent will be taken away; and by striking
off such of the taxes as are already mentioned, the nation will more
than recover the whole expense of the mad American war.

There will then remain only the national debt as a subject of
discontent; and in order to remove, or rather to prevent this, it
would be good policy in the stockholders themselves to consider it as
property, subject like all other property, to bear some portion of the
taxes. It would give to it both popularity and security, and as a great
part of its present inconvenience is balanced by the capital which it
keeps alive, a measure of this kind would so far add to that balance as
to silence objections.

This may be done by such gradual means as to accomplish all that is
necessary with the greatest ease and convenience.

Instead of taxing the capital, the best method would be to tax the
interest by some progressive ratio, and to lessen the public taxes in
the same proportion as the interest diminished.

Suppose the interest was taxed one halfpenny in the pound the first
year, a penny more the second, and to proceed by a certain ratio to be
determined upon, always less than any other tax upon property. Such
a tax would be subtracted from the interest at the time of payment,
without any expense of collection.

One halfpenny in the pound would lessen the interest and consequently
the taxes, twenty thousand pounds. The tax on wagons amounts to this
sum, and this tax might be taken off the first year. The second year the
tax on female servants, or some other of the like amount might also be
taken off, and by proceeding in this manner, always applying the tax
raised from the property of the debt toward its extinction, and not
carry it to the current services, it would liberate itself.

The stockholders, notwithstanding this tax, would pay less taxes than
they do now. What they would save by the extinction of the poor-rates,
and the tax on houses and windows, and the commutation tax, would
be considerably greater than what this tax, slow, but certain in its
operation, amounts to.

It appears to me to be prudence to look out for measures that may apply
under any circumstances that may approach. There is, at this moment,
a crisis in the affairs of Europe that requires it. Preparation now
is wisdom. If taxation be once let loose, it will be difficult to
re-instate it; neither would the relief be so effectual, as if it
proceeded by some certain and gradual reduction.

The fraud, hypocrisy, and imposition of governments, are now beginning
to be too well understood to promise them any long career. The farce
of monarchy and aristocracy, in all countries, is following that of
chivalry, and Mr. Burke is dressing aristocracy, in all countries, is
following that of chivalry, and Mr. Burke is dressing for the funeral.
Let it then pass quietly to the tomb of all other follies, and the
mourners be comforted.

The time is not very distant when England will laugh at itself for
sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick for men, at the expense
of a million a year, who understood neither her laws, her language, nor
her interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for
the office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England.

When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy;
neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are
empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the
taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I
am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may
that country boast its constitution and its government.

Within the space of a few years we have seen two revolutions, those
of America and France. In the former, the contest was long, and
the conflict severe; in the latter, the nation acted with such a
consolidated impulse, that having no foreign enemy to contend with, the
revolution was complete in power the moment it appeared. From both those
instances it is evident, that the greatest forces that can be brought
into the field of revolutions, are reason and common interest. Where
these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition dies with fear, or
crumbles away by conviction. It is a great standing which they have now
universally obtained; and we may hereafter hope to see revolutions, or
changes in governments, produced with the same quiet operation by which
any measure, determinable by reason and discussion, is accomplished.

When a nation changes its opinion and habits of thinking, it is no
longer to be governed as before; but it would not only be wrong, but
bad policy, to attempt by force what ought to be accomplished by reason.
Rebellion consists in forcibly opposing the general will of a nation,
whether by a party or by a government. There ought, therefore, to be in
every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public
opinion with respect to government. On this point the old government of
France was superior to the present government of England, because, on
extraordinary occasions, recourse could be had what was then called the
States General. But in England there are no such occasional bodies; and
as to those who are now called Representatives, a great part of them are
mere machines of the court, placemen, and dependants.

I presume, that though all the people of England pay taxes, not an
hundredth part of them are electors, and the members of one of the
houses of parliament represent nobody but themselves. There is,
therefore, no power but the voluntary will of the people that has a
right to act in any matter respecting a general reform; and by the same
right that two persons can confer on such a subject, a thousand may.
The object, in all such preliminary proceedings, is to find out what the
general sense of a nation is, and to be governed by it. If it prefer a
bad or defective government to a reform or choose to pay ten times more
taxes than there is any occasion for, it has a right so to do; and so
long as the majority do not impose conditions on the minority, different
from what they impose upon themselves, though there may be much error,
there is no injustice. Neither will the error continue long. Reason and
discussion will soon bring things right, however wrong they may begin.
By such a process no tumult is to be apprehended. The poor, in all
countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in
which their interest and happiness is included. It is only by neglecting
and rejecting them that they become tumultuous.

The objects that now press on the public attention are, the French
revolution, and the prospect of a general revolution in governments.
Of all nations in Europe there is none so much interested in the French
revolution as England. Enemies for ages, and that at a vast expense,
and without any national object, the opportunity now presents itself of
amicably closing the scene, and joining their efforts to reform the rest
of Europe. By doing this they will not only prevent the further effusion
of blood, and increase of taxes, but be in a condition of getting rid
of a considerable part of their present burthens, as has been already
stated. Long experience however has shown, that reforms of this kind are
not those which old governments wish to promote, and therefore it is
to nations, and not to such governments, that these matters present
themselves.

In the preceding part of this work, I have spoken of an alliance between
England, France, and America, for purposes that were to be afterwards
mentioned. Though I have no direct authority on the part of America,
I have good reason to conclude, that she is disposed to enter into a
consideration of such a measure, provided, that the governments with
which she might ally, acted as national governments, and not as courts
enveloped in intrigue and mystery. That France as a nation, and a
national government, would prefer an alliance with England, is a matter
of certainty. Nations, like individuals, who have long been enemies,
without knowing each other, or knowing why, become the better friends
when they discover the errors and impositions under which they had
acted.

Admitting, therefore, the probability of such a connection, I will state
some matters by which such an alliance, together with that of Holland,
might render service, not only to the parties immediately concerned, but
to all Europe.

It is, I think, certain, that if the fleets of England, France, and
Holland were confederated, they could propose, with effect, a limitation
to, and a general dismantling of, all the navies in Europe, to a certain
proportion to be agreed upon.

First, That no new ship of war shall be built by any power in Europe,
themselves included.

Second, That all the navies now in existence shall be put back, suppose
to one-tenth of their present force. This will save to France and
England, at least two millions sterling annually to each, and their
relative force be in the same proportion as it is now. If men will
permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think,
nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral
reflections, than to be at the expense of building navies, filling them
with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can
sink each other fastest. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with
infinitely more advantage, than any victory with all its expense. But
this, though it best answers the purpose of nations, does not that
of court governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation,
places, and offices.

It is, I think, also certain, that the above confederated powers,
together with that of the United States of America, can propose with
effect, to Spain, the independence of South America, and the opening
those countries of immense extent and wealth to the general commerce of
the world, as North America now is.

With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act,
when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to
create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase
ruin, desolation, and misery. The horrid scene that is now acting by the
English government in the East-Indies, is fit only to be told of Goths
and Vandals, who, destitute of principle, robbed and tortured the world
they were incapable of enjoying.

The opening of South America would produce an immense field of commerce,
and a ready money market for manufactures, which the eastern world does
not. The East is already a country full of manufactures, the importation
of which is not only an injury to the manufactures of England, but a
drain upon its specie. The balance against England by this trade is
regularly upwards of half a million annually sent out in the East-India
ships in silver; and this is the reason, together with German intrigue,
and German subsidies, that there is so little silver in England.

But any war is harvest to such governments, however ruinous it may be
to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent
people from looking into the defects and abuses of government. It is the
lo here! and the lo there! that amuses and cheats the multitude.

Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all
Europe, as is produced by the two Revolutions of America and France. By
the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by
the latter, in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism
and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite
expression, the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted
German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning
to think. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of
Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam
of a new world.

When all the governments of Europe shall be established on the
representative system, nations will become acquainted, and the
animosities and prejudices fomented by the intrigue and artifice of
courts, will cease. The oppressed soldier will become a freeman; and
the tortured sailor, no longer dragged through the streets like a felon,
will pursue his mercantile voyage in safety. It would be better that
nations should wi continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives,
and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their
friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the
same expense, in a condition useless to society and to themselves. As
soldiers have hitherto been treated in most countries, they might be
said to be without a friend. Shunned by the citizen on an apprehension
of their being enemies to liberty, and too often insulted by those
who commanded them, their condition was a double oppression. But where
genuine principles of liberty pervade a people, every thing is restored
to order; and the soldier civilly treated, returns the civility.

In contemplating revolutions, it is easy to perceive that they may arise
from two distinct causes; the one, to avoid or get rid of some great
calamity; the other, to obtain some great and positive good; and the two
may be distinguished by the names of active and passive revolutions. In
those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed
and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by
revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter, the heart, rather
animated than agitated, enters serenely upon the subject. Reason
and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the
contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that
recourse is had to violence. When men unite in agreeing that a thing is
good, could it be obtained, such for instance as relief from a burden
of taxes and the extinction of corruption, the object is more than half
accomplished. What they approve as the end, they will promote in the
means.

Will any man say, in the present excess of taxation, falling so heavily
on the poor, that a remission of five pounds annually of taxes to one
hundred and four thousand poor families is not a good thing? Will he say
that a remission of seven pounds annually to one hundred thousand other
poor families--of eight pounds annually to another hundred thousand poor
families, and of ten pounds annually to fifty thousand poor and widowed
families, are not good things? And, to proceed a step further in this
climax, will he say that to provide against the misfortunes to which
all human life is subject, by securing six pounds annually for all poor,
distressed, and reduced persons of the age of fifty and until sixty, and
of ten pounds annually after sixty, is not a good thing?

Will he say that an abolition of two millions of poor-rates to the
house-keepers, and of the whole of the house and window-light tax and of
the commutation tax is not a good thing? Or will he say that to abolish
corruption is a bad thing?

If, therefore, the good to be obtained be worthy of a passive, rational,
and costless revolution, it would be bad policy to prefer waiting for
a calamity that should force a violent one. I have no idea, considering
the reforms which are now passing and spreading throughout Europe, that
England will permit herself to be the last; and where the occasion and
the opportunity quietly offer, it is better than to wait for a turbulent
necessity. It may be considered as an honour to the animal faculties
of man to obtain redress by courage and danger, but it is far greater
honour to the rational faculties to accomplish the same object by
reason, accommodation, and general consent.*[40]

As reforms, or revolutions, call them which you please, extend
themselves among nations, those nations will form connections and
conventions, and when a few are thus confederated, the progress will
be rapid, till despotism and corrupt government be totally expelled, at
least out of two quarters of the world, Europe and America. The Algerine
piracy may then be commanded to cease, for it is only by the malicious
policy of old governments, against each other, that it exists.

Throughout this work, various and numerous as the subjects are, which
I have taken up and investigated, there is only a single paragraph
upon religion, viz. "that every religion is good that teaches man to be
good."

I have carefully avoided to enlarge upon the subject, because I am
inclined to believe that what is called the present ministry, wish to
see contentions about religion kept up, to prevent the nation turning
its attention to subjects of government. It is as if they were to say,
"Look that way, or any way, but this."

But as religion is very improperly made a political machine, and the
reality of it is thereby destroyed, I will conclude this work with
stating in what light religion appears to me.

If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any particular day,
or particular circumstance, made it a custom to present to their parents
some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a
different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would
pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little
devices, as their genius dictated, or according to what they thought
would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of
those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather
what it thought the prettiest flower it could find, though, perhaps, it
might be but a simple weed. The parent would be more gratified by such
a variety, than if the whole of them had acted on a concerted plan,
and each had made exactly the same offering. This would have the cold
appearance of contrivance, or the harsh one of control. But of all
unwelcome things, nothing could more afflict the parent than to know,
that the whole of them had afterwards gotten together by the ears, boys
and girls, fighting, scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about
which was the best or the worst present.

Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with
variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that
by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? For my own
part, I am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an endeavour
to conciliate mankind, to render their condition happy, to unite nations
that have hitherto been enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of
war, and break the chains of slavery and oppression is acceptable in his
sight, and being the best service I can perform, I act it cheerfully.

I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points,
think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that
appear to agree. It is in this case as with what is called the British
constitution. It has been taken for granted to be good, and encomiums
have supplied the place of proof. But when the nation comes to examine
into its principles and the abuses it admits, it will be found to have
more defects than I have pointed out in this work and the former.

As to what are called national religions, we may, with as much
propriety, talk of national Gods. It is either political craft or the
remains of the Pagan system, when every nation had its separate and
particular deity. Among all the writers of the English church clergy,
who have treated on the general subject of religion, the present Bishop
of Llandaff has not been excelled, and it is with much pleasure that I
take this opportunity of expressing this token of respect.

I have now gone through the whole of the subject, at least, as far as it
appears to me at present. It has been my intention for the five years I
have been in Europe, to offer an address to the people of England on
the subject of government, if the opportunity presented itself before I
returned to America. Mr. Burke has thrown it in my way, and I thank
him. On a certain occasion, three years ago, I pressed him to propose a
national convention, to be fairly elected, for the purpose of taking
the state of the nation into consideration; but I found, that however
strongly the parliamentary current was then setting against the party
he acted with, their policy was to keep every thing within that field
of corruption, and trust to accidents. Long experience had shown that
parliaments would follow any change of ministers, and on this they
rested their hopes and their expectations.

Formerly, when divisions arose respecting governments, recourse was had
to the sword, and a civil war ensued. That savage custom is exploded by
the new system, and reference is had to national conventions. Discussion
and the general will arbitrates the question, and to this, private
opinion yields with a good grace, and order is preserved uninterrupted.

Some gentlemen have affected to call the principles upon which this
work and the former part of Rights of Man are founded, "a new-fangled
doctrine." The question is not whether those principles are new or old,
but whether they are right or wrong. Suppose the former, I will show
their effect by a figure easily understood.

It is now towards the middle of February. Were I to take a turn into
the country, the trees would present a leafless, wintery appearance. As
people are apt to pluck twigs as they walk along, I perhaps might do the
same, and by chance might observe, that a single bud on that twig had
begun to swell. I should reason very unnaturally, or rather not reason
at all, to suppose this was the only bud in England which had this
appearance. Instead of deciding thus, I should instantly conclude, that
the same appearance was beginning, or about to begin, every where; and
though the vegetable sleep will continue longer on some trees and plants
than on others, and though some of them may not blossom for two or three
years, all will be in leaf in the summer, except those which are rotten.
What pace the political summer may keep with the natural, no human
foresight can determine. It is, however, not difficult to perceive
that the spring is begun.--Thus wishing, as I sincerely do, freedom and
happiness to all nations, I close the Second Part.




APPENDIX

As the publication of this work has been delayed beyond the time
intended, I think it not improper, all circumstances considered, to
state the causes that have occasioned delay.

The reader will probably observe, that some parts in the plan contained
in this work for reducing the taxes, and certain parts in Mr. Pitt's
speech at the opening of the present session, Tuesday, January 31, are
so much alike as to induce a belief, that either the author had taken
the hint from Mr. Pitt, or Mr. Pitt from the author.--I will first point
out the parts that are similar, and then state such circumstances as I
am acquainted with, leaving the reader to make his own conclusion.

Considering it as almost an unprecedented case, that taxes should
be proposed to be taken off, it is equally extraordinary that such a
measure should occur to two persons at the same time; and still more
so (considering the vast variety and multiplicity of taxes) that they
should hit on the same specific taxes. Mr. Pitt has mentioned, in his
speech, the tax on Carts and Wagons--that on Female Servantsthe lowering
the tax on Candles and the taking off the tax of three shillings on
Houses having under seven windows.

Every one of those specific taxes are a part of the plan contained in
this work, and proposed also to be taken off. Mr. Pitt's plan, it is
true, goes no further than to a reduction of three hundred and twenty
thousand pounds; and the reduction proposed in this work, to nearly six
millions. I have made my calculations on only sixteen millions and an
half of revenue, still asserting that it was "very nearly, if not quite,
seventeen millions." Mr. Pitt states it at 16,690,000. I know enough of
the matter to say, that he has not overstated it. Having thus given the
particulars, which correspond in this work and his speech, I will state
a chain of circumstances that may lead to some explanation.

The first hint for lessening the taxes, and that as a consequence
flowing from the French revolution, is to be found in the Address and
Declaration of the Gentlemen who met at the Thatched-House Tavern,
August 20, 1791. Among many other particulars stated in that Address, is
the following, put as an interrogation to the government opposers of the
French Revolution. "Are they sorry that the pretence for new oppressive
taxes, and the occasion for continuing many old taxes will be at an
end?"

It is well known that the persons who chiefly frequent the
Thatched-House Tavern, are men of court connections, and so much did
they take this Address and Declaration respecting the French Revolution,
and the reduction of taxes in disgust, that the Landlord was under the
necessity of informing the Gentlemen, who composed the meeting of the
20th of August, and who proposed holding another meeting, that he could
not receive them.*[41]

What was only hinted in the Address and Declaration respecting taxes and
principles of government, will be found reduced to a regular system in
this work. But as Mr. Pitt's speech contains some of the same things
respecting taxes, I now come to give the circumstances before alluded
to.

The case is: This work was intended to be published just before the
meeting of Parliament, and for that purpose a considerable part of
the copy was put into the printer's hands in September, and all the
remaining copy, which contains the part to which Mr. Pitt's speech
is similar, was given to him full six weeks before the meeting of
Parliament, and he was informed of the time at which it was to appear.
He had composed nearly the whole about a fortnight before the time of
Parliament meeting, and had given me a proof of the next sheet. It was
then in sufficient forwardness to be out at the time proposed, as two
other sheets were ready for striking off. I had before told him, that
if he thought he should be straitened for time, I could get part of
the work done at another press, which he desired me not to do. In this
manner the work stood on the Tuesday fortnight preceding the meeting of
Parliament, when all at once, without any previous intimation, though I
had been with him the evening before, he sent me, by one of his
workmen, all the remaining copy, declining to go on with the work on any
consideration.

To account for this extraordinary conduct I was totally at a loss, as
he stopped at the part where the arguments on systems and principles of
government closed, and where the plan for the reduction of taxes, the
education of children, and the support of the poor and the aged begins;
and still more especially, as he had, at the time of his beginning to
print, and before he had seen the whole copy, offered a thousand pounds
for the copy-right, together with the future copy-right of the former
part of the Rights of Man. I told the person who brought me this offer
that I should not accept it, and wished it not to be renewed, giving him
as my reason, that though I believed the printer to be an honest man, I
would never put it in the power of any printer or publisher to suppress
or alter a work of mine, by making him master of the copy, or give to
him the right of selling it to any minister, or to any other person,
or to treat as a mere matter of traffic, that which I intended should
operate as a principle.

His refusal to complete the work (which he could not purchase) obliged
me to seek for another printer, and this of consequence would throw
the publication back till after the meeting of Parliament, otherways it
would have appeared that Mr. Pitt had only taken up a part of the plan
which I had more fully stated.

Whether that gentleman, or any other, had seen the work, or any part of
it, is more than I have authority to say. But the manner in which the
work was returned, and the particular time at which this was done, and
that after the offers he had made, are suspicious circumstances. I know
what the opinion of booksellers and publishers is upon such a case, but
as to my own opinion, I choose to make no declaration. There are many
ways by which proof sheets may be procured by other persons before a
work publicly appears; to which I shall add a certain circumstance,
which is,

A ministerial bookseller in Piccadilly who has been employed, as common
report says, by a clerk of one of the boards closely connected with
the ministry (the board of trade and plantation, of which Hawkesbury is
president) to publish what he calls my Life, (I wish his own life and
those of the cabinet were as good), used to have his books printed at
the same printing-office that I employed; but when the former part of
Rights of Man came out, he took his work away in dudgeon; and about a
week or ten days before the printer returned my copy, he came to
make him an offer of his work again, which was accepted. This would
consequently give him admission into the printing-office where the
sheets of this work were then lying; and as booksellers and printers are
free with each other, he would have the opportunity of seeing what was
going on.--Be the case, however, as it may, Mr. Pitt's plan, little and
diminutive as it is, would have made a very awkward appearance, had this
work appeared at the time the printer had engaged to finish it.

I have now stated the particulars which occasioned the delay, from the
proposal to purchase, to the refusal to print. If all the Gentlemen
are innocent, it is very unfortunate for them that such a variety of
suspicious circumstances should, without any design, arrange themselves
together.

Having now finished this part, I will conclude with stating another
circumstance.

About a fortnight or three weeks before the meeting of Parliament, a
small addition, amounting to about twelve shillings and sixpence a year,
was made to the pay of the soldiers, or rather their pay was docked
so much less. Some Gentlemen who knew, in part, that this work would
contain a plan of reforms respecting the oppressed condition of
soldiers, wished me to add a note to the work, signifying that the part
upon that subject had been in the printer's hands some weeks before that
addition of pay was proposed. I declined doing this, lest it should be
interpreted into an air of vanity, or an endeavour to excite suspicion
(for which perhaps there might be no grounds) that some of the
government gentlemen had, by some means or other, made out what this
work would contain: and had not the printing been interrupted so as
to occasion a delay beyond the time fixed for publication, nothing
contained in this appendix would have appeared.

                        Thomas Paine




THE AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR PART ONE AND PART TWO


[Footnote 1: The main and uniform maxim of the judges is, the greater the truth
the greater the libel.]

[Footnote 2: Since writing the above, two other places occur in Mr. Burke's
pamphlet in which the name of the Bastille is mentioned, but in the same
manner. In the one he introduces it in a sort of obscure question, and
asks: "Will any ministers who now serve such a king, with but a decent
appearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of those whom but the
other day, in his name, they had committed to the Bastille?" In the
other the taking it is mentioned as implying criminality in the French
guards, who assisted in demolishing it. "They have not," says he,
"forgot the taking the king's castles at Paris." This is Mr. Burke, who
pretends to write on constitutional freedom.]

[Footnote 3: I am warranted in asserting this, as I had it personally from M.
de la Fayette, with whom I lived in habits of friendship for fourteen
years.]

[Footnote 4: An account of the expedition to Versailles may be seen in No. 13 of
the Revolution de Paris containing the events from the 3rd to the 10th
of October, 1789.]

[Footnote 5: It is a practice in some parts of the country, when two travellers
have but one horse, which, like the national purse, will not carry
double, that the one mounts and rides two or three miles ahead, and then
ties the horse to a gate and walks on. When the second traveller arrives
he takes the horse, rides on, and passes his companion a mile or two,
and ties again, and so on--Ride and tie.]

[Footnote 6: The word he used was renvoye, dismissed or sent away.]

[Footnote 7: When in any country we see extraordinary circumstances taking
place, they naturally lead any man who has a talent for observation
and investigation, to enquire into the causes. The manufacturers of
Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield, are the principal manufacturers
in England. From whence did this arise? A little observation will
explain the case. The principal, and the generality of the inhabitants
of those places, are not of what is called in England, the church
established by law: and they, or their fathers, (for it is within but a
few years) withdrew from the persecution of the chartered towns, where
test-laws more particularly operate, and established a sort of asylum
for themselves in those places. It was the only asylum that then
offered, for the rest of Europe was worse.--But the case is now
changing. France and America bid all comers welcome, and initiate them
into all the rights of citizenship. Policy and interest, therefore,
will, but perhaps too late, dictate in England, what reason and justice
could not. Those manufacturers are withdrawing, and arising in other
places. There is now erecting in Passey, three miles from Paris, a large
cotton manufactory, and several are already erected in America. Soon
after the rejecting the Bill for repealing the test-law, one of the
richest manufacturers in England said in my hearing, "England, Sir, is
not a country for a dissenter to live in,--we must go to France." These
are truths, and it is doing justice to both parties to tell them. It
is chiefly the dissenters that have carried English manufactures to the
height they are now at, and the same men have it in their power to carry
them away; and though those manufactures would afterwards continue in
those places, the foreign market will be lost. There frequently appear
in the London Gazette, extracts from certain acts to prevent machines
and persons, as far as they can extend to persons, from going out of the
country. It appears from these that the ill effects of the test-laws and
church-establishment begin to be much suspected; but the remedy of force
can never supply the remedy of reason. In the progress of less than a
century, all the unrepresented part of England, of all denominations,
which is at least an hundred times the most numerous, may begin to feel
the necessity of a constitution, and then all those matters will come
regularly before them.]

[Footnote 8: When the English Minister, Mr. Pitt, mentions the French finances
again in the English Parliament, it would be well that he noticed this
as an example.]

[Footnote 9: Mr. Burke, (and I must take the liberty of telling him that he is
very unacquainted with French affairs), speaking upon this subject,
says, "The first thing that struck me in calling the States-General,
was a great departure from the ancient course";--and he soon after says,
"From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as
it has happened, all that was to follow."--Mr. Burke certainly did not
see an that was to follow. I endeavoured to impress him, as well before
as after the States-General met, that there would be a revolution; but
was not able to make him see it, neither would he believe it. How then
he could distinctly see all the parts, when the whole was out of sight,
is beyond my comprehension. And with respect to the "departure from the
ancient course," besides the natural weakness of the remark, it shows
that he is unacquainted with circumstances. The departure was necessary,
from the experience had upon it, that the ancient course was a bad one.
The States-General of 1614 were called at the commencement of the civil
war in the minority of Louis XIII.; but by the class of arranging them
by orders, they increased the confusion they were called to compose. The
author of L'Intrigue du Cabinet, (Intrigue of the Cabinet), who
wrote before any revolution was thought of in France, speaking of the
States-General of 1614, says, "They held the public in suspense five
months; and by the questions agitated therein, and the heat with which
they were put, it appears that the great (les grands) thought more to
satisfy their particular passions, than to procure the goods of the
nation; and the whole time passed away in altercations, ceremonies and
parade."--L'Intrigue du Cabinet, vol. i. p. 329.]

[Footnote 10: There is a single idea, which, if it strikes rightly upon the mind,
either in a legal or a religious sense, will prevent any man or any body
of men, or any government, from going wrong on the subject of religion;
which is, that before any human institutions of government were known in
the world, there existed, if I may so express it, a compact between
God and man, from the beginning of time: and that as the relation and
condition which man in his individual person stands in towards his Maker
cannot be changed by any human laws or human authority, that religious
devotion, which is a part of this compact, cannot so much as be made a
subject of human laws; and that all laws must conform themselves to this
prior existing compact, and not assume to make the compact conform to
the laws, which, besides being human, are subsequent thereto. The first
act of man, when he looked around and saw himself a creature which he
did not make, and a world furnished for his reception, must have been
devotion; and devotion must ever continue sacred to every individual
man, as it appears, right to him; and governments do mischief by
interfering.]

[Footnote 11: See this work, Part I starting at line number 254.--N.B. Since the
taking of the Bastille, the occurrences have been published: but the
matters recorded in this narrative, are prior to that period; and some
of them, as may be easily seen, can be but very little known.]

[Footnote 12: See "Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain," by G.
Chalmers.]

[Footnote 13: See "Administration of the Finances of France," vol. iii, by M.
Neckar.]

[Footnote 14: "Administration of the Finances of France," vol. iii.]

[Footnote 15: Whether the English commerce does not bring in money, or whether the
government sends it out after it is brought in, is a matter which the
parties concerned can best explain; but that the deficiency exists, is
not in the power of either to disprove. While Dr. Price, Mr. Eden, (now
Auckland), Mr. Chalmers, and others, were debating whether the quantity
of money in England was greater or less than at the Revolution, the
circumstance was not adverted to, that since the Revolution, there
cannot have been less than four hundred millions sterling imported into
Europe; and therefore the quantity in England ought at least to have
been four times greater than it was at the Revolution, to be on a
proportion with Europe. What England is now doing by paper, is what she
would have been able to do by solid money, if gold and silver had come
into the nation in the proportion it ought, or had not been sent out;
and she is endeavouring to restore by paper, the balance she has lost by
money. It is certain, that the gold and silver which arrive annually
in the register-ships to Spain and Portugal, do not remain in those
countries. Taking the value half in gold and half in silver, it is about
four hundred tons annually; and from the number of ships and galloons
employed in the trade of bringing those metals from South-America to
Portugal and Spain, the quantity sufficiently proves itself, without
referring to the registers.

In the situation England now is, it is impossible she can increase in
money. High taxes not only lessen the property of the individuals, but
they lessen also the money capital of the nation, by inducing smuggling,
which can only be carried on by gold and silver. By the politics which
the British Government have carried on with the Inland Powers of Germany
and the Continent, it has made an enemy of all the Maritime Powers, and
is therefore obliged to keep up a large navy; but though the navy is
built in England, the naval stores must be purchased from abroad, and
that from countries where the greatest part must be paid for in gold
and silver. Some fallacious rumours have been set afloat in England to
induce a belief in money, and, among others, that of the French refugees
bringing great quantities. The idea is ridiculous. The general part of
the money in France is silver; and it would take upwards of twenty of
the largest broad wheel wagons, with ten horses each, to remove one
million sterling of silver. Is it then to be supposed, that a few people
fleeing on horse-back or in post-chaises, in a secret manner, and having
the French Custom-House to pass, and the sea to cross, could bring even
a sufficiency for their own expenses?

When millions of money are spoken of, it should be recollected, that
such sums can only accumulate in a country by slow degrees, and a long
procession of time. The most frugal system that England could now adopt,
would not recover in a century the balance she has lost in money since
the commencement of the Hanover succession. She is seventy millions
behind France, and she must be in some considerable proportion behind
every country in Europe, because the returns of the English mint do not
show an increase of money, while the registers of Lisbon and Cadiz
show an European increase of between three and four hundred millions
sterling.]

[Footnote 16: That part of America which is generally called New-England,
including New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode-Island, and Connecticut,
is peopled chiefly by English descendants. In the state of New-York
about half are Dutch, the rest English, Scotch, and Irish. In
New-jersey, a mixture of English and Dutch, with some Scotch and Irish.
In Pennsylvania about one third are English, another Germans, and
the remainder Scotch and Irish, with some Swedes. The States to the
southward have a greater proportion of English than the middle States,
but in all of them there is a mixture; and besides those enumerated,
there are a considerable number of French, and some few of all the
European nations, lying on the coast. The most numerous religious
denomination are the Presbyterians; but no one sect is established above
another, and all men are equally citizens.]

[Footnote 17: For a character of aristocracy, the reader is referred to Rights of
Man, Part I., starting at line number 1457.]

[Footnote 18: The whole amount of the assessed taxes of France, for the present
year, is three hundred millions of francs, which is twelve millions
and a half sterling; and the incidental taxes are estimated at three
millions, making in the whole fifteen millions and a half; which among
twenty-four millions of people, is not quite thirteen shillings per
head. France has lessened her taxes since the revolution, nearly nine
millions sterling annually. Before the revolution, the city of Paris
paid a duty of upwards of thirty per cent. on all articles brought into
the city. This tax was collected at the city gates. It was taken off on
the first of last May, and the gates taken down.]

[Footnote 19: What was called the livre rouge, or the red book, in France, was not
exactly similar to the Court Calendar in England; but it sufficiently
showed how a great part of the taxes was lavished.]

[Footnote 20: In England the improvements in agriculture, useful arts,
manufactures, and commerce, have been made in opposition to the genius
of its government, which is that of following precedents. It is from
the enterprise and industry of the individuals, and their numerous
associations, in which, tritely speaking, government is neither pillow
nor bolster, that these improvements have proceeded. No man thought
about government, or who was in, or who was out, when he was planning
or executing those things; and all he had to hope, with respect to
government, was, that it would let him alone. Three or four very silly
ministerial newspapers are continually offending against the spirit of
national improvement, by ascribing it to a minister. They may with as
much truth ascribe this book to a minister.]

[Footnote 21: With respect to the two houses, of which the English parliament is
composed, they appear to be effectually influenced into one, and, as a
legislature, to have no temper of its own. The minister, whoever he
at any time may be, touches it as with an opium wand, and it sleeps
obedience.

But if we look at the distinct abilities of the two houses, the
difference will appear so great, as to show the inconsistency of
placing power where there can be no certainty of the judgment to use
it. Wretched as the state of representation is in England, it is manhood
compared with what is called the house of Lords; and so little is this
nick-named house regarded, that the people scarcely enquire at any time
what it is doing. It appears also to be most under influence, and the
furthest removed from the general interest of the nation. In the debate
on engaging in the Russian and Turkish war, the majority in the house
of peers in favor of it was upwards of ninety, when in the other house,
which was more than double its numbers, the majority was sixty-three.]

The proceedings on Mr. Fox's bill, respecting the rights of juries,
merits also to be noticed. The persons called the peers were not the
objects of that bill. They are already in possession of more privileges
than that bill gave to others. They are their own jury, and if any one
of that house were prosecuted for a libel, he would not suffer, even
upon conviction, for the first offense. Such inequality in laws ought
not to exist in any country. The French constitution says, that the law
is the same to every individual, whether to Protect or to punish. All
are equal in its sight.]

[Footnote 22: As to the state of representation in England, it is too absurd to
be reasoned upon. Almost all the represented parts are decreasing
in population, and the unrepresented parts are increasing. A general
convention of the nation is necessary to take the whole form of
government into consideration.]

[Footnote 23: It is related that in the canton of Berne, in Switzerland, it has
been customary, from time immemorial, to keep a bear at the public
expense, and the people had been taught to believe that if they had not
a bear they should all be undone. It happened some years ago that the
bear, then in being, was taken sick, and died too suddenly to have his
place immediately supplied with another. During this interregnum the
people discovered that the corn grew, and the vintage flourished, and
the sun and moon continued to rise and set, and everything went on
the same as before, and taking courage from these circumstances, they
resolved not to keep any more bears; for, said they, "a bear is a very
voracious expensive animal, and we were obliged to pull out his claws,
lest he should hurt the citizens." The story of the bear of Berne was
related in some of the French newspapers, at the time of the flight of
Louis Xvi., and the application of it to monarchy could not be mistaken
in France; but it seems that the aristocracy of Berne applied it to
themselves, and have since prohibited the reading of French newspapers.]

[Footnote 24: It is scarcely possible to touch on any subject, that will not
suggest an allusion to some corruption in governments. The simile of
"fortifications," unfortunately involves with it a circumstance, which
is directly in point with the matter above alluded to.]

Among the numerous instances of abuse which have been acted or protected
by governments, ancient or modern, there is not a greater than that of
quartering a man and his heirs upon the public, to be maintained at its
expense.

Humanity dictates a provision for the poor; but by what right, moral or
political, does any government assume to say, that the person called
the Duke of Richmond, shall be maintained by the public? Yet, if
common report is true, not a beggar in London can purchase his wretched
pittance of coal, without paying towards the civil list of the Duke of
Richmond. Were the whole produce of this imposition but a shilling a
year, the iniquitous principle would be still the same; but when it
amounts, as it is said to do, to no less than twenty thousand pounds per
annum, the enormity is too serious to be permitted to remain. This is
one of the effects of monarchy and aristocracy.

In stating this case I am led by no personal dislike. Though I think
it mean in any man to live upon the public, the vice originates in the
government; and so general is it become, that whether the parties are in
the ministry or in the opposition, it makes no difference: they are sure
of the guarantee of each other.]

[Footnote 25: In America the increase of commerce is greater in proportion than in
England. It is, at this time, at least one half more than at any period
prior to the revolution. The greatest number of vessels cleared out
of the port of Philadelphia, before the commencement of the war, was
between eight and nine hundred. In the year 1788, the number was upwards
of twelve hundred. As the State of Pennsylvania is estimated at an
eighth part of the United States in population, the whole number of
vessels must now be nearly ten thousand.]

[Footnote 26: When I saw Mr. Pitt's mode of estimating the balance of trade, in
one of his parliamentary speeches, he appeared to me to know nothing
of the nature and interest of commerce; and no man has more wantonly
tortured it than himself. During a period of peace it has been havocked
with the calamities of war. Three times has it been thrown into
stagnation, and the vessels unmanned by impressing, within less than
four years of peace.]

[Footnote 27: Rev. William Knowle, master of the grammar school of Thetford, in
Norfolk.]

[Footnote 28: Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected that
the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of
public characters, but with regard to myself I am perfectly easy on
this head. I did not, at my first setting out in public life, nearly
seventeen years ago, turn my thoughts to subjects of government from
motives of interest, and my conduct from that moment to this proves the
fact. I saw an opportunity in which I thought I could do some good, and
I followed exactly what my heart dictated. I neither read books, nor
studied other people's opinion. I thought for myself. The case was
this:--

During the suspension of the old governments in America, both prior to
and at the breaking out of hostilities, I was struck with the order and
decorum with which everything was conducted, and impressed with the idea
that a little more than what society naturally performed was all the
government that was necessary, and that monarchy and aristocracy were
frauds and impositions upon mankind. On these principles I published the
pamphlet Common Sense. The success it met with was beyond anything since
the invention of printing. I gave the copyright to every state in the
Union, and the demand ran to not less than one hundred thousand copies.
I continued the subject in the same manner, under the title of The
Crisis, till the complete establishment of the Revolution.

After the declaration of independence Congress unanimously, and unknown
to me, appointed me Secretary in the Foreign Department. This was
agreeable to me, because it gave me the opportunity of seeing into the
abilities of foreign courts, and their manner of doing business. But
a misunderstanding arising between Congress and me, respecting one of
their commissioners then in Europe, Mr. Silas Deane, I resigned the
office, and declined at the same time the pecuniary offers made by the
Ministers of France and Spain, M. Gerald and Don Juan Mirralles.]
I had by this time so completely gained the ear and confidence of
America, and my own independence was become so visible, as to give me a
range in political writing beyond, perhaps, what any man ever possessed
in any country, and, what is more extraordinary, I held it undiminished
to the end of the war, and enjoy it in the same manner to the present
moment. As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination,
and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or
censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by
any personal altercation, and the man who cannot do this is not fit for
a public character.

When the war ended I went from Philadelphia to Borden-Town, on the east
bank of the Delaware, where I have a small place. Congress was at this
time at Prince-Town, fifteen miles distant, and General Washington
had taken his headquarters at Rocky Hill, within the neighbourhood of
Congress, for the purpose of resigning up his commission (the object
for which he accepted it being accomplished), and of retiring to private
life. While he was on this business he wrote me the letter which I here
subjoin:

"Rocky-Hill, Sept. 10, 1783.

"I have learned since I have been at this place that you are at
Borden-Town. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy I know not.
Be it for either, for both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this
place, and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at
it.

"Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this
country, and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best
exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who
entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who, with
much pleasure, subscribes himself, Your sincere friend,

G. Washington."

During the war, in the latter end of the year 1780, I formed to myself a
design of coming over to England, and communicated it to General Greene,
who was then in Philadelphia on his route to the southward, General
Washington being then at too great a distance to communicate with
immediately. I was strongly impressed with the idea that if I could get
over to England without being known, and only remain in safety till I
could get out a publication, that I could open the eyes of the country
with respect to the madness and stupidity of its Government. I saw that
the parties in Parliament had pitted themselves as far as they could go,
and could make no new impressions on each other. General Greene entered
fully into my views, but the affair of Arnold and Andre happening just
after, he changed his mind, under strong apprehensions for my safety,
wrote very pressingly to me from Annapolis, in Maryland, to give up
the design, which, with some reluctance, I did. Soon after this I
accompanied Colonel Lawrens, son of Mr. Lawrens, who was then in the
Tower, to France on business from Congress. We landed at L'orient, and
while I remained there, he being gone forward, a circumstance occurred
that renewed my former design. An English packet from Falmouth to
New York, with the Government dispatches on board, was brought into
L'orient. That a packet should be taken is no extraordinary thing, but
that the dispatches should be taken with it will scarcely be credited,
as they are always slung at the cabin window in a bag loaded with
cannon-ball, and ready to be sunk at a moment. The fact, however, is
as I have stated it, for the dispatches came into my hands, and I
read them. The capture, as I was informed, succeeded by the following
stratagem:--The captain of the "Madame" privateer, who spoke English, on
coming up with the packet, passed himself for the captain of an English
frigate, and invited the captain of the packet on board, which, when
done, he sent some of his own hands back, and he secured the mail. But
be the circumstance of the capture what it may, I speak with certainty
as to the Government dispatches. They were sent up to Paris to Count
Vergennes, and when Colonel Lawrens and myself returned to America we
took the originals to Congress.

By these dispatches I saw into the stupidity of the English Cabinet far
more than I otherwise could have done, and I renewed my former design.
But Colonel Lawrens was so unwilling to return alone, more especially
as, among other matters, we had a charge of upwards of two hundred
thousand pounds sterling in money, that I gave in to his wishes, and
finally gave up my plan. But I am now certain that if I could have
executed it that it would not have been altogether unsuccessful.]

[Footnote 29: It is difficult to account for the origin of charter and corporation
towns, unless we suppose them to have arisen out of, or been connected
with, some species of garrison service. The times in which they began
justify this idea. The generality of those towns have been garrisons,
and the corporations were charged with the care of the gates of the
towns, when no military garrison was present. Their refusing or granting
admission to strangers, which has produced the custom of giving,
selling, and buying freedom, has more of the nature of garrison
authority than civil government. Soldiers are free of all corporations
throughout the nation, by the same propriety that every soldier is
free of every garrison, and no other persons are. He can follow any
employment, with the permission of his officers, in any corporation
towns throughout the nation.]

[Footnote 30: See Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue. The land-tax in 1646
was L2,473,499.]

[Footnote 31: Several of the court newspapers have of late made frequent mention
of Wat Tyler. That his memory should be traduced by court sycophants and
an those who live on the spoil of a public is not to be wondered at. He
was, however, the means of checking the rage and injustice of taxation
in his time, and the nation owed much to his valour. The history is
concisely this:--In the time of Richard Ii. a poll tax was levied of one
shilling per head upon every person in the nation of whatever estate or
condition, on poor as well as rich, above the age of fifteen years. If
any favour was shown in the law it was to the rich rather than to the
poor, as no person could be charged more than twenty shillings for
himself, family and servants, though ever so numerous; while all other
families, under the number of twenty were charged per head. Poll taxes
had always been odious, but this being also oppressive and unjust, it
excited as it naturally must, universal detestation among the poor and
middle classes. The person known by the name of Wat Tyler, whose proper
name was Walter, and a tiler by trade, lived at Deptford. The gatherer
of the poll tax, on coming to his house, demanded tax for one of
his daughters, whom Tyler declared was under the age of fifteen. The
tax-gatherer insisted on satisfying himself, and began an indecent
examination of the girl, which, enraging the father, he struck him with
a hammer that brought him to the ground, and was the cause of his
death. This circumstance served to bring the discontent to an issue. The
inhabitants of the neighbourhood espoused the cause of Tyler, who in a
few days was joined, according to some histories, by upwards of fifty
thousand men, and chosen their chief. With this force he marched
to London, to demand an abolition of the tax and a redress of other
grievances. The Court, finding itself in a forlorn condition, and,
unable to make resistance, agreed, with Richard at its head, to hold
a conference with Tyler in Smithfield, making many fair professions,
courtier-like, of its dispositions to redress the oppressions. While
Richard and Tyler were in conversation on these matters, each being on
horseback, Walworth, then Mayor of London, and one of the creatures of
the Court, watched an opportunity, and like a cowardly assassin, stabbed
Tyler with a dagger, and two or three others falling upon him, he
was instantly sacrificed. Tyler appears to have been an intrepid
disinterested man with respect to himself. All his proposals made to
Richard were on a more just and public ground than those which had
been made to John by the Barons, and notwithstanding the sycophancy of
historians and men like Mr. Burke, who seek to gloss over a base action
of the Court by traducing Tyler, his fame will outlive their falsehood.
If the Barons merited a monument to be erected at Runnymede, Tyler
merited one in Smithfield.]

[Footnote 32: I happened to be in England at the celebration of the centenary of
the Revolution of 1688. The characters of William and Mary have always
appeared to be detestable; the one seeking to destroy his uncle, and
the other her father, to get possession of power themselves; yet, as
the nation was disposed to think something of that event, I felt hurt at
seeing it ascribe the whole reputation of it to a man who had undertaken
it as a job and who, besides what he otherwise got, charged six hundred
thousand pounds for the expense of the fleet that brought him from
Holland. George the First acted the same close-fisted part as William
had done, and bought the Duchy of Bremen with the money he got from
England, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds over and above his pay as
king, and having thus purchased it at the expense of England, added it
to his Hanoverian dominions for his own private profit. In fact, every
nation that does not govern itself is governed as a job. England has
been the prey of jobs ever since the Revolution.]

[Footnote 33: Charles, like his predecessors and successors, finding that war was
the harvest of governments, engaged in a war with the Dutch, the expense
of which increased the annual expenditure to L1,800,000 as stated under
the date of 1666; but the peace establishment was but L1,200,000.]

[Footnote 34: Poor-rates began about the time of Henry VIII., when the taxes began
to increase, and they have increased as the taxes increased ever since.]

[Footnote 35: Reckoning the taxes by families, five to a family, each family pays
on an average L12 7s. 6d. per annum. To this sum are to be added the
poor-rates. Though all pay taxes in the articles they consume, all do
not pay poor-rates. About two millions are exempted: some as not being
house-keepers, others as not being able, and the poor themselves
who receive the relief. The average, therefore, of poor-rates on the
remaining number, is forty shillings for every family of five persons,
which make the whole average amount of taxes and rates L14 17s. 6d. For
six persons L17 17s. For seven persons L2O 16s. 6d.
The average of taxes in America, under the new or representative system
of government, including the interest of the debt contracted in the
war, and taking the population at four millions of souls, which it now
amounts to, and it is daily increasing, is five shillings per head,
men, women, and children. The difference, therefore, between the two
governments is as under:

                                        England      America
                                      L    s.  d.  L    s.  d.
    For a family of five persons     14   17   6   1    5   0
    For a family of six persons      17   17   0   1   10   0
    For a family of seven persons    20   16   6   1   15   0

[Footnote 36: Public schools do not answer the general purpose of the poor.
They are chiefly in corporation towns from which the country towns and
villages are excluded, or, if admitted, the distance occasions a great
loss of time. Education, to be useful to the poor, should be on the
spot, and the best method, I believe, to accomplish this is to enable
the parents to pay the expenses themselves. There are always persons of
both sexes to be found in every village, especially when growing into
years, capable of such an undertaking. Twenty children at ten shillings
each (and that not more than six months each year) would be as much as
some livings amount to in the remotest parts of England, and there are
often distressed clergymen's widows to whom such an income would be
acceptable. Whatever is given on this account to children answers two
purposes. To them it is education--to those who educate them it is a
livelihood.]

[Footnote 37: The tax on beer brewed for sale, from which the aristocracy are
exempt, is almost one million more than the present commutation tax,
being by the returns of 1788, L1,666,152--and, consequently, they ought
to take on themselves the amount of the commutation tax, as they are
already exempted from one which is almost a million greater.]

[Footnote 38: See the Reports on the Corn Trade.]

[Footnote 39: When enquiries are made into the condition of the poor, various
degrees of distress will most probably be found, to render a different
arrangement preferable to that which is already proposed. Widows with
families will be in greater want than where there are husbands living.
There is also a difference in the expense of living in different
counties: and more so in fuel.

  Suppose then fifty thousand extraordinary cases, at
    the rate of ten pounds per family per annum            L500,000
  100,000 families, at L8 per family per annum              800,000
  100,000 families, at L7 per family per annum              700,000
  104,000 families, at L5 per family per annum              520,000

  And instead of ten shillings per head for the education
    of other children, to allow fifty shillings per family
    for that purpose to fifty thousand families             250,000
                                                         ----------
                                                         L2,770,000
    140,000 aged persons as before                        1,120,000
                                                         ----------
                                                         L3,890,000

This arrangement amounts to the same sum as stated in this work, Part
II, line number 1068, including the L250,000 for education; but it
provides (including the aged people) for four hundred and four thousand
families, which is almost one third of an the families in England.]

[Footnote 40: I know it is the opinion of many of the most enlightened characters
in France (there always will be those who see further into events than
others), not only among the general mass of citizens, but of many of the
principal members of the former National Assembly, that the monarchical
plan will not continue many years in that country. They have found out,
that as wisdom cannot be made hereditary, power ought not; and that, for
a man to merit a million sterling a year from a nation, he ought to have
a mind capable of comprehending from an atom to a universe, which, if he
had, he would be above receiving the pay. But they wished not to appear
to lead the nation faster than its own reason and interest dictated. In
all the conversations where I have been present upon this subject, the
idea always was, that when such a time, from the general opinion of the
nation, shall arrive, that the honourable and liberal method would be,
to make a handsome present in fee simple to the person, whoever he may
be, that shall then be in the monarchical office, and for him to retire
to the enjoyment of private life, possessing his share of general rights
and privileges, and to be no more accountable to the public for his time
and his conduct than any other citizen.]

[Footnote 41: The gentleman who signed the address and declaration as chairman of
the meeting, Mr. Horne Tooke, being generally supposed to be the person
who drew it up, and having spoken much in commendation of it, has
been jocularly accused of praising his own work. To free him from this
embarrassment, and to save him the repeated trouble of mentioning the
author, as he has not failed to do, I make no hesitation in saying,
that as the opportunity of benefiting by the French Revolution easily
occurred to me, I drew up the publication in question, and showed it to
him and some other gentlemen, who, fully approving it, held a meeting
for the purpose of making it public, and subscribed to the amount of
fifty guineas to defray the expense of advertising. I believe there
are at this time, in England, a greater number of men acting on
disinterested principles, and determined to look into the nature and
practices of government themselves, and not blindly trust, as
has hitherto been the case, either to government generally, or to
parliaments, or to parliamentary opposition, than at any former period.
Had this been done a century ago, corruption and taxation had not
arrived to the height they are now at.]


                          -END OF PART II.-






THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE

By Thomas Paine

Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway


VOLUME III.

1791-1804

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York London


Copyright, 1895

By G. P. Putnam's Sons



CONTENTS.


  Introduction to the Third Volume

  I.  The Republican Proclamation

  II.  To the Authors of "Le Républicain"

  III.  To the Abbe Sieyes

  IV.  To the Attorney General

  V.  To Mr. Secretary Dundas

  VI.  Letters to Onslow Cranley

  VII.  To the Sheriff of the County of Sussex

  VIII.  To Mr. Secretary Dundas

  IX.  Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation

  X.  Address to the People of France

  XI.  Anti-Monarchal Essay

  XII.  To the Attorney General, on the Prosecution AGAINST
        THE SECOND PART OF RIGHTS of Man

  XIII.  On the Propriety of Bringing Louis XVI to Trial

  XIV.  Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet

  XV.  Shall Louis XVI. Have Respite?

  XVI.  Declaration of Rights.

  XVII.  Private Letters to Jefferson

  XVIII.  Letters to Danton

  XIX.  A Citizen of America to the Citizens of Europe

  XX.  Appeal to the Convention

  XXI.  The Memorial to Monroe

  XXII.  Letter to George Washington

  XXIII.  Observations

  XXIV.  Dissertation on First Principles of Government

  XXV.  The Constitution of 1795

  XXVI.  The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance

  XXVII.  Forgetfulness

  XXVIII.  Agrarian Justice

  XXIX.  The Eighteenth Fructidor

  XXX.  The Recall of Monroe

  XXXI.  Private Letter to President Jefferson

  XXXII.  Proposal that Louisiana be Purchased

  XXXIII.  Thomas Paine to the Citizens of the United States

  XXXIV.  To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana




INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD VOLUME.

WITH HISTORICAL NOTES AND DOCUMENTS.

In a letter of Lafayette to Washington ("Paris, 12 Jan., 1790") he
writes: "_Common Sense_ is writing for you a brochure where you will see
a part of my adventures." It thus appears that the narrative embodied in
the reply to Burke ("Rights of Man," Part I.), dedicated to Washington,
was begun with Lafayette's collaboration fourteen months before its
publication (March 13, 1791).

In another letter of Lafayette to Washington (March 17, 1790) he writes:

"To Mr. Paine, who leaves for London, I entrust the care of sending
you my news.... Permit me, my dear General, to offer you a picture
representing the Bastille as it was some days after I gave the order for
its demolition. I also pay you the homage of sending you the principal
Key of that fortress of despotism. It is a tribute I owe as a son to
my adoptive father, as aide-de-camp to my General, as a missionary of
liberty to his Patriarch."

The Key was entrusted to Paine, and by him to J. Rut-ledge, Jr., who
sailed from London in May. I have found in the manuscript despatches of
Louis Otto, Chargé d' Affaires, several amusing paragraphs, addressed to
his govern-ment at Paris, about this Key.

"August 4, 1790. In attending yesterday the public audience of the
President, I was surprised by a question from the Chief Magistrate,
'whether I would like to see the Key of the Bastille?' One of his
secretaries showed me at the same moment a large Key, which had
been sent to the President by desire of the Marquis de la Fayette. I
dissembled my surprise in observing to the President that 'the time had
not yet come in America to do ironwork equal to that before him.'
The Americans present looked at the key with indifference, and as if
wondering why it had been sent But the serene face of the President
showed that he regarded it as an homage from the French nation."
"December 13, 1790. The Key of the Bastille, regularly shown at the
President's audiences, is now also on exhibition in Mrs. Washington's
_salon_, where it satisfies the curiosity of the Philadelphians. I am
persuaded, Monseigneur, that it is only their vanity that finds pleasure
in the exhibition of this trophy, but Frenchmen here are not the less
piqued, and many will not enter the President's house on this account."

In sending the key Paine, who saw farther than these distant Frenchmen,
wrote to Washington: "That the principles of America opened the Bastille
is not to be doubted, and therefore the Key comes to the right place."

Early in May, 1791 (the exact date is not given), Lafayette writes
Washington: "I send you the rather indifferent translation of Mr. Paine
as a kind of preservative and to keep me near you." This was a hasty
translation of "Rights of Man," Part I., by F. Soûles, presently
superseded by that of Lanthenas.

The first convert of Paine to pure republicanism in France was Achille
Duchâtelet, son of the Duke, and grandson of the authoress,--the friend
of Voltaire. It was he and Paine who, after the flight of Louis XVI.,
placarded Paris with the Proclamation of a Republic, given as the first
chapter of this volume. An account of this incident is here quoted from
Etienne Dumont's "Recollections of Mirabeau":

"The celebrated Paine was at this time in Paris, and intimate in
Condorcet's family. Thinking that he had effected the American
Revolution, he fancied himself called upon to bring about one in France.
Duchâtelet called on me, and after a little preface placed in my hand an
English manuscript--a Proclamation to the French People. It was nothing
less than an anti-royalist Manifesto, and summoned the nation to
seize the opportunity and establish a Republic. Paine was its author.
Duchâtelet had adopted and was resolved to sign, placard the walls of
Paris with it, and take the consequences. He had come to request me to
translate and develop it. I began discussing the strange proposal,
and pointed out the danger of raising a republican standard without
concurrence of the National Assembly, and nothing being as yet known
of the king's intentions, resources, alliances, and possibilities of
support by the army, and in the provinces. I asked if he had consulted
any of the most influential leaders,--Sieves, Lafayette, etc. He had
not: he and Paine had acted alone. An American and an impulsive nobleman
had put themselves forward to change the whole governmental system
of France. Resisting his entreaties, I refused to translate the
Proclamation. Next day the republican Proclamation appeared on the walls
in every part of Paris, and was denounced to the Assembly. The idea of
a Republic had previously presented itself to no one: this first
intimation filled with consternation the Right and the moderates of the
Left. Malouet, Cazales, and others proposed prosecution of the author,
but Chapelier, and a numerous party, fearing to add fuel to the fire
instead of extinguishing it, prevented this. But some of the seed sown
by the audacious hand of Paine were now budding in leading minds."

A Republican Club was formed in July, consisting of five members, the
others who joined themselves to Paine and Duchâtelet being Condorcet,
and probably Lanthenas (translator of Paine's works), and Nicolas de
Bonneville. They advanced so far as to print "Le Républicain," of which,
however, only one number ever appeared. From it is taken the second
piece in this volume.

Early in the year 1792 Paine lodged in the house and book-shop of Thomas
"Clio" Rickman, now as then 7 Upper Marylebone Street. Among his friends
was the mystical artist and poet, William Blake. Paine had become to
him a transcendental type; he is one of the Seven who appear in Blake's
"Prophecy" concerning America (1793):


  "The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent
  Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America's shore;
  Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night:--
  Washington, Franklin, Paine, and Warren, Gates, Hancock, and Greene,
  Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albion's fiery Prince."


The Seven are wrapt in the flames of their enthusiasm. Albion's Prince
sends to America his thirteen Angels, who, however, there become
Governors of the thirteen States. It is difficult to discover from
Blake's mystical visions how much political radicalism was in him, but
he certainly saved Paine from the scaffold by forewarning him (September
13, 1792) that an order had been issued for his arrest. Without
repeating the story told in Gilchrist's "Life of Blake," and in my "Life
of Paine," I may add here my belief that Paine also appears in one of
Blake's pictures. The picture is in the National Gallery (London), and
called "The spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth." The monster jaws
of Behemoth are full of struggling men, some of whom stretch imploring
hands to another spiritual form, who reaches down from a crescent
moon in the sky, as if to rescue them. This face and form appear to me
certainly meant for Paine.

Acting on Blake's warning Paine's friends got him off to Dover, where,
after some trouble, related in a letter to Dundas (see p. 41 of this
volume), he reached Calais. He had been elected by four departments to
the National Convention, and selected Calais, where he was welcomed
with grand civic parades. On September 19, 1792, he arrived in Paris,
stopping at "White's Hotel," 7 Passage des Pétits Pères, about five
minutes' walk from the Salle de Manége, where, on September 21st, the
National Convention opened its sessions. The spot is now indicated by a
tablet on the wall of the Tuileries Garden, Rue de Rivoli. On that
day Paine was introduced to the Convention by the Abbé Grégoire, and
received with acclamation.

The French Minister in London, Chauvelin, had sent to his government
(still royalist) a despatch unfavorable to Paine's work in England, part
of which I translate:

"May 23, 1792. An Association [for Parliamentary Reform, see pp. 78,
93, of this volume] has been formed to seek the means of forwarding the
demand. It includes some distinguished members of the Commons, and a few
peers. The writings of M. Payne which preceded this Association by a
few days have done it infinite harm. People suspect under the veil of
a reform long demanded by justice and reason an intention to destroy a
constitution equally dear to the peers whose privileges it consecrates,
to the wealthy whom it protects, and to the entire nation, to which
it assures all the liberty desired by a people methodical and slow in
character, and who, absorbed in their commercial interests, do not
like being perpetually worried about the imbecile George III. or public
affairs. Vainly have the friends of reform protested their attachment
to the Constitution. Vainly they declare that they desire to demand
nothing, to obtain nothing, save in lawful ways. They are persistently
disbelieved. Payne alone is seen in all their movements; and this author
has not, like Mackintosh, rendered imposing his refutation of Burke. The
members of the Association, although very different in principles, find
themselves involved in the now almost general disgrace of Payne."

M. Noël writes from London, November 2, 1792, to the republican
Minister, Le Brun, concerning the approaching trial of Paine, which had
been fixed for December 18th.

"This matter above all excites the liveliest interest. People desire
to know whether they live in a free country, where criticism even of
government is a right of every citizen. Whatever may be the decision in
this interesting trial, the result can only be fortunate for the cause
of liberty. But the government cannot conceal from itself that it is
suspended over a volcano. The wild dissipations of the King's sons
add to the discontent, and if something is overlooked in the Prince of
Wales, who is loved enough, it is not so with the Duke of York, who
has few friends. The latter has so many debts that at this moment the
receivers are in his house, and the creditors wish even his bed to be
seized. You perceive, Citizen, what a text fruitful in reflexions this
conduct presents to a people groaning under the weight of taxes for the
support of such whelps (_louvetaux_)."

Under date of December 22, 1792, M. Noël writes:

"London is perfectly tranquil. The arbitrary measures taken by the
government in advance [of Paine's trial] cause no anxiety to the mass
of the nation about its liberties. Some dear-headed people see well that
the royal prerogative will gain in this crisis, and that it is dangerous
to leave executive power to become arbitrary at pleasure; but this very
small number groan in silence, and dare not speak for fear of seeing
their property pillaged or burned by what the miserable hirelings
of government call 'Loyal Mob,' or 'Church and King Mob.' To the
'Addressers,' of whom I wrote you, are added the associations for
maintaining the Constitution they are doing all they can to destroy.
There is no corporation, no parish, which is not mustered for this
object. All have assembled, one on the other, to press against
those whom they call 'The Republicans and the Levellers,' the most
inquisitorial measures. Among other parishes, one (S. James' Vestry
Room) distinguishes itself by a decree worthy of the sixteenth century.
It promises twenty guineas reward to any one who shall denounce those
who in conversation or otherwise propagate opinions contrary to the
public tranquillity, and places the denouncer under protection of the
parish. The inhabitants of London are now placed under a new kind of
_Test_, and those who refuse it will undoubtedly be persecuted. Meantime
these papers are carried from house to house to be signed, especially by
those lodging as strangers. This _Test_ causes murmurs, and some try to
evade signature, but the number is few. The example of the capital is
generally followed. The trial of Payne, which at one time seemed likely
to cause events, has ended in the most peaceful way. Erskine has been
borne to his house by people shouting _God Save the King! Erskine
forever!_ The friends of liberty generally are much dissatisfied with
the way in which he has defended his client. They find that he threw
himself into commonplaces which could make his eloquence shine, but
guarded himself well from going to the bottom of the question. Vane
especially, a distinguished advocate and zealous democrat, is furious
against Erskine. It is now for Payne to defend himself. But whatever
he does, he will have trouble enough to reverse the opinion. The Jury's
verdict is generally applauded: a mortal blow is dealt to freedom of
thought. People sing in the streets, even at midnight, _God save the
King and damn Tom Payne!_" (1)

     1 The despatches from which these translations are made are
     in the Archives of the Department of State at Paris, series
     marked _Angleterre_ vol. 581.

The student of that period will find some instruction in a collection,
now in the British Museum, of coins and medals mostly struck after the
trial and outlawry of Paine. A halfpenny, January 21,1793: _obverse_,
a man hanging on a gibbet, with church in the distance; motto "End of
Pain"; _reverse_, open book inscribed "The Wrongs of Man." A token: bust
of Paine, with his name; _reverse_, "The Mountain in Labour, 1793."
Farthing: Paine gibbeted; _reverse_, breeches burning, legend,
"Pandora's breeches"; beneath, serpent decapitated by a dagger,
the severed head that of Paine. Similar farthing, but _reverse_,
combustibles intermixed with labels issuing from a globe marked
"Fraternity"; the labels inscribed "Regicide," "Robbery," "Falsity,"
"Requisition"; legend, "French Reforms, 1797"; near by, a church with
flag, on it a cross. Half-penny without date, but no doubt struck in
1794, when a rumor reached London that Paine had been guillotined:
Paine gibbeted; above, devil smoking a pipe; _reverse_, monkey dancing;
legend, "We dance, Paine swings." Farthing: three men hanging on a
gallows; "The three Thomases, 1796." _Reverse_, "May the three knaves
of Jacobin Clubs never get a trick." The three Thomases were Thomas
Paine, Thomas Muir, and Thomas Spence. In 1794 Spence was imprisoned
seven months for publishing some of Paine's works at his so-called
"Hive of Liberty." Muir, a Scotch lawyer, was banished to Botany Bay for
fourteen years for having got up in Edinburgh (1792) a "Convention," in
imitation of that just opened in Paris; two years later he escaped from
Botany Bay on an American ship, and found his way to Paine in Paris.
Among these coins there are two of opposite character. A farthing
represents Pitt on a gibbet, against which rests a ladder; inscription,
"End of P [here an eye] T." _Reverse_, face of Pitt conjoined with that
of the devil, and legend, "Even Fellows." Another farthing like the
last, except an added legend, "Such is the reward of tyrants, 1796."
These anti-Pitt farthings were struck by Thomas Spence.

In the winter of 1792-3 the only Reign of Terror was in England. The
Ministry had replied to Paine's "Rights of Man" by a royal proclamation
against seditious literature, surrounding London with militia, and
calling a meeting of Parliament (December, 1792) out of season.
Even before the trial of Paine his case was prejudged by the royal
proclamation, and by the Addresses got up throughout the country in
response,--documents which elicited Paine's Address to the Addressers,
chapter IX. in this volume. The Tory gentry employed roughs to burn
Paine in effigy throughout the country, and to harry the Nonconformists.
Dr. Priestley's house was gutted. Mr. Fox (December 14, 1792) reminded
the House of Commons that all the mobs had "Church and King" for their
watchword, no mob having been heard of for "The Rights of Man"; and
he vainly appealed to the government to prosecute the dangerous libels
against Dissenters as they were prosecuting Paine's work. Burke, who in
the extra session of Parliament for the first time took his seat on the
Treasury Bench, was reminded that he had once "exulted at the victories
of that rebel Washington," and welcomed Franklin. "Franklin," he said,
"was a native of America; Paine was born in England, and lived under the
protection of our laws; but, instigated by his evil genius, he conspired
against the very country which gave him birth, by attempting to
introduce the new and pernicious doctrines of republicans."

In the course of the same harangue, Burke alluded to the English and
Irish deputations, then in Paris, which had congratulated the Convention
on the defeat of the invaders of the Republic. Among them he named
Lord Semphill, John Frost, D. Adams, and "Joel--Joel the Prophet" (Joel
Barlow). These men were among those who, towards the close of 1792,
formed a sort of Paine Club at "Philadelphia House"--as White's Hotel
was now called. The men gathered around Paine, as the exponent of
republican principles, were animated by a passion for liberty which
withheld no sacrifice. Some of them threw away wealth and rank as
trifles. At a banquet of the Club, at Philadelphia House, November 18,
1792, where Paine presided, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Sir Robert Smyth,
Baronet, formally renounced their titles. Sir Robert proposed the toast,
"A speedy abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions."
Another toast was, "Paine--and the new way of making good books known by
a Royal proclamation and a King's Bench prosecution."

There was also Franklin's friend, Benjamin Vaughan, Member of
Parliament, who, compromised by an intercepted letter, took refuge in
Paris under the name of Jean Martin. Other Englishmen were Rev. Jeremiah
Joyce, a Unitarian minister and author (coadjutor of Dr. Gregory in
his "Cyclopaedia "); Henry Redhead Yorke, a West Indian with some negro
blood (afterwards an agent of Pitt, under whom he had been imprisoned);
Robert Merry, husband of the actress "Miss Brunton"; Sayer, Rayment,
Macdonald, Perry.

Sampson Perry of London, having attacked the government in his journal,
"The Argus," fled from an indictment, and reached Paris in January,
1793. These men, who for a time formed at Philadelphia House their
Parliament of Man, were dashed by swift storms on their several rocks.
Sir Robert Smyth was long a prisoner under the Reign of Terror, and died
(1802) of the illness thereby contracted. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was
slain while trying to kindle a revolution in Ireland. Perry was a
prisoner in the Luxembourg, and afterwards in London. John Frost, a
lawyer (struck off the roll), ventured back to London, where he was
imprisoned six months in Newgate, sitting in the pillory at Charing
Cross one hour per day. Robert Merry went to Baltimore, where he died
in 1798. Nearly all of these men suffered griefs known only to the "man
without a country."

Sampson Perry, who in 1796 published an interesting "History of the
French Revolution," has left an account of his visit to Paine in
January, 1793:

"I breakfasted with Paine about this time at the Philadelphia Hotel, and
asked him which province in America he conceived the best calculated
for a fugitive to settle in, and, as it were, to begin the world with no
other means or pretensions than common sense and common honesty. Whether
he saw the occasion and felt the tendency of this question I know not;
but he turned it aside by the political news of the day, and added that
he was going to dine with Petion, the mayor, and that he knew I should
be welcome and be entertained. We went to the mayoralty in a hackney
coach, and were seated at a table about which were placed the following
persons: Petion, the mayor of Paris, with his female relation who did
the honour of the table; Dumourier, the commander-in-chief of the French
forces, and one of his aides-de-camp; Santerre, the commandant of the
armed force of Paris, and an aide-de-camp; Condorcet; Brissot; Gaudet;
Genson-net; Danton; Rersaint; Clavière; Vergniaud; and Syèyes; which,
with three other persons, whose names I do not now recollect, and
including Paine and myself, made in all nineteen."

Paine found warm welcome in the home of Achille Du-châtelet, who with
him had first proclaimed the Republic, and was now a General. Madame
Duchâtelet was an English lady of rank, Charlotte Comyn, and English was
fluently spoken in the family. They resided at Auteuil, not far from the
Abbé Moulet, who preserved an arm-chair with the inscription, _Benjamin
Franklin hic sedebat_, Paine was a guest of the Duchâtelets soon after
he got to work in the Convention, as I have just discovered by a letter
addressed "To Citizen Le Brun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paris."

"Auteuil, Friday, the 4th December, 1792. I enclose an Irish newspaper
which has been sent me from Belfast. It contains the Address of the
Society of United Irishmen of Dublin (of which Society I am a member)
to the volunteers of Ireland. None of the English newspapers that I have
seen have ventured to republish this Address, and as there is no other
copy of it than this which I send you, I request you not to let it go
out of your possession. Before I received this newspaper I had drawn up
a statement of the affairs of Ireland, which I had communicated to my
friend General Duchâtelet at Auteuil, where I now am. I wish to confer
with you on that subject, but as I do not speak French, and as the
matter requires confidence, General Duchâtelet has desired me to say
that if you can make it convenient to dine with him and me at Auteuil,
he will with pleasure do the office of interpreter. I send this letter
by my servant, but as it may not be convenient to you to give an answer
directly, I have told him not to wait--Thomas Paine."

It will be noticed that Paine now keeps his servant, and drives to the
Mayor's dinner in a hackney coach. A portrait painted in Paris about
this time, now owned by Mr. Alfred Howlett of Syracuse, N. Y., shows him
in elegant costume.

It is mournful to reflect, even at this distance, that only a little
later both Paine and his friend General Duchâtelet were prisoners. The
latter poisoned himself in prison (1794).

The illustrative notes and documents which it seems best to set before
the reader at the outset may here terminate. As in the previous volumes
the writings are, as a rule, given in chronological sequence, but an
exception is now made in respect of Paine's religious writings, some of
which antedate essays in the present volume. The religious writings
are reserved for the fourth and final volume, to which will be added
an Appendix containing Paine's poems, scientific fragments, and several
letters of general interest.




I. THE REPUBLICAN PROCLAMATION.(1)

"Brethren and Fellow Citizens:

"The serene tranquillity, the mutual confidence which prevailed amongst
us, during the time of the late King's escape, the indifference with
which we beheld him return, are unequivocal proofs that the absence of
a King is more desirable than his presence, and that he is not only a
political superfluity, but a grievous burden, pressing hard on the whole
nation.

"Let us not be imposed on by sophisms; all that concerns this is reduced
to four points.

"He has abdicated the throne in having fled from his post. Abdication
and desertion are not characterized by the length of absence; but by the
single act of flight. In the present instance, the act is everything,
and the time nothing.

"The nation can never give back its confidence to a man who, false to
his trust, perjured to his oath, conspires a clandestine flight, obtains
a fraudulent passport, conceals a King of France under the disguise of
a valet, directs his course towards a frontier covered with traitors
and deserters, and evidently meditates a return into our country, with a
force capable of imposing his own despotic laws.

"Should his flight be considered as his own act, or the act of those
who fled with him? Was it a spontaneous resolution of his own, or was
it inspired by others? The alternative is immaterial; whether fool or
hypocrite, idiot or traitor, he has proved himself equally unworthy of
the important functions that had been delegated to him.

     1 See Introduction to this volume. This manifesto with which
     Paris was found placarded on July 1, 1791, is described by
     Dumont as a "Republican Proclamation," but what its literal
     caption was I have not found.--_Editor_.

"In every sense in which the question can be considered, the reciprocal
obligation which subsisted between us is dissolved. He holds no longer
any authority. We owe him no longer obedience. We see in him no more
than an indifferent person; we can regard him only as Louis Capet.

"The history of France presents little else than a long series of public
calamity, which takes its source from the vices of Kings; we have been
the wretched victims that have never ceased to suffer either for them
or by them. The catalogue of their oppressions was complete, but to
complete the sum of their crimes, treason was yet wanting. Now the
only vacancy is filled up, the dreadful list is full; the system is
exhausted; there are no remaining errors for them to commit; their reign
is consequently at an end.

"What kind of office must that be in a government which requires for its
execution neither experience nor ability, that may be abandoned to the
desperate chance of birth, that may be filled by an idiot, a madman, a
tyrant, with equal effect as by the good, the virtuous, and the wise? An
office of this nature is a mere nonentity; it is a place of show, not of
use. Let France then, arrived at the age of reason, no longer be deluded
by the sound of words, and let her deliberately examine, if a King,
however insignificant and contemptible in himself, may not at the same
time be extremely dangerous.

"The thirty millions which it costs to support a King in the eclat of
stupid brutal luxury, presents us with an easy method of reducing taxes,
which reduction would at once relieve the people, and stop the progress
of political corruption. The grandeur of nations consists, not, as Kings
pretend, in the splendour of thrones, but in a conspicuous sense of
their own dignity, and in a just disdain of those barbarous follies and
crimes which, under the sanction of Royalty, have hitherto desolated
Europe.

"As to the personal safety of Louis Capet, it is so much the more
confirmed, as France will not stoop to degrade herself by a spirit of
revenge against a wretch who has dishonoured himself. In defending
a just and glorious cause, it is not possible to degrade it, and the
universal tranquillity which prevails is an undeniable proof that a free
people know how to respect themselves."




II. TO THE AUTHORS OF "LE RÉPUBLICAIN."(1)


Gentlemen:

M. Duchâtelet has mentioned to me the intention of some persons to
commence a work under the title of "The Republican."

As I am a Citizen of a country which knows no other Majesty than that of
the People; no other Government than that of the Representative body;
no other sovereignty than that of the Laws, and which is attached to
_France_ both by alliance and by gratitude, I voluntarily offer you my
services in support of principles as honorable to a nation as they are
adapted to promote the happiness of mankind. I offer them to you with
the more zeal, as I know the moral, literary, and political character
of those who are engaged in the undertaking, and find myself honoured in
their good opinion.

But I must at the same time observe, that from ignorance of the French
language, my works must necessarily undergo a translation; they can of
course be of but little utility, and my offering must consist more of
wishes than services. I must add, that I am obliged to pass a part of
this summer in England and Ireland.

As the public has done me the unmerited favor of recognizing me under
the appellation of "Common Sense," which is my usual signature, I shall
continue it in this publication to avoid mistakes, and to prevent
my being supposed the author of works not my own. As to my political
principles, I shall endeavour, in this letter, to trace their general
features in such a manner, as that they cannot be misunderstood.

     1 "Le Républicain; ou le Défenseur du gouvernement
     Représentatif. Par une Société des Républicains. A Paris.
     July, 1791." See Introduction to this volume.--_Editor_.

It is desirable in most instances to avoid that which may give even the
least suspicion as to the part meant to be adopted, and particularly
on the present occasion, where a perfect clearness of expression is
necessary to the avoidance of any possible misinterpretation. I am
happy, therefore, to find, that the work in question is entitled "The
Republican." This word expresses perfectly the idea which we ought to
have of Government in general--_Res Publico_,--the public affairs of a
nation.

As to the word _Monarchy_, though the address and intrigue of Courts
have rendered it familiar, it does not contain the less of reproach or
of insult to a nation. The word, in its immediate or original sense,
signifies _the absolute power of a single individual_, who may prove
a fool, an hypocrite, or a tyrant. The appellation admits of no other
interpretation than that which is here given. France is therefore not a
_Monarchy_; it is insulted when called by that name. The servile spirit
which characterizes this species of government is banished from France,
and this country, like AMERICA, can now afford to Monarchy no more than
a glance of disdain.

Of the errors which monarchic ignorance or knavery has spread through
the world, the one which bears the marks of the most dexterous
invention, is the opinion that the system of _Republicanism_ is only
adapted to a small country, and that a _Monarchy_ is suited, on the
contrary, to those of greater extent. Such is the language of Courts,
and such the sentiments which they have caused to be adopted in
monarchic countries; but the opinion is contrary, at the same time, to
principle and to experience.

The Government, to be of real use, should possess a complete knowledge
of all the parties, all the circumstances, and all the interests of a
nation. The monarchic system, in consequence, instead of being suited
to a country of great extent, would be more admissible in a small
territory, where an individual may be supposed to know the affairs and
the interests of the whole. But when it is attempted to extend this
individual knowledge to the affairs of a great country, the capacity of
knowing bears no longer any proportion to the extent or multiplicity of
the objects which ought to be known, and the government inevitably falls
from ignorance into tyranny. For the proof of this position we need only
look to Spain, Russia, Germany, Turkey, and the whole of the Eastern
Continent,--countries, for the deliverance of which I offer my most
sincere wishes.

On the contrary, the true _Republican_ system, by Election and
Representation, offers the only means which are known, and, in my
opinion, the only means which are possible, of proportioning the wisdom
and the information of a Government to the extent of a country.

The system of _Representation_ is the strongest and most powerful center
that can be devised for a nation. Its attraction acts so powerfully,
that men give it their approbation even without reasoning on the cause;
and France, however distant its several parts, finds itself at this
moment _an whole_, in its _central_ Representation. The citizen is
assured that his rights are protected, and the soldier feels that he
is no longer the slave of a Despot, but that he is become one of the
Nation, and interested of course in its defence.

The states at present styled _Republican_, as Holland, Genoa, Venice,
Berne, &c. are not only unworthy the name, but are actually in
opposition to every principle of a _Republican_ government, and the
countries submitted to their power are, truly speaking, subject to an
_Aristocratic_ slavery!

It is, perhaps, impossible, in the first steps which are made in a
Revolution, to avoid all kind of error, in principle or in practice, or
in some instances to prevent the combination of both. Before the sense
of a nation is sufficiently enlightened, and before men have entered
into the habits of a free communication with each other of their natural
thoughts, a certain reserve--a timid prudence seizes on the human mind,
and prevents it from obtaining its level with that vigor and promptitude
that belongs to _right_.--An example of this influence discovers
itself in the commencement of the present Revolution: but happily this
discovery has been made before the Constitution was completed, and in
time to provide a remedy.

The _hereditary succession_ can never exist as a matter of _right_; it
is a _nullity_--a _nothing_. To admit the idea is to regard man as a
species of property belonging to some individuals, either born or to
be born! It is to consider our descendants, and all posterity, as mere
animals without a right or will! It is, in fine, the most base and
humiliating idea that ever degraded the human species, and which, for
the honor of Humanity, should be destroyed for ever.

The idea of hereditary succession is so contrary to the rights of man,
that if we were ourselves to be recalled to existence, instead of being
replaced by our posterity, we should not have the right of depriving
ourselves beforehand of those _rights_ which would then properly belong
to us. On what ground, then, or by what authority, do we dare to deprive
of their rights those children who will soon be men? Why are we not
struck with the injustice which we perpetrate on our descendants, by
endeavouring to transmit them as a vile herd to masters whose vices are
all that can be foreseen.

Whenever the _French_ constitution shall be rendered conformable to its
_Declaration of Rights_, we shall then be enabled to give to France, and
with justice, the appellation of a _civic Empire_; for its government
will be the empire of laws founded on the great republican principles
of _Elective Representation_, and the _Rights of Man_.--But Monarchy
and Hereditary Succession are incompatible with the _basis_ of its
constitution.

I hope that I have at present sufficiently proved to you that I am
a good Republican; and I have such a confidence in the truth of the
principles, that I doubt not they will soon be as universal in _France_
as in _America_. The pride of human nature will assist their evidence,
will contribute to their establishment, and men will be ashamed of
Monarchy.

I am, with respect, Gentlemen, your friend,

Thomas Paine.

Paris, June, 1791.




III. TO THE ABBÉ SIÈYES.(1)

Paris, 8th July, 1791.

Sir,

At the moment of my departure for England, I read, in the _Moniteur_
of Tuesday last, your letter, in which you give the challenge, on
the subject of Government, and offer to defend what is called the
_Monarchical opinion_ against the Republican system.

I accept of your challenge with pleasure; and I place such a confidence
in the superiority of the Republican system over that nullity of a
system, called _Monarchy_, that I engage not to exceed the extent of
fifty pages, and to leave you the liberty of taking as much latitude as
you may think proper.

The respect which I bear your moral and literary reputation, will be
your security for my candour in the course of this discussion; but,
notwithstanding that I shall treat the subject seriously and sincerely,
let me promise, that I consider myself at liberty to ridicule, as they
deserve, Monarchical absurdities, whensoever the occasion shall present
itself.

By Republicanism, I do not understand what the name signifies in
Holland, and in some parts of Italy. I understand simply a government
by representation--a government founded upon the principles of the
Declaration of Rights; principles to which several parts of the French
Constitution arise in contradiction. The Declaration of Rights of France
and America are but one and the same thing in principles, and almost in
expressions; and this is the Republicanism which I undertake to defend
against what is called _Monarchy_ and _Aristocracy_.

     1 Written to the _Moniteur_ in reply to a letter of the Abbé
     (July 8) elicited by Paine's letter to "Le Républicain"
     (II.). The Abbé now declining a controversy, Paine dealt
     with his views in "Rights of Man," Part IL, ch. 3.--
     _Editor_.

I see with pleasure that in respect to one point we are already agreed;
and _that is, the extreme danger of a civil list of thirty millions_. I
can discover no reason why one of the parts of the government should
be supported with so extravagant a profusion, whilst the other scarcely
receives what is sufficient for its common wants.

This dangerous and dishonourable disproportion at once supplies the one
with the means of corrupting, and throws the other into the predicament
of being corrupted. In America there is but little difference, with
regard to this point, between the legislative and the executive part of
our government; but the first is much better attended to than it is in
France.

In whatsoever manner, Sir, I may treat the subject of which you
have proposed the investigation, I hope that you will not doubt my
entertaining for you the highest esteem. I must also add, that I am not
the personal enemy of Kings. Quite the contrary. No man more heartily
wishes than myself to see them all in the happy and honourable state of
private individuals; but I am the avowed, open, and intrepid enemy of
what is called Monarchy; and I am such by principles which nothing can
either alter or corrupt--by my attachment to humanity; by the anxiety
which I feel within myself, for the dignity and the honour of the human
race; by the disgust which I experience, when I observe men directed by
children, and governed by brutes; by the horror which all the evils that
Monarchy has spread over the earth excite within my breast; and by those
sentiments which make me shudder at the calamities, the exactions, the
wars, and the massacres with which Monarchy has crushed mankind: in
short, it is against all the hell of monarchy that I have declared war.

Thomas Paine.(1)

     1 To the sixth paragraph of the above letter is appended a
     footnote: "A deputy to the congress receives about a guinea
     and a half daily: and provisions are cheaper in America
     than in France." The American Declaration of Rights referred
     to unless the Declaration of Independence, was no doubt,
     especially that of Pennsylvania, which Paine helped to
     frame.--Editor.




IV. TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL.


[Undated, but probably late in May, 1793.]


Sir,

Though I have some reason for believing that you were not the original
promoter or encourager of the prosecution commenced against the work
entitled "Rights of Man" either as that prosecution is intended to
affect the author, the publisher, or the public; yet as you appear
the official person therein, I address this letter to you, not as Sir
Archibald Macdonald, but as Attorney General.

You began by a prosecution against the publisher Jordan, and the reason
assigned by Mr. Secretary Dundas, in the House of Commons, in the debate
on the Proclamation, May 25, for taking that measure, was, he said,
because Mr. Paine could not be found, or words to that effect. Mr.
Paine, sir, so far from secreting himself, never went a step out of his
way, nor in the least instance varied from his usual conduct, to avoid
any measure you might choose to adopt with respect to him. It is on the
purity of his heart, and the universal utility of the principles and
plans which his writings contain, that he rests the issue; and he will
not dishonour it by any kind of subterfuge. The apartments which he
occupied at the time of writing the work last winter, he has continued
to occupy to the present hour, and the solicitors of the prosecution
knew where to find him; of which there is a proof in their own office,
as far back as the 21st of May, and also in the office of my own
Attorney.(1)

     1 Paine was residing at the house of one of his publishers,
     Thomas Rickman, 7 Upper Marylebone Street, London. His
     Attorney was the Hon. Thomas Erskine.--_Editor_.

But admitting, for the sake of the case, that the reason for proceeding
against the publisher was, as Mr. Dundas stated, that Mr. Paine could
not be found, that reason can now exist no longer.

The instant that I was informed that an information was preparing to be
filed against me, as the author of, I believe, one of the most useful
and benevolent books ever offered to mankind, I directed my Attorney
to put in an appearance; and as I shall meet the prosecution fully and
fairly, and with a good and upright conscience, I have a right to
expect that no act of littleness will be made use of on the part of the
prosecution towards influencing the future issue with respect to the
author. This expression may, perhaps, appear obscure to you, but I am
in the possession of some matters which serve to shew that the action
against the publisher is not intended to be a _real_ action. If,
therefore, any persons concerned in the prosecution have found their
cause so weak, as to make it appear convenient to them to enter into
a negociation with the publisher, whether for the purpose of his
submitting to a verdict, and to make use of the verdict so obtained as a
circumstance, by way of precedent, on a future trial against myself;
or for any other purpose not fully made known to me; if, I say, I have
cause to suspect this to be the case, I shall most certainly withdraw
the defence I should otherwise have made, or promoted on his (the
publisher's) behalf, and leave the negociators to themselves, and shall
reserve the whole of the defence for the _real_ trial.(1)

But, sir, for the purpose of conducting this matter with at least the
appearance of fairness and openness, that shall justify itself before
the public, whose cause it really is, (for it is the right of public
discussion and investigation that is questioned,) I have to propose to
you to cease the prosecution against the publisher; and as the reason
or pretext can no longer exist for continuing it against him because
Mr. Paine could not be found, that you would direct the whole process
against me, with whom the prosecuting party will not find it possible to
enter into any private negociation.

     1 A detailed account of the proceedings with regard to the
     publisher will be found infra, in ix., Letter to the
     Addressers.--_Editor_.

I will do the cause full justice, as well for the sake of the nation, as
for my own reputation.

Another reason for discontinuing the process against the publisher is,
because it can amount to nothing. First, because a jury in London cannot
decide upon the fact of publishing beyond the limits of the jurisdiction
of London, and therefore the work may be republished over and over
again in every county in the nation, and every case must have a separate
process; and by the time that three or four hundred prosecutions have
been had, the eyes of the nation will then be fully open to see that the
work in question contains a plan the best calculated to root out all the
abuses of government, and to lessen the taxes of the nation upwards of
_six millions annually_.

Secondly, Because though the gentlemen of London may be very expert in
understanding their particular professions and occupations, and how
to make business contracts with government beneficial to themselves as
individuals, the rest of the nation may not be disposed to consider them
sufficiently qualified nor authorized to determine for the whole Nation
on plans of reform, and on systems and principles of Government. This
would be in effect to erect a jury into a National Convention, instead
of electing a Convention, and to lay a precedent for the probable
tyranny of juries, under the pretence of supporting their rights.

That the possibility always exists of packing juries will not be denied;
and, therefore, in all cases, where Government is the prosecutor,
more especially in those where the right of public discussion and
investigation of principles and systems of Government is attempted to be
suppressed by a verdict, or in those where the object of the work that
is prosecuted is the reform of abuse and the abolition of sinecure
places and pensions, in all these cases the verdict of a jury will
itself become a subject of discussion; and therefore, it furnishes
an additional reason for discontinuing the prosecution against the
publisher, more especially as it is not a secret that there has been a
negociation with him for secret purposes, and for proceeding against
me only. I shall make a much stronger defence than what I believe the
Treasury Solicitor's agreement with him will permit him to do.

I believe that Mr. Burke, finding himself defeated, and not being able
to make any answer to the _Rights of Man_, has been one of the promoters
of this prosecution; and I shall return the compliment to him by
shewing, in a future publication, that he has been a masked pensioner at
1500L. per annum for about ten years.

Thus it is that the public money is wasted, and the dread of public
investigation is produced.

I am, sir, Your obedient humble servant,

Thomas Paine.(1)

     1 Paine's case was set down for June 8th, and on that day he
     appeared in court; but, much to his disappointment, the
     trial was adjourned to December 18th, at which time he was
     in his place in the National Convention at Paris.--_Editor_.




V. TO MR. SECRETARY DUNDAS.(1)


London, June 6, 1793.

Sir,

As you opened the debate in the House of Commons, May 25th, on the
proclamation for suppressing publications, which that proclamation
(without naming any) calls wicked and seditious: and as you applied
those opprobious epithets to the works entitled "RIGHTS OF MAN," I think
it unnecessary to offer any other reason for addressing this letter to
you.

I begin, then, at once, by declaring, that I do not believe there are
found in the writings of any author, ancient or modern, on the subject
of government, a spirit of greater benignity, and a stronger inculcation
of moral principles than in those which I have published. They come,
Sir, from a man, who, by having lived in different countries, and
under different systems of government, and who, being intimate in
the construction of them, is a better judge of the subject than it is
possible that you, from the want of those opportunities, can be:--And
besides this, they come from a heart that knows not how to beguile.

I will farther say, that when that moment arrives in which the best
consolation that shall be left will be looking back on some past
actions, more virtuous and more meritorious than the rest, I shall then
with happiness remember, among other things, I have written the RIGHTS
OF MAN.---As to what proclamations, or prosecutions, or place-men,
and place-expectants,--those who possess, or those who are gaping for
office,--may say of them, it will not alter their character, either with
the world or with me.

     1 Henry D. (afterwards Viscount Melville), appointed
     Secretary for the Home Department, 1791. In 1805 he was
     impeached by the Commons for "gross malversation" while
     Treasurer of the Navy; he was acquitted by the Lords
     (1806), but not by public sentiment or by history.--
     _Editor_.

Having, Sir, made this declaration, I shall proceed to remark, not
particularly on your speech on that occasion, but on any one to which
your motion on that day gave rise; and I shall begin with that of Mr.
Adam.

This Gentleman accuses me of not having done the very thing that _I have
done_, and which, he says, if I _had_ done, he should not have accused
me.

Mr. Adam, in his speech, (see the Morning Chronicle of May 26,) says,

"That he had well considered the subject of Constitutional Publications,
and was by no means ready to say (but the contrary) that books of
science upon government though recommending a doctrine or system
different from the form of our constitution (meaning that of England)
were fit objects of prosecution; that if he did, he must condemn
Harrington for his Oceana, Sir Thomas More for his Eutopia, and Hume
for his Idea of a perfect Commonwealth. But (continued Mr. Adam) the
publication of Mr. Paine was very different; for it reviled what
was most sacred in the constitution, destroyed every principle of
subordination, and _established nothing in their room_."

I readily perceive that Mr. Adam has not read the Second Part of _Rights
of Man_, and I am put under the necessity, either of submitting to an
erroneous charge, or of justifying myself against it; and certainly
shall prefer the latter.--If, then, I shall prove to Mr. Adam, that in
my reasoning upon systems of government, in the Second Part of _Rights
of Man_, I have shown as clearly, I think, as words can convey ideas, a
certain system of government, and that not existing in theory only,
but already in full and established practice, and systematically
and practically free from all the vices and defects of the English
government, and capable of producing more happiness to the people, and
that also with an eightieth part of the taxes, which the present English
system of government consumes; I hope he will do me the justice, when
he next goes to the House, to get up and confess he had been mistaken in
saying, that I had _established nothing, and that I had destroyed every
principle of subordination_. Having thus opened the case, I now come to
the point.

In the Second Part of the Rights of Man, I have distinguished government
into two classes or systems: the one the hereditary system, the other
the representative system.

In the First Part of _Rights of Man_, I have endeavoured to shew, and
I challenge any man to refute it, that there does not exist a right
to establish hereditary government; or, in other words, hereditary
governors; because hereditary government always means a government
yet to come, and the case always is, that the people who are to live
afterwards, have always the same right to choose a government for
themselves, as the people had who lived before them.

In the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, I have not repeated those
arguments, because they are irrefutable; but have confined myself to
shew the defects of what is called hereditary government, or hereditary
succession, that it must, from the nature of it, throw government into
the hands of men totally unworthy of it, from want of principle, or
unfitted for it from want of capacity.--James the IId. is recorded as
an instance of the first of these cases; and instances are to be found
almost all over Europe to prove the truth of the latter.

To shew the absurdity of the Hereditary System still more strongly, I
will now put the following case:--Take any fifty men promiscuously, and
it will be very extraordinary, if, out of that number, one man should be
found, whose principles and talents taken together (for some might have
principles, and others might have talents) would render him a person
truly fitted to fill any very extraordinary office of National Trust.
If then such a fitness of character could not be expected to be found
in more than one person out of fifty, it would happen but once in a
thousand years to the eldest son of any one family, admitting each, on
an average, to hold the office twenty years. Mr. Adam talks of something
in the Constitution which he calls _most sacred_; but I hope he does not
mean hereditary succession, a thing which appears to me a violation of
every order of nature, and of common sense.

When I look into history and see the multitudes of men, otherwise
virtuous, who have died, and their families been ruined, in the defence
of knaves and fools, and which they would not have done, had they
reasoned at all upon the system; I do not know a greater good that an
individual can render to mankind, than to endeavour to break the chains
of political superstition. Those chains are now dissolving fast,
and proclamations and persecutions will serve but to hasten that
dissolution.

Having thus spoken of the Hereditary System as a bad System, and subject
to every possible defect, I now come to the Representative System, and
this Mr. Adam will find stated in the Second Part of Rights of Man, not
only as the best, but as the only _Theory_ of Government under which the
liberties of the people can be permanently secure.

But it is needless now to talk of mere theory, since there is already a
government in full practice, established upon that theory; or in other
words, upon the Rights of Man, and has been so for almost twenty years.
Mr. Pitt, in a speech of his some short time since, said, "That there
never did, and never could exist a Government established upon those
Rights, and that if it began at noon, it would end at night." Mr. Pitt
has not yet arrived at the degree of a school-boy in this species of
knowledge; his practice has been confined to the means of _extorting
revenue_, and his boast has been--_how much!_ Whereas the boast of the
system of government that I am speaking of, is not how much, but how
little.

The system of government purely representative, unmixed with any thing
of hereditary nonsense, began in America. I will now compare the effects
of that system of government with the system of government in England,
both during, and since the close of the war.

So powerful is the Representative system, first, by combining and
consolidating all the parts of a country together, however great the
extent; and, secondly, by admitting of none but men properly qualified
into the government, or dismissing them if they prove to be otherwise,
that America was enabled thereby totally to defeat and overthrow all
the schemes and projects of the hereditary government of England against
her. As the establishment of the Revolution and Independence of America
is a proof of this fact, it is needless to enlarge upon it.

I now come to the comparative effect of the two systems _since_ the
close of the war, and I request Mr. Adam to attend to it.

America had internally sustained the ravages of upwards of seven years
of war, which England had not. England sustained only the expence of the
war; whereas America sustained not only the expence, but the destruction
of property committed by _both_ armies. Not a house was built
during that period, and many thousands were destroyed. The farms and
plantations along the coast of the country, for more than a thousand
miles, were laid waste. Her commerce was annihilated. Her ships were
either taken, or had rotted within her own harbours. The credit of
her funds had fallen upwards of ninety per cent., that is, an original
hundred pounds would not sell for ten pounds. In fine, she was
apparently put back an hundred years when the war closed, which was not
the case with England.

But such was the event, that the same representative system of
government, though since better organized, which enabled her to conquer,
enabled her also to recover, and she now presents a more flourishing
condition, and a more happy and harmonized society, under that system of
government, than any country in the world can boast under any other. Her
towns are rebuilt, much better than before; her farms and plantations
are in higher improvement than ever; her commerce is spread over the
world, and her funds have risen from less than ten pounds the hundred to
upwards of one hundred and twenty. Mr. Pitt and his colleagues talk
of the things that have happened in his boyish administration, without
knowing what greater things have happened elsewhere, and under other
systems of government.

I now come to state the expence of the two systems, as they now stand
in each of the countries; but it may first be proper to observe, that
government in America is what it ought to be, a matter of honour and
trust, and not made a trade of for the purpose of lucre.

The whole amount of the nett(sic) taxes in England (exclusive of the
expence of collection, of drawbacks, of seizures and condemnation, of
fines and penalties, of fees of office, of litigations and informers,
which are some of the blessed means of enforcing them) is seventeen
millions. Of this sum, about nine millions go for the payment of the
interest of the national debt, and the remainder, being about eight
millions, is for the current annual expences. This much for one side of
the case. I now come to the other.

The expence of the several departments of the general Representative
Government of the United States of America, extending over a space
of country nearly ten times larger than England, is two hundred and
ninety-four thousand, five hundred and fifty-eight dollars, which, at
4s. 6d. per dollar, is 66,305L. 11s. sterling, and is thus apportioned;

[Illustration: table046]

On account of the incursions of the Indians on the back settlements,
Congress is at this time obliged to keep six thousand militia in pay, in
addition to a regiment of foot, and a battalion of artillery, which it
always keeps; and this increases the expence of the War Department to
390,000 dollars, which is 87,795L. sterling, but when peace shall be
concluded with the Indians, the greatest part of this expence will
cease, and the total amount of the expence of government, including that
of the army, will not amount to 100,000L. sterling, which, as has been
already stated, is but an eightieth part of the expences of the English
government.

I request Mr. Adam and Mr. Dundas, and all those who are talking of
Constitutions, and blessings, and Kings, and Lords, and the Lord
knows what, to look at this statement. Here is a form and system of
government, that is better organized and better administered than any
government in the world, and that for less than one hundred thousand
pounds per annum, and yet every Member of Congress receives, as a
compensation for his time and attendance on public business, one pound
seven shillings per day, which is at the rate of nearly five hundred
pounds a year.

This is a government that has nothing to fear. It needs no proclamations
to deter people from writing and reading. It needs no political
superstition to support it; it was by encouraging discussion and
rendering the press free upon all subjects of government, that the
principles of government became understood in America, and the people
are now enjoying the present blessings under it. You hear of no riots,
tumults, and disorders in that country; because there exists no cause
to produce them. Those things are never the effect of Freedom, but of
restraint, oppression, and excessive taxation.

In America, there is not that class of poor and wretched people that
are so numerously dispersed all over England, who are to be told by a
proclamation, that they are happy; and this is in a great measure to
be accounted for, not by the difference of proclamations, but by the
difference of governments and the difference of taxes between that
country and this. What the labouring people of that country earn, they
apply to their own use, and to the education of their children, and
do not pay it away in taxes as fast as they earn it, to support Court
extravagance, and a long enormous list of place-men and pensioners;
and besides this, they have learned the manly doctrine of reverencing
themselves, and consequently of respecting each other; and they laugh
at those imaginary beings called Kings and Lords, and all the fraudulent
trumpery of Court.

When place-men and pensioners, or those who expect to be such, are
lavish in praise of a government, it is not a sign of its being a good
one. The pension list alone in England (see sir John Sinclair's History
of the Revenue, p. 6, of the Appendix) is one hundred and seven thousand
four hundred and four pounds, _which is more than the expences of the
whole Government of America amount to_. And I am now more convinced than
before, that the offer that was made to me of a thousand pounds for the
copy-right of the second part of the Rights of Man, together with the
remaining copyright of the first part, was to have effected, by a quick
suppression, what is now attempted to be done by a prosecution. The
connection which the person, who made the offer, has with the King's
printing-office, may furnish part of the means of inquiring into this
affair, when the ministry shall please to bring their prosecution to
issue.(1) But to return to my subject.--

I have said in the second part of the _Rights of Man_, and I repeat
it here, that the service of any man, whether called King, President,
Senator, Legislator, or any thing else, cannot be worth more to any
country, in the regular routine of office, than ten thousand pounds per
annum. We have a better man in America, and more of a gentleman, than
any King I ever knew of, who does not occasion half that ex-pence; for,
though the salary is fixed at £5625 he does not accept it, and it is
only the incidental expences that are paid out of it.(2) The name by
which a man is called is of itself but an empty thing. It is worth and
character alone which can render him valuable, for without these, Kings,
and Lords, and Presidents, are but jingling names.

But without troubling myself about Constitutions of Government, I have
shewn in the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, that an alliance may be
formed between England, France, and America, and that the expences of
government in England may be put back to one million and a half, viz.:

     Civil expence of Government...... 500,000L.
     Army............................. 500,000
     Navy............................. 500,000
                                      ----------
                                     1,500,000L.

And even this sum is fifteen times greater than the expences of
government are in America; and it is also greater than the whole peace
establishment of England amounted to about an hundred years ago. So much
has the weight and oppression of taxes increased since the Revolution,
and especially since the year 1714.

     1 At Paine's trial, Chapman, the printer, in answer to fa
     question of the Solicitor General, said: "I made him three
     separate offers in the different stages of the work; the
     first, I believe, was a hundred guineas, the second five
     hundred, and the last was a thousand."--_Editor_.

     2 Error. See also ante, and in vol. ii., p. 435.
     Washington had retracted his original announcement, and
     received his salary regularly.--_Editor_.

To shew that the sum of 500,000L. is sufficient to defray all civil
expences of government, I have, in that work, annexed the following
estimate for any country of the same extent as England.--

In the first place, three hundred Representatives, fairly elected, are
sufficient for all the purposes to which Legislation can apply, and
preferable to a larger number.

If, then, an allowance, at the rate of 500L. per annum be made to every
Representative, deducting for non-attendance, the expence, if the whole
number attended six months each year, would be.......75,000L.

The Official Departments could not possibly exceed the following number,
with the salaries annexed, viz.:



[ILLUSTRATION: Table]

Three offices at
 10,000L.
 each
 30,000

Ten ditto at
 5,000
 u
 50,000

Twenty ditto at
 2,000
 u
 40,000

Forty ditto at
 1,000
 it
 40,000

Two hundred ditto at
 500
 u
 100,000

Three hundred ditto at  200
 u
 60,000

Five hundred ditto at
 100
 u
 50,000

Seven hundred ditto at  75
 it
 52,500

497,500L.


If a nation chose, it might deduct four per cent, from all the offices,
and make one of twenty thousand pounds per annum, and style the person
who should fill it, King or Madjesty, (1) or give him any other title.

Taking, however, this sum of one million and a half, as an abundant
supply for all the expences of government under any form whatever,
there will remain a surplus of nearly six millions and a half out of
the present taxes, after paying the interest of the national debt; and
I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights of Man_, what appears to me,
the best mode of applying the surplus money; for I am now speaking of
expences and savings, and not of systems of government.

     1 A friend of Paine advised him against this pun, as too
     personal an allusion to George the Third, to whom however
     much has been forgiven on account of his mental infirmity.
     Yorke, in his account of his visit to Paine, 1802, alludes
     to his (Paine's) anecdotes "of humor and benevolence"
     concerning George III.--_Editor_.

I have, in the first place, estimated the poor-rates at two millions
annually, and shewn that the first effectual step would be to abolish
the poor-rates entirely (which would be a saving of two millions to the
house-keepers,) and to remit four millions out of the surplus taxes to
the poor, to be paid to them in money, in proportion to the number of
children in each family, and the number of aged persons.

I have estimated the number of persons of both sexes in England, of
fifty years of age and upwards, at 420,000, and have taken one third of
this number, viz. 140,000, to be poor people.

To save long calculations, I have taken 70,000 of them to be upwards of
fifty years of age, and under sixty, and the others to be sixty years
and upwards; and to allow six pounds per annum to the former class, and
ten pounds per annum to the latter. The expence of which will be,

  Seventy thousand persons at 6L. per annum..... 420,000L.
  Seventy thousand persons at 10L. per annum.... 700,000
                                                -----------
                                               1,120,000L.

There will then remain of the four millions, 2,880,000L. I have stated
two different methods of appropriating this money. The one is to pay it
in proportion to the number of children in each family, at the rate of
three or four pounds per annum for each child; the other is to apportion
it according to the expence of living in different counties; but in
either of these cases it would, together with the allowance to be
made to the aged, completely take off taxes from one third of all the
families in England, besides relieving all the other families from the
burthen of poor-rates.

The whole number of families in England, allotting five souls to each
family, is one million four hundred thousand, of which I take one third,
_viz_. 466,666 to be poor families who now pay four millions of taxes,
and that the poorest pays at least four guineas a year; and that the
other thirteen millions are paid by the other two-thirds. The plan,
therefore, as stated in the work, is, first, to remit or repay, as is
already stated, this sum of four millions to the poor, because it is
impossible to separate them from the others in the present mode of
collecting taxes on articles of consumption; and, secondly, to abolish
the poor-rates, the house and window-light tax, and to change the
commutation tax into a progressive tax on large estates, the particulars
of all which are set forth in the work, to which I desire Mr. Adam to
refer for particulars. I shall here content myself with saying, that to
a town of the population of Manchester, it will make a difference in its
favour, compared with the present state of things, of upwards of fifty
thousand pounds annually, and so in proportion to all other places
throughout the nation. This certainly is of more consequence than that
the same sums should be collected to be afterwards spent by riotous
and profligate courtiers, and in nightly revels at the Star and Garter
tavern, Pall Mall.

I will conclude this part of my letter with an extract from the Second
Part of the _Rights of Man_, which Mr. Dundas (a man rolling in luxury
at the expence of the nation) has branded with the epithet of "wicked."

"By the operation of this plan, the poor laws, those instruments
of civil torture, will be superseded, and the wasteful ex-pence of
litigation prevented. The hearts of the humane will not be shocked by
ragged and hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of
age begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to
place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows
will have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on
the death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children
will no longer be considered as increasing the distresses of their
parents. The haunts of the wretched will be known, because it will be
to their advantage; and the number of petty crimes, the offspring of
poverty and distress, will be lessened. The poor as well as the rich
will then be interested in the support of Government, and the cause and
apprehension of riots and tumults will cease. Ye who sit in ease, and
solace yourselves in plenty, and such there are in Turkey and Russia,
as well as in England, and who say to yourselves, _are we not well off_
have ye thought of these things? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and
feel for yourselves alone."

After this remission of four millions be made, and the poor-rates
and houses and window-light tax be abolished, and the commutation
tax changed, there will still remain nearly one million and a half
of surplus taxes; and as by an alliance between England, France and
America, armies and navies will, in a great measure, be rendered
unnecessary; and as men who have either been brought up in, or long
habited to, those lines of life, are still citizens of a nation in
common with the rest, and have a right to participate in all plans of
national benefit, it is stated in that work (_Rights of Man_, Part ii.)
to apply annually 507,000L. out of the surplus taxes to this purpose, in
the following manner:

[Illustration: table 053]

The limits to which it is proper to confine this letter, will not admit
of my entering into further particulars. I address it to Mr. Dundas
because he took the lead in the debate, and he wishes, I suppose, to
appear conspicuous; but the purport of it is to justify myself from the
charge which Mr. Adam has made.

This Gentleman, as has been observed in the beginning of this letter,
considers the writings of Harrington, More and Hume, as justifiable and
legal publications, because they reasoned by comparison, though in so
doing they shewed plans and systems of government, not only different
from, but preferable to, that of England; and he accuses me of
endeavouring to confuse, instead of producing a system in the room of
that which I had reasoned against; whereas, the fact is, that I have
not only reasoned by comparison of the representative system against
the hereditary system, but I have gone further; for I have produced
an instance of a government established entirely on the representative
system, under which greater happiness is enjoyed, much fewer taxes
required, and much higher credit is established, than under the system
of government in England. The funds in England have risen since the war
only from 54L. to 97L. and they have been down since the proclamation,
to 87L. whereas the funds in America rose in the mean time from 10L. to
120L.

His charge against me of "destroying every principle of subordination,"
is equally as groundless; which even a single paragraph from the work
will prove, and which I shall here quote:

"Formerly when divisions arose respecting Governments, recourse was had
to the sword, and a civil war ensued. That savage custom is exploded
by the new system, and _recourse is had to a national convention_.
Discussion, and the general will, arbitrates the question, and to
this private opinion yields with a good grace, and _order is preserved
uninterrupted_."

That two different charges should be brought at the same time, the one
by a Member of the Legislative, for _not_ doing a certain thing, and
the other by the Attorney General for _doing_ it, is a strange jumble of
contradictions. I have now justified myself, or the work rather, against
the first, by stating the case in this letter, and the justification of
the other will be undertaken in its proper place. But in any case the
work will go on.

I shall now conclude this letter with saying, that the only objection
I found against the plan and principles contained in the Second Part
of _Rights of Man_, when I had written the book, was, that they would
beneficially interest at least ninety-nine persons out of every hundred
throughout the nation, and therefore would not leave sufficient room for
men to act from the direct and disinterested principles of honour; but
the prosecution now commenced has fortunately removed that objection,
and the approvers and protectors of that work now feel the immediate
impulse of honour added to that of national interest.

I am, Mr. Dundas,

Not your obedient humble Servant,

But the contrary,

Thomas Paine.




VI. LETTERS TO ONSLOW CRANLEY,

Lord Lieutenant of the county of Surry; on the subject of the late
excellent proclamation:--or the chairman who shall preside at the
meeting to be held at Epsom, June 18.


FIRST LETTER.

London, June 17th, 1792.

SIR,

I have seen in the public newspapers the following advertisement, to
wit--

"To the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, Freeholders, and other Inhabitants of
the county of Surry.

"At the requisition and desire of several of the freeholders of the
county, I am, in the absence of the Sheriff, to desire the favour of
your attendance, at a meeting to be held at Epsom, on Monday, the 18th
instant, at 12 o'clock at noon, to consider of an humble address to his
majesty, to express our grateful approbation of his majesty's paternal,
and well-timed attendance to the public welfare, in his late most
gracious Proclamation against the enemies of our happy Constitution.

"(Signed.) Onslow Cranley."


Taking it for granted, that the aforesaid advertisement, equally as
obscure as the proclamation to which it refers, has nevertheless some
meaning, and is intended to effect some purpose; and as a prosecution
(whether wisely or unwisely, justly or unjustly) is already commenced
against a work intitled RIGHTS OF MAN, of which I have the honour and
happiness to be the author; I feel it necessary to address this letter
to you, and to request that it may be read publicly to the gentlemen who
shall meet at Epsom in consequence of the advertisement.

The work now under prosecution is, I conceive, the same work which is
intended to be suppressed by the aforesaid proclamation. Admitting this
to be the case, the gentlemen of the county of Surry are called upon by
somebody to condemn a work, and they are at the same time forbidden by
the proclamation to know what that work is; and they are further called
upon to give their aid and assistance to prevent other people from
knowing it also. It is therefore necessary that the author, for his own
justification, as well as to prevent the gentlemen who shall meet from
being imposed upon by misrepresentation, should give some outlines of
the principles and plans which that work contains.

The work, Sir, in question, contains, first, an investigation of general
principles of government.

It also distinguishes government into two classes or systems, the one
the hereditary system; the other the representative system; and it
compares these two systems with each other.

It shews that what is called hereditary government cannot exist as a
matter of right; because hereditary government always means a government
yet to come; and the case always is, that those who are to live
afterwards have always the same right to establish a government for
themselves as the people who had lived before them.

It also shews the defect to which hereditary government is unavoidably
subject: that it must, from the nature of it, throw government into
the hands of men totally unworthy of it from the want of principle, and
unfitted for it from want of capacity. James II. and many others are
recorded in the English history as proofs of the former of those cases,
and instances are to be found all over Europe to prove the truth of the
latter.

It then shews that the representative system is the only true system of
government; that it is also the only system under which the liberties of
any people can be permanently secure; and, further, that it is the
only one that can continue the same equal probability at all times of
admitting of none but men properly qualified, both by principles and
abilities, into government, and of excluding such as are otherwise.

The work shews also, by plans and calculations not hitherto denied nor
controverted, not even by the prosecution that is commenced, that the
taxes now existing may be reduced at least six millions, that taxes may
be entirely taken off from the poor, who are computed at one third of
the nation; and that taxes on the other two thirds may be considerably
reduced; that the aged poor may be comfortably provided for, and the
children of poor families properly educated; that fifteen thousand
soldiers, and the same number of sailors, may be allowed three
shillings per week during life out of the surplus taxes; and also that a
proportionate allowance may be made to the officers, and the pay of the
remaining soldiers and sailors be raised; and that it is better to apply
the surplus taxes to those purposes, than to consume them on lazy and
profligate placemen and pensioners; and that the revenue, said to be
twenty thousand pounds per annum, raised by a tax upon coals, and given
to the Duke of Richmond, is a gross imposition upon all the people of
London, and ought to be instantly abolished.

This, Sir, is a concise abstract of the principles and plans contained
in the work that is now prosecuted, and for the suppression of which the
proclamation appears to be intended; but as it is impossible that I can,
in the compass of a letter, bring into view all the matters contained
in the work, and as it is proper that the gentlemen who may compose that
meeting should know what the merits or demerits of it are, before they
come to any resolutions, either directly or indirectly relating thereto,
I request the honour of presenting them with one hundred copies of the
second part of the Rights of Man, and also one thousand copies of my
letter to Mr. Dundas, which I have directed to be sent to Epsom for that
purpose; and I beg the favour of the Chairman to take the trouble of
presenting them to the gentlemen who shall meet on that occasion, with
my sincere wishes for their happiness, and for that of the nation in
general.

Having now closed thus much of the subject of my letter, I next come
to speak of what has relation to me personally. I am well aware of the
delicacy that attends it, but the purpose of calling the meeting appears
to me so inconsistent with that justice that is always due between man
and man, that it is proper I should (as well on account of the gentlemen
who may meet, as on my own account) explain myself fully and candidly
thereon.

I have already informed the gentlemen, that a prosecution is commenced
against a work of which I have the honour and happiness to be the
author; and I have good reasons for believing that the proclamation
which the gentlemen are called to consider, and to present an address
upon, is purposely calculated to give an impression to the jury before
whom that matter is to come. In short, that it is dictating a verdict by
proclamation; and I consider the instigators of the meeting to be held
at Epsom, as aiding and abetting the same improper, and, in my opinion,
illegal purpose, and that in a manner very artfully contrived, as I
shall now shew.

Had a meeting been called of the Freeholders of the county of Middlesex,
the gentlemen who had composed that meeting would have rendered
themselves objectionable as persons to serve on a Jury, before whom the
judicial case was afterwards to come. But by calling a meeting out
of the county of Middlesex, that matter is artfully avoided, and the
gentlemen of Surry are summoned, as if it were intended thereby to give
a tone to the sort of verdict which the instigators of the meeting no
doubt wish should be brought in, and to give countenance to the Jury in
so doing. I am, sir,

With much respect to the

Gentlemen who shall meet, Their and your obedient and humble Servant,

Thomas Paine.


TO ONSLOW CRANLEY,

COMMONLY CALLED LORD ONSLOW.

SECOND LETTER. SIR,

London, June 21st 1792.

WHEN I wrote you the letter which Mr. Home Tooke did me the favour to
present to you, as chairman of the meeting held at Epsom, Monday, June
18, it was not with much expectation that you would do me the justice of
permitting, or recommending it to be publicly read. I am well aware that
the signature of Thomas Paine has something in it dreadful to sinecure
Placemen and Pensioners; and when you, on seeing the letter opened,
informed the meeting that it was signed Thomas Paine, and added in a
note of exclamation, "the common enemy of us all." you spoke one of the
greatest truths you ever uttered, if you confine the expression to
men of the same description with yourself; men living in indolence and
luxury, on the spoil and labours of the public.

The letter has since appeared in the "Argus," and probably in other
papers.(1) It will justify itself; but if any thing on that account
hath been wanting, your conduct at the meeting would have supplied
the omission. You there sufficiently proved that I was not mistaken in
supposing that the meeting was called to give an indirect aid to the
prosecution commenced against a work, the reputation of which will long
outlive the memory of the Pensioner I am writing to.

When meetings, Sir, are called by the partisans of the Court, to
preclude the nation the right of investigating systems and principles
of government, and of exposing errors and defects, under the pretence
of prosecuting an individual--it furnishes an additional motive for
maintaining sacred that violated right.

The principles and arguments contained in the work in question, _Rights
OF Man_, have stood, and they now stand, and I believe ever will stand,
unrefuted. They are stated in a fair and open manner to the world, and
they have already received the public approbation of a greater number of
men, of the best of characters, of every denomination of religion, and
of every rank in life, (placemen and pensioners excepted,) than all the
juries that shall meet in England, for ten years to come, will amount
to; and I have, moreover, good reasons for believing that the approvers
of that work, as well private as public, are already more numerous than
all the present electors throughout the nation.

     1 The _Argus_ was edited by Sampson Perry, soon after
     prosecuted.--_Editor_.

Not less than forty pamphlets, intended as answers thereto, have
appeared, and as suddenly disappeared: scarcely are the titles of any of
them remembered, notwithstanding their endeavours have been aided by all
the daily abuse which the Court and Ministerial newspapers, for almost
a year and a half, could bestow, both upon the work and the author;
and now that every attempt to refute, and every abuse has failed,
the invention of calling the work a libel has been hit upon, and the
discomfited party has pusillanimously retreated to prosecution and a
jury, and obscure addresses.

As I well know that a long letter from me will not be agreeable to you,
I will relieve your uneasiness by making it as short as I conveniently
can; and will conclude it with taking up the subject at that part where
Mr. HORNE TOOKE was interrupted from going on when at the meeting.

That gentleman was stating, that the situation you stood in rendered it
improper for you to appear _actively_ in a scene in which your private
interest was too visible: that you were a Bedchamber Lord at a thousand
a year, and a Pensioner at three thousand pounds a year more--and here
he was stopped by the little but noisy circle you had collected round.
Permit me then, Sir, to add an explanation to his words, for the benefit
of your neighbours, and with which, and a few observations, I shall
close my letter.

When it was reported in the English Newspapers, some short time since,
that the empress of RUSSIA had given to one of her minions a large tract
of country and several thousands of peasants as property, it very justly
provoked indignation and abhorrence in those who heard it. But if we
compare the mode practised in England, with that which appears to us so
abhorrent in Russia, it will be found to amount to very near the same
thing;--for example--

As the whole of the revenue in England is drawn by taxes from the
pockets of the people, those things called gifts and grants (of which
kind are all pensions and sinecure places) are paid out of that stock.
The difference, therefore, between the two modes is, that in England the
money is collected by the government, and then given to the Pensioner,
and in Russia he is left to collect it for himself. The smallest sum
which the poorest family in a county so near London as Surry, can be
supposed to pay annually, of taxes, is not less than five pounds; and as
your sinecure of one thousand, and pension of three thousand per annum,
are made up of taxes paid by eight hundred such poor families, it comes
to the same thing as if the eight hundred families had been given to
you, as in Russia, and you had collected the money on your account.
Were you to say that you are not quartered particularly on the people
of Surrey, but on the nation at large, the objection would amount to
nothing; for as there are more pensioners than counties, every one may
be considered as quartered on that in which he lives.

What honour or happiness you can derive from being the PRINCIPAL PAUPER
of the neighbourhood, and occasioning a greater expence than the poor,
the aged, and the infirm, for ten miles round you, I leave you to enjoy.
At the same time I can see that it is no wonder you should be strenuous
in suppressing a book which strikes at the root of those abuses. No
wonder that you should be against reforms, against the freedom of the
press, and the right of investigation. To you, and to others of your
description, these are dreadful things; but you should also consider,
that the motives which prompt you to _act_, ought, by reflection, to
compel you to be _silent_.

Having now returned your compliment, and sufficiently tired your
patience, I take my leave of you, with mentioning, that if you had not
prevented my former letter from being read at the meeting, you would not
have had the trouble of reading this; and also with requesting, that
the next time you call me "_a common enemy_," you would add, "_of us
sinecure placemen and pensioners_."

I am, Sir, &c. &c. &c.

Thomas Paine.




VII. TO THE SHERIFF OF THE COUNTY OF SUSSEX,

OR, THE GENTLEMAN WHO SHALL PRESIDE AT THE MEETING TO BE HELD AT LEWES,
JULY 4.

London, June 30, 1792.

Sir,

I have seen in the Lewes newspapers, of June 25, an advertisement,
signed by sundry persons, and also by the sheriff, for holding a meeting
at the Town-hall of Lewes, for the purpose, as the advertisement states,
of presenting an Address on the late Proclamation for suppressing
writings, books, &c. And as I conceive that a certain publication
of mine, entitled "Rights of Man," in which, among other things, the
enormous increase of taxes, placemen, and pensioners, is shewn to be
unnecessary and oppressive, _is the particular writing alluded to in
the said publication_; I request the Sheriff, or in his absence, whoever
shall preside at the meeting, or any other person, to read this letter
publicly to the company who shall assemble in consequence of that
advertisement.

Gentlemen--It is now upwards of eighteen years since I was a resident
inhabitant of the town of Lewes. My situation among you, as an officer
of the revenue, for more than six years, enabled me to see into the
numerous and various distresses which the weight of taxes even at that
time of day occasioned; and feeling, as I then did, and as it is natural
for me to do, for the hard condition of others, it is with pleasure I
can declare, and every person then under my survey, and now living, can
witness, the exceeding candour, and even tenderness, with which that
part of the duty that fell to my share was executed. The name of _Thomas
Paine_ is not to be found in the records of the Lewes' justices, in any
one act of contention with, or severity of any kind whatever towards,
the persons whom he surveyed, either in the town, or in the country;
of this, _Mr. Fuller_ and _Mr. Shelley_, who will probably attend the
meeting, can, if they please, give full testimony. It is, however, not
in their power to contradict it.

Having thus indulged myself in recollecting a place where I formerly
had, and even now have, many friends, rich and poor, and most probably
some enemies, I proceed to the more important purport of my letter.

Since my departure from Lewes, fortune or providence has thrown me
into a line of action, which my first setting out into life could not
possibly have suggested to me.

I have seen the fine and fertile country of America ravaged and deluged
in blood, and the taxes of England enormously increased and multiplied
in consequence thereof; and this, in a great measure, by the instigation
of the same class of placemen, pensioners, and Court dependants, who
are now promoting addresses throughout England, on the present
_unintelligible_ Proclamation.

I have also seen a system of Government rise up in that country, free
from corruption, and now administered over an extent of territory ten
times as large as England, _for less expence than the pensions alone in
England amount to_; and under which more freedom is enjoyed, and a more
happy state of society is preserved, and a more general prosperity is
promoted, than under any other system of Government now existing in the
world. Knowing, as I do, the things I now declare, I should reproach
myself with want of duty and affection to mankind, were I not in the
most undismayed manner to publish them, as it were, on the house-tops,
for the good of others.

Having thus glanced at what has passed within my knowledge, since my
leaving Lewes, I come to the subject more immediately before the meeting
now present.

Mr. Edmund Burke, who, as I shall show, in a future publication, has
lived a concealed pensioner, at the expence of the public, of fifteen
hundred pounds per annum, for about ten years last past, published a
book the winter before last, in open violation of the principles of
liberty, and for which he was applauded by that class of men _who are
now promoting addresses_. Soon after his book appeared, I published the
first part of the work, entitled "Rights of Man," as an answer thereto,
and had the happiness of receiving the public thanks of several bodies
of men, and of numerous individuals of the best character, of every
denomination in religion, and of every rank in life--placemen and
pensioners excepted.

In February last, I published the Second Part of "Rights of Man," and as
it met with still greater approbation from the true friends of national
freedom, and went deeper into the system of Government, and exposed the
abuses of it, more than had been done in the First Part, it consequently
excited an alarm among all those, who, insensible of the burthen of
taxes which the general mass of the people sustain, are living in luxury
and indolence, and hunting after Court preferments, sinecure places, and
pensions, either for themselves, or for their family connections.

I have shewn in that work, that the taxes may be reduced at least _six
millions_, and even then the expences of Government in England would be
twenty times greater than they are in the country I have already spoken
of. That taxes may be entirely taken off from the poor, by remitting to
them in money at the rate of between _three and four pounds_ per head
per annum, for the education and bringing up of the children of the poor
families, who are computed at one third of the whole nation, and _six
pounds_ per annum to all poor persons, decayed tradesmen, or others,
from the age of fifty until sixty, and _ten pounds_ per annum from after
sixty. And that in consequence of this allowance, to be paid out of the
surplus taxes, the poor-rates would become unnecessary, and that it is
better to apply the surplus taxes to these beneficent purposes, _than to
waste them on idle and profligate courtiers, placemen, and pensioners_.

These, gentlemen, are a part of the plans and principles contained in
the work, which this meeting is now called upon, in an indirect manner,
to vote an address against, and brand with the name of _wicked and
seditious_. But that the work may speak for itself, I request leave to
close this part of my letter with an extract therefrom, in the following
words: [_Quotation the same as that on p. 26_.]

Gentlemen, I have now stated to you such matters as appear necessary
to me to offer to the consideration of the meeting. I have no other
interest in what I am doing, nor in writing you this letter, than the
interest of the _heart_. I consider the proposed address as calculated
to give countenance to placemen, pensioners, enormous taxation, and
corruption. Many of you will recollect, that whilst I resided among you,
there was not a man more firm and open in supporting the principles of
liberty than myself, and I still pursue, and ever will, the same path.

I have, Gentlemen, only one request to make, which is--that those
who have called the meeting will speak _out_, and say, whether in
the address they are going to present against publications, which the
proclamation calls wicked, they mean the work entitled _Rights of Man_,
or whether they do not?

I am, Gentlemen, With sincere wishes for your happiness,

Your friend and Servant,

Thomas Paine.




VIII. TO MR. SECRETARY DUNDAS.

Calais, Sept. 15, 1792.

Sir,

I CONCEIVE it necessary to make you acquainted with the following
circumstance:--The department of Calais having elected me a member
of the National Convention of France, I set off from London the 13th
instant, in company with Mr. Frost, of Spring Garden, and Mr. Audibert,
one of the municipal officers of Calais, who brought me the certificate
of my being elected. We had not arrived more, I believe, than five
minutes at the York Hotel, at Dover, when the train of circumstances
began that I am going to relate. We had taken our baggage out of the
carriage, and put it into a room, into which we went. Mr. Frost, having
occasion to go out, was stopped in the passage by a gentleman, who told
him he must return into the room, which he did, and the gentleman came
in with him, and shut the door. I had remained in the room; Mr. Audibert
was gone to inquire when the packet was to sail. The gentleman then
said, that he was collector of the customs, and had an information
against us, and must examine our baggage for prohibited articles. He
produced his commission as Collector. Mr. Frost demanded to see the
information, which the Collector refused to shew, and continued to
refuse, on every demand that we made. The Collector then called in
several other officers, and began first to search our pockets. He took
from Mr. Audibert, who was then returned into the room, every thing
he found in his pocket, and laid it on the table. He then searched Mr.
Frost in the same manner, (who, among other things, had the keys of the
trunks in his pocket,) and then did the same by me. Mr. Frost wanting
to go out, mentioned it, and was going towards the door; on which the
Collector placed himself against the door, and said, nobody should
depart the room. After the keys had been taken from Mr. Frost, (for I
had given him the keys of my trunks beforehand, for the purpose of his
attending the baggage to the customs, if it should be necessary,) the
Collector asked us to open the trunks, presenting us the keys for
that purpose; this we declined to do, unless he would produce his
information, which he again refused. The Collector then opened the
trunks himself, and took out every paper and letter, sealed or unsealed.
On our remonstrating with him on the bad policy, as well as the
illegality, of Custom-House officers seizing papers and letters, which
were things that did not come under their cognizance, he replied, that
the _Proclamation_ gave him the authority.

Among the letters which he took out of my trunk, were two sealed
letters, given into my charge by the American Minister in London
[Pinckney], one of which was directed to the American Minister at Paris
[Gouverneur Morris], the other to a private gentleman; a letter from the
President of the United States, and a letter from the Secretary of
State in America, both directed to me, and which I had received from
the American Minister, now in London, and were private letters of
friendship; a letter from the electoral body of the Department of
Calais, containing the notification of my being elected to the National
Convention; and a letter from the President of the National Assembly,
informing me of my being also elected for the Department of the Oise.

As we found that all remonstrances with the Collector, on the bad policy
and illegality of seizing papers and letters, and retaining our persons
by force, under the pretence of searching for prohibited articles,
were vain, (for he justified himself on the Proclamation, and on the
information which he refused to shew,) we contented ourselves with
assuring him, that what he was then doing, he would afterwards have to
answer for, and left it to himself to do as he pleased.

It appeared to us that the Collector was acting under the direction of
some other person or persons, then in the hotel, but whom he did not
choose we should see, or who did not choose to be seen by us; for the
Collector went several times out of the room for a few minutes, and was
also called out several times.

When the Collector had taken what papers and letters he pleased out of
the trunks, he proceeded to read them. The first letter he took up for
this purpose was that from the President of the United States to me.
While he was doing this, I said, that it was very extraordinary that
General Washington could not write a letter of private friendship to
me, without its being subject to be read by a custom-house officer. Upon
this Mr. Frost laid his hand over the face of the letter, and told the
Collector that he should not read it, and took it from him. Mr. Frost
then, casting his eyes on the concluding paragraph of the letter, said,
I will read this part to you, which he did; of which the following is an
exact transcript--

"And as no one can feel a greater interest in the happiness of mankind
than I do, it is the first wish of my heart, that the enlightened policy
of the present age may diffuse to all men those blessings to which
they are entitled, and lay the foundation of happiness for future
generations."(1)

As all the other letters and papers lay then on the table, the Collector
took them up, and was going out of the room with them. During the
transactions already stated, I contented myself with observing what
passed, and spoke but little; but on seeing the Collector going out of
the room with the letters, I told him that the papers and letters then
in his hand were either belonging to me, or entrusted to my charge, and
that as I could not permit them to be out of my sight, I must insist on
going with him.

     1 Washington's letter is dated 6 May, 1792. See my _Life of
     Paine_ vol. i., p. 302.--_Editor_.

The Collector then made a list of the letters and papers, and went out
of the room, giving the letters and papers into the charge of one of
the officers. He returned in a short time, and, after some trifling
conversation, chiefly about the Proclamation, told us, that he saw _the
Proclamation was ill-founded_, and asked if we chose to put the letters
and papers into the trunks ourselves, which, as we had not taken them
out, we declined doing, and he did it himself, and returned us the keys.

In stating to you these matters, I make no complaint against the
personal conduct of the Collector, or of any of the officers. Their
manner was as civil as such an extraordinary piece of business could
admit of.

My chief motive in writing to you on this subject is, that you may take
measures for preventing the like in future, not only as it concerns
private individuals, but in order to prevent a renewal of those
unpleasant consequences that have heretofore arisen between nations from
circumstances equally as insignificant. I mention this only for myself;
but as the interruption extended to two other gentlemen, it is probable
that they, as individuals, will take some more effectual mode for
redress.

I am, Sir, yours, &c.

Thomas Paine.

P. S. Among the papers seized, was a copy of the Attorney-General's
information against me for publishing the _Rights of Man_, and a printed
proof copy of my Letter to the Addressers, which will soon be published.




IX. LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE ADDRESSERS ON THE LATE PROCLAMATION.(1)

COULD I have commanded circumstances with a wish, I know not of any that
would have more generally promoted the progress of knowledge, than
the late Proclamation, and the numerous rotten Borough and Corporation
Addresses thereon. They have not only served as advertisements, but they
have excited a spirit of enquiry into principles of government, and a
desire to read the Rights OF Man, in places where that spirit and that
work were before unknown.

The people of England, wearied and stunned with parties, and alternately
deceived by each, had almost resigned the prerogative of thinking. Even
curiosity had expired, and a universal languor had spread itself over
the land. The opposition was visibly no other than a contest for power,
whilst the mass of the nation stood torpidly by as the prize.

In this hopeless state of things, the First Part of the Rights of
Man made its appearance. It had to combat with a strange mixture
of prejudice and indifference; it stood exposed to every species of
newspaper abuse; and besides this, it had to remove the obstructions
which Mr. Burke's rude and outrageous attack on the French Revolution
had artfully raised.

     1 The Royal Proclamation issued against seditious writings,
     May 21st. This pamphlet, the proof of which was read in
     Paris (see P. S. of preceding chapter), was published at 1s.
     6d. by H. D. Symonds, Paternoster Row, and Thomas Clio
     Rickman, 7 Upper Marylebone Street (where it was written),
     both pub-Ushers being soon after prosecuted.--_Editor_.

But how easy does even the most illiterate reader distinguish the
spontaneous sensations of the heart, from the laboured productions of
the brain. Truth, whenever it can fully appear, is a thing so naturally
familiar to the mind, that an acquaintance commences at first sight.
No artificial light, yet discovered, can display all the properties of
daylight; so neither can the best invented fiction fill the mind with
every conviction which truth begets.

To overthrow Mr. Burke's fallacious book was scarcely the operation of a
day. Even the phalanx of Placemen and Pensioners, who had given the
tone to the multitude, by clamouring forth his political fame, became
suddenly silent; and the final event to himself has been, that as he
rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

It seldom happens, that the mind rests satisfied with the simple
detection of error or imposition. Once put in motion, _that_ motion soon
becomes accelerated; where it had intended to stop, it discovers new
reasons to proceed, and renews and continues the pursuit far beyond the
limits it first prescribed to itself. Thus it has happened to the people
of England. From a detection of Mr. Burke's incoherent rhapsodies, and
distorted facts, they began an enquiry into the first principles of
Government, whilst himself, like an object left far behind, became
invisible and forgotten.

Much as the First Part of RIGHTS OF Man impressed at its first
appearance, the progressive mind soon discovered that it did not go far
enough. It detected errors; it exposed absurdities; it shook the fabric
of political superstition; it generated new ideas; but it did not
produce a regular system of principles in the room of those which it
displaced. And, if I may guess at the mind of the Government-party,
they beheld it as an unexpected gale that would soon blow over, and
they forbore, like sailors in threatening weather, to whistle, lest they
should encrease(sic) the wind. Every thing, on their part, was profound
silence.

When the Second Part of _Rights of Man, combining Principle and
Practice_, was preparing to appear, they affected, for a while, to act
with the same policy as before; but finding their silence had no more
influence in stifling the progress of the work, than it would have in
stopping the progress of time, they changed their plan, and affected
to treat it with clamorous contempt. The Speech-making Placemen and
Pensioners, and Place-expectants, in both Houses of Parliament, the
_Outs_ as well as the _Ins_, represented it as a silly, insignificant
performance; as a work incapable of producing any effect; as something
which they were sure the good sense of the people would either despise
or indignantly spurn; but such was the overstrained awkwardness with
which they harangued and encouraged each other, that in the very act of
declaring their confidence they betrayed their fears.

As most of the rotten Borough Addressers are obscured in holes and
corners throughout the country, and to whom a newspaper arrives as
rarely as an almanac, they most probably have not had the opportunity of
knowing how far this part of the farce (the original prelude to all the
Addresses) has been acted. For _their_ information, I will suspend a
while the more serious purpose of my Letter, and entertain them with two
or three Speeches in the last Session of Parliament, which will serve
them for politics till Parliament meets again.

You must know, Gentlemen, that the Second Part of the Rights of Man (the
book against which you have been presenting Addresses, though it is
most probable that many of you did not know it) was to have come out
precisely at the time that Parliament last met. It happened not to be
published till a few days after. But as it was very well known that the
book would shortly appear, the parliamentary Orators entered into a very
cordial coalition to cry the book down, and they began their attack by
crying up the _blessings_ of the Constitution.

Had it been your fate to have been there, you could not but have been
moved at the heart-and-pocket-felt congratulations that passed between
all the parties on this subject of _blessings_; for the _Outs_ enjoy
places and pensions and sinecures as well as the _Ins_, and are as
devoutly attached to the firm of the house.

One of the most conspicuous of this motley groupe, is the Clerk of
the Court of King's Bench, who calls himself Lord Stormont. He is also
called Justice General of Scotland, and Keeper of Scoon, (an opposition
man,) and he draws from the public for these nominal offices, not less,
as I am informed, than six thousand pounds a-year, and he is, most
probably, at the trouble of counting the money, and signing a receipt,
to shew, perhaps, that he is qualified to be Clerk as well as Justice.
He spoke as follows.(*)

"That we shall all be unanimous in expressing our attachment to the
constitution of these realms, I am confident. It is a subject upon which
there can be no divided opinion in this house. I do not pretend to be
deep read in the knowledge of the Constitution, but I take upon me to
say, that from the extent of my knowledge [_for I have so many thousands
a year for nothing_] it appears to me, that from the period of the
Revolution, for it was by no means created then, it has been, both in
theory and practice, the wisest system that ever was formed. I never was
[he means he never was till now] a dealer in political cant. My life has
not been occupied in that way, but the speculations of late years seem
to have taken a turn, for which I cannot account. When I came into
public life, the political pamphlets of the time, however they might be
charged with the heat and violence of parties, were agreed in extolling
the radical beauties of the Constitution itself. I remember [_he means
he has forgotten_] a most captivating eulogium on its charms, by Lord
Bolingbroke, where he recommends his readers to contemplate it in all
its aspects, with the assurance that it would be found more estimable
the more it was seen, I do not recollect his precise words, but I wish
that men who write upon these subjects would take this for their
model, instead of the political pamphlets, which, I am told, are now in
circulation, [_such, I suppose, as Rights of Man,_] pamphlets which
I have not read, and whose purport I know only by report, [_he means,
perhaps, by the noise they make_.] This, however, I am sure, that
pamphlets tending to unsettle the public reverence for the constitution,
will have very little influence. They can do very little harm--for
[_by the bye, he is no dealer in political cant_] the English are a
sober-thinking people, and are more intelligent, more solid, more steady
in their opinions, than any people I ever had the fortune to see. [_This
is pretty well laid on, though, for a new beginner_.] But if there
should ever come a time when the propagation of those doctrines should
agitate the public mind, I am sure for every one of your Lordships, that
no attack will be made on the constitution, from which it is truly said
that we derive all our prosperity, without raising every one of
your Lordships to its support It will then be found that there is no
difference among us, but that we are all determined to stand or fall
together, in defence of the inestimable system "--[_of places and
pensions_].

     * See his speech in the Morning Chronicle of Feb. 1.--
     Author.

After Stormont, on the opposition side, sat down, up rose another noble
Lord, on the ministerial side, Grenville. This man ought to be as strong
in the back as a mule, or the sire of a mule, or it would crack with
the weight of places and offices. He rose, however, without feeling any
incumbrance, full master of his weight; and thus said this noble Lord to
t'other noble Lord!

"The patriotic and manly manner in which the noble Lord has declared
his sentiments on the subject of the constitution, demands my cordial
approbation. The noble Viscount has proved, that however we may differ
on particular measures, amidst all the jars and dissonance of parties,
we are unanimous in principle. There is a perfect and entire consent
[_between us_] in the love and maintenance of the constitution as
happily subsisting. It must undoubtedly give your Lordships concern, to
find that the time is come [heigh ho!] when there is propriety in the
expressions of regard to [o! o! o!] the constitution. And that there are
men [confound--their--po-li-tics] who disseminate doctrines hostile to
the genuine spirit of our well balanced system, [_it is certainly well
balanced when both sides hold places and pensions at once._] I agree
with the noble viscount that they have not [I hope] much success. I am
convinced that there is no danger to be apprehended from their attempts:
but it is truly important and consolatory [to us placemen, I suppose] to
know, that if ever there should arise a serious alarm, there is but one
spirit, one sense, [_and that sense I presume is not common sense_]
and one determination in this house "--which undoubtedly is to hold all
their places and pensions as long as they can.

Both those speeches (except the parts enclosed in parenthesis, which
are added for the purpose of illustration) are copied verbatim from the
Morning Chronicle of the 1st of February last; and when the situation of
the speakers is considered, the one in the opposition, and the other
in the ministry, and both of them living at the public expence, by
sinecure, or nominal places and offices, it required a very unblushing
front to be able to deliver them. Can those men seriously suppose
any nation to be so completely blind as not to see through them? Can
Stormont imagine that the political _cant_, with which he has larded his
harangue, will conceal the craft? Does he not know that there never was
a cover large enough to hide _itself_? Or can Grenvilie believe that his
credit with the public encreases with his avarice for places?

But, if these orators will accept a service from me, in return for the
allusions they have made to the _Rights of Man_, I will make a speech
for either of them to deliver, on the excellence of the constitution,
that shall be as much to the purpose as what they have spoken, or as
_Bolingbroke's captivating eulogium_. Here it is.

"That we shall all be unanimous in expressing our attachment to the
constitution, I am confident. It is, my Lords, incomprehensibly good:
but the great wonder of all is the wisdom; for it is, my lords, _the
wisest system that ever was formed_.

"With respect to us, noble Lords, though the world does not know it, it
is very well known to us, that we have more wisdom than we know what to
do with; and what is still better, my Lords, we have it all in stock. I
defy your Lordships to prove, that a tittle of it has been used yet; and
if we but go on, my Lords, with the frugality we have hitherto done, we
shall leave to our heirs and successors, when we go out of the world,
the whole stock of wisdom, _untouched_, that we brought in; and there is
no doubt but they will follow our example. This, my lords, is one of the
blessed effects of the hereditary system; for we can never be without
wisdom so long as we keep it by us, and do not use it.

"But, my Lords, as all this wisdom is hereditary property, for the sole
benefit of us and our heirs, and it is necessary that the people should
know where to get a supply for their own use, the excellence of our
constitution has provided us a King for this very purpose, and for _no
other_. But, my Lords, I perceive a defect to which the constitution
is subject, and which I propose to remedy by bringing a bill into
Parliament for that purpose.

"The constitution, my Lords, out of delicacy, I presume, has left it as
a matter of _choice_ to a King whether he will be wise or not. It has
not, I mean, my Lords, insisted upon it as a constitutional point,
which, I conceive it ought to have done; for I pledge myself to your
Lordships to prove, and that with _true patriotic boldness_, that he has
_no choice in the matter_. This bill, my Lords, which I shall bring in,
will be to declare, that the constitution, according to the true intent
and meaning thereof, does not invest the King with this choice; our
ancestors were too wise to do that; and, in order to prevent any doubts
that might otherwise arise, I shall prepare, my Lords, an enacting
clause, to fix the wisdom of Kings by act of Parliament; and then, my
Lords our Constitution will be the wonder of the world!

"Wisdom, my lords, is the one thing needful: but that there may be no
mistake in this matter, and that we may proceed consistently with the
true wisdom of the constitution, I shall propose a _certain criterion_
whereby the _exact quantity of wisdom_ necessary for a King may be
known. [Here should be a cry of, Hear him! Hear him!]

"It is recorded, my Lords, in the Statutes at Large of the Jews, 'a
book, my Lords, which I have not read, and whose purport I know only by
report,' _but perhaps the bench of Bishops can recollect something about
it_, that Saul gave the most convincing proofs of royal wisdom before
he was made a King, _for he was sent to seek his father's asses and he
could not find them_.

"Here, my Lords, we have, most happily for us, a case in point: This
precedent ought to be established by act of Parliament; and every King,
before he be crowned, should be sent to seek his father's asses, and
if he cannot find them, he shall be declared wise enough to be King,
according to the true meaning of our excellent constitution. All,
therefore, my Lords, that will be necessary to be done by the enacting
clause that I shall bring in, will be to invest the King beforehand with
the quantity of wisdom necessary for this purpose, lest he should happen
not to possess it; and this, my Lords, we can do without making use of
any of our own.

"We further read, my Lords, in the said Statutes at Large of the
Jews, that Samuel, who certainly was as mad as any Man-of-Rights-Man
now-a-days (hear him! hear him!), was highly displeased, and even
exasperated, at the proposal of the Jews to have a King, and he warned
them against it with all that assurance and impudence of which he was
master. I have been, my Lords, at the trouble of going all the way to
_Paternoster-row_, to procure an extract from the printed copy. I was
told that I should meet with it there, or in _Amen-eorner_, for I was
then going, my Lords, to rummage for it among the curiosities of the
_Antiquarian Society_. I will read the extracts to your Lordships, to
shew how little Samuel knew of the matter.

"The extract, my Lords, is from 1 Sam. chap. viii.:

"'And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked
of him a King.

"'And he said, this will be the manner of the King that shall reign
over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for
his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his
chariots.

"'And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over
fifties, and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest,
and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

"'And he will take your daughters to be confectionnes, and to be cooks,
and to be bakers.

"'And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your
olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

"'And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and
give to his officers and to his servants.

"'And he will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your
goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

"'And he will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his
servants.

"'And ye shall cry out in that day, because of your King, which ye shall
have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.'

"Now, my Lords, what can we think of this man Samuel? Is there a word of
truth, or any thing like truth, in all that he has said? He pretended
to be a prophet, or a wise man, but has not the event proved him to be a
fool, or an incendiary? Look around, my Lords, and see if any thing has
happened that he pretended to foretell! Has not the most profound peace
reigned throughout the world ever since Kings were in fashion? Are not,
for example, the present Kings of Europe the most peaceable of mankind,
and the Empress of Russia the very milk of human kindness? It would not
be worth having Kings, my Lords, if it were not that they never go to
war.

"If we look at home, my Lords, do we not see the same things here as are
seen every where else? Are our young men taken to be horsemen, or foot
soldiers, any more than in Germany or in Prussia, or in Hanover or in
Hesse? Are not our sailors as safe at land as at sea? Are they ever
dragged from their homes, like oxen to the slaughter-house, to serve on
board ships of war? When they return from the perils of a long voyage
with the merchandize of distant countries, does not every man sit down
under his own vine and his own fig-tree, in perfect security? Is the
tenth of our seed taken by tax-gatherers, or is any part of it given to
the King's servants? In short, _is not everything as free from taxes as
the light from Heaven!_ (1)

"Ah! my Lords, do we not see the blessed effect of having Kings in every
thing we look at? Is not the G. R., or the broad R., stampt upon every
thing? Even the shoes, the gloves, and the hats that we wear,
are enriched with the impression, and all our candles blaze a
burnt-offering.

"Besides these blessings, my Lords, that cover us from the sole of the
foot to the crown of the head, do we not see a race of youths growing
up to be Kings, who are the very paragons of virtue? There is not one of
them, my Lords, but might be trusted with untold gold, as safely as
the other. Are they not '_more sober, intelligent, more solid, more
steady_,' and withal, _more learned, more wise, more every thing, than
any youths we '_ever had the fortune to see.' Ah! my Lords, they are a
_hopeful family_.

"The blessed prospect of succession, which the nation has at this moment
before its eyes, is a most undeniable proof of the excellence of our
constitution, and of the blessed hereditary system; for nothing, my
Lords, but a constitution founded on the truest and purest wisdom
could admit such heaven-born and heaven-taught characters into the
government.--Permit me now, my Lords, to recal your attention to the
libellous chapter I have just read about Kings. I mention this, my
Lords, because it is my intention to move for a bill to be brought into
parliament to expunge that chapter from the Bible, and that the Lord
Chancellor, with the assistance of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of
York, and the Duke of Clarence, be requested to write a chapter in the
room of it; and that Mr. Burke do see that it be truly canonical, and
faithfully inserted."--Finis.

     1 Allusion to the window-tax.--Editor,

If the Clerk of the Court of King's Bench should chuse to be the orator
of this luminous encomium on the constitution, I hope he will get
it well by heart before he attempts to deliver it, and not have
to apologize to Parliament, as he did in the case of Bolingbroke's
encomium, for forgetting his lesson; and, with this admonition I leave
him.

Having thus informed the Addressers of what passed at the meeting of
Parliament, I return to take up the subject at the part where I broke
off in order to introduce the preceding speeches.

I was then stating, that the first policy of the Government party was
silence, and the next, clamorous contempt; but as people generally
choose to read and judge for themselves, the work still went on, and the
affectation of contempt, like the silence that preceded it, passed for
nothing.

Thus foiled in their second scheme, their evil genius, like a
will-with-a-wisp, led them to a third; when all at once, as if it had
been unfolded to them by a fortune-teller, or Mr. Dundas had discovered
it by second sight, this once harmless, insignificant book, without
undergoing the alteration of a single letter, became a most wicked and
dangerous Libel. The whole Cabinet, like a ship's crew, became alarmed;
all hands were piped upon deck, as if a conspiracy of elements was
forming around them, and out came the Proclamation and the Prosecution;
and Addresses supplied the place of prayers.

Ye silly swains, thought I to myself, why do you torment yourselves
thus? The Rights OF Man is a book calmly and rationally written; why
then are you so disturbed? Did you see how little or how suspicious such
conduct makes you appear, even cunning alone, had you no other faculty,
would hush you into prudence. The plans, principles, and arguments,
contained in that work, are placed before the eyes of the nation, and
of the world, in a fair, open, and manly manner, and nothing more is
necessary than to refute them. Do this, and the whole is done; but if ye
cannot, so neither can ye suppress the reading, nor convict the author;
for the Law, in the opinion of all good men, would convict itself, that
should condemn what cannot be refuted.

Having now shown the Addressers the several stages of the business,
prior to their being called upon, like Cæsar in the Tyber, crying to
Cassius, "_help, Cassius, or I sink_!" I next come to remark on the
policy of the Government, in promoting Addresses; on the consequences
naturally resulting therefrom; and on the conduct of the persons
concerned.

With respect to the policy, it evidently carries with it every mark
and feature of disguised fear. And it will hereafter be placed in the
history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by
an individual, unconnected with any sect or party, and not seeking to
make any, and almost a stranger in the land, that should compleatly
frighten a whole Government, and that in the midst of its most
triumphant security. Such a circumstance cannot fail to prove, that
either the pamphlet has irresistible powers, or the Government very
extraordinary defects, or both. The nation exhibits no signs of fear at
the Rights of Man; why then should the Government, unless the interest
of the two are really opposite to each other, and the secret is
beginning to be known? That there are two distinct classes of men in
the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon
the taxes, is evident at first sight; and when taxation is carried to
excess, it cannot fail to disunite those two, and something of this kind
is now beginning to appear.

It is also curious to observe, amidst all the fume and bustle about
Proclamations and Addresses, kept up by a few noisy and interested men,
how little the mass of the nation seem to care about either. They
appear to me, by the indifference they shew, not to believe a word the
Proclamation contains; and as to the Addresses, they travel to London
with the silence of a funeral, and having announced their arrival in
the Gazette, are deposited with the ashes of their predecessors, and Mr.
Dundas writes their _hic facet_.

One of the best effects which the Proclamation, and its echo the
Addresses have had, has been that of exciting and spreading curiosity;
and it requires only a single reflection to discover, that the object
of all curiosity is knowledge. When the mass of the nation saw that
Placemen, Pensioners, and Borough-mongers, were the persons that stood
forward to promote Addresses, it could not fail to create suspicions
that the public good was not their object; that the character of the
books, or writings, to which such persons obscurely alluded, not daring
to mention them, was directly contrary to what they described them to
be, and that it was necessary that every man, for his own satisfaction,
should exercise his proper right, and read and judge for himself.

But how will the persons who have been induced to read the _Rights of
Man_, by the clamour that has been raised against it, be surprized
to find, that, instead of a wicked, inflammatory work, instead of a
licencious and profligate performance, it abounds with principles of
government that are uncontrovertible--with arguments which every reader
will feel, are unanswerable--with plans for the increase of commerce
and manufactures--for the extinction of war--for the education of
the children of the poor--for the comfortable support of the aged and
decayed persons of both sexes--for the relief of the army and navy, and,
in short, for the promotion of every thing that can benefit the moral,
civil, and political condition of Man.

Why, then, some calm observer will ask, why is the work prosecuted, if
these be the goodly matters it contains? I will tell thee, friend;
it contains also a plan for the reduction of Taxes, for lessening the
immense expences of Government, for abolishing sinecure Places and
Pensions; and it proposes applying the redundant taxes, that shall
be saved by these reforms, to the purposes mentioned in the former
paragraph, instead of applying them to the support of idle and
profligate Placemen and Pensioners.

Is it, then, any wonder that Placemen and Pensioners, and the whole
train of Court expectants, should become the promoters of Addresses,
Proclamations, and Prosecutions? or, is it any wonder that Corporations
and rotten Boroughs, which are attacked and exposed, both in the First
and Second Parts of _Rights of Man_, as unjust monopolies and public
nuisances, should join in the cavalcade? Yet these are the sources from
which Addresses have sprung. Had not such persons come forward to
oppose the _Rights of Man_, I should have doubted the efficacy of my
own writings: but those opposers have now proved to me that the blow was
well directed, and they have done it justice by confessing the smart.

The principal deception in this business of Addresses has been, that the
promoters of them have not come forward in their proper characters. They
have assumed to pass themselves upon the public as a part of the Public,
bearing a share of the burthen of Taxes, and acting for the public good;
whereas, they are in general that part of it that adds to the public
burthen, by living on the produce of the public taxes. They are to the
public what the locusts are to the tree: the burthen would be less, and
the prosperity would be greater, if they were shaken off.

"I do not come here," said Onslow, at the Surry County meeting, "as the
Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the county, but I come here as
a plain country gentleman." The fact is, that he came there as what he
was, and as no other, and consequently he came as one of the beings I
have been describing. If it be the character of a gentleman to be fed by
the public, as a pauper is by the parish, Onslow has a fair claim to the
title; and the same description will suit the Duke of Richmond, who led
the Address at the Sussex meeting. He also may set up for a gentleman.

As to the meeting in the next adjoining county (Kent), it was a scene of
disgrace. About two hundred persons met, when a small part of them drew
privately away from the rest, and voted an Address: the consequence of
which was that they got together by the ears, and produced a riot in the
very act of producing an Address to prevent Riots.

That the Proclamation and the Addresses have failed of their intended
effect, may be collected from the silence which the Government party
itself observes. The number of addresses has been weekly retailed in the
Gazette; but the number of Addressers has been concealed. Several of the
Addresses have been voted by not more than ten or twelve persons; and a
considerable number of them by not more than thirty. The whole number of
Addresses presented at the time of writing this letter is three hundred
and twenty, (rotten Boroughs and Corporations included) and even
admitting, on an average, one hundred Addressers to each address, the
whole number of addressers would be but thirty-two thousand, and nearly
three months have been taken up in procuring this number. That the
success of the Proclamation has been less than the success of the work
it was intended to discourage, is a matter within my own knowledge; for
a greater number of the cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of
the Rights OF Man has been sold in the space only of one month, than the
whole number of Addressers (admitting them to be thirty-two thousand)
have amounted to in three months.

It is a dangerous attempt in any government to say to a Nation, "_thou
shalt not read_." This is now done in Spain, and was formerly done under
the old Government of France; but it served to procure the downfall of
the latter, and is subverting that of the former; and it will have
the same tendency in all countries; because _thought_ by some means
or other, is got abroad in the world, and cannot be restrained, though
reading may.

If _Rights of Man_ were a book that deserved the vile description which
the promoters of the Address have given of it, why did not these men
prove their charge, and satisfy the people, by producing it, and reading
it publicly? This most certainly ought to have been done, and would also
have been done, had they believed it would have answered their purpose.
But the fact is, that the book contains truths which those time-servers
dreaded to hear, and dreaded that the people should know; and it is now
following up the,


ADDRESS TO ADDRESSERS.

Addresses in every part of the nation, and convicting them of
falsehoods.

Among the unwarrantable proceedings to which the Proclamation has given
rise, the meetings of the Justices in several of the towns and counties
ought to be noticed.. Those men have assumed to re-act the farce of
General Warrants, and to suppress, by their own authority, whatever
publications they please. This is an attempt at power equalled only by
the conduct of the minor despots of the most despotic governments in
Europe, and yet those Justices affect to call England a Free Country.
But even this, perhaps, like the scheme for garrisoning the country
by building military barracks, is necessary to awaken the country to a
sense of its Rights, and, as such, it will have a good effect.

Another part of the conduct of such Justices has been, that of
threatening to take away the licences from taverns and public-houses,
where the inhabitants of the neighbourhood associated to read and
discuss the principles of Government, and to inform each other thereon.
This, again, is similar to what is doing in Spain and Russia; and the
reflection which it cannot fail to suggest is, that the principles and
conduct of any Government must be bad, when that Government dreads and
startles at discussion, and seeks security by a prevention of knowledge.

If the Government, or the Constitution, or by whatever name it be
called, be that miracle of perfection which the Proclamation and
the Addresses have trumpeted it forth to be, it ought to have defied
discussion and investigation, instead of dreading it. Whereas, every
attempt it makes, either by Proclamation, Prosecution, or Address, to
suppress investigation, is a confession that it feels itself unable to
bear it. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry. All
the numerous pamphlets, and all the newspaper falsehood and abuse, that
have been published against the Rights of Man, have fallen before it
like pointless arrows; and, in like manner, would any work have fallen
before the Constitution, had the Constitution, as it is called, been
founded on as good political principles as those on which the Rights OF
Man is written.

It is a good Constitution for courtiers, placemen, pensioners,
borough-holders, and the leaders of Parties, and these are the men that
have been the active leaders of Addresses; but it is a bad Constitution
for at least ninety-nine parts of the nation out of an hundred, and this
truth is every day making its way.

It is bad, first, because it entails upon the nation the unnecessary
expence of supporting three forms and systems of Government at once,
namely, the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the democratical.

Secondly, because it is impossible to unite such a discordant
composition by any other means than perpetual corruption; and therefore
the corruption so loudly and so universally complained of, is no
other than the natural consequence of such an unnatural compound of
Governments; and in this consists that excellence which the numerous
herd of placemen and pensioners so loudly extol, and which at the same
time, occasions that enormous load of taxes under which the rest of the
nation groans.

Among the mass of national delusions calculated to amuse and impose upon
the multitude, the standing one has been that of flattering them into
taxes, by calling the Government (or as they please to express it,
the English Constitution) "_the envy and the admiration of the world_"
Scarcely an Address has been voted in which some of the speakers have
not uttered this hackneyed nonsensical falsehood.

Two Revolutions have taken place, those of America and France; and both
of them have rejected the unnatural compounded system of the English
government. America has declared against all hereditary Government, and
established the representative system of Government only. France has
entirely rejected the aristocratical part, and is now discovering
the absurdity of the monarchical, and is approaching fast to the
representative system. On what ground then, do these men continue a
declaration, respecting what they call the _envy and admiration of other
nations_, which the voluntary practice of such nations, as have had the
opportunity of establishing Government, contradicts and falsifies. Will
such men never confine themselves to truth? Will they be for ever the
deceivers of the people?

But I will go further, and shew, that were Government now to begin in
England, the people could not be brought to establish the same system
they now submit to.

In speaking on this subject (or on any other) _on the pure ground
of principle_, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and
hoary-headed error loses its effect. The reasonableness and propriety of
things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage; and, in this
point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a
right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary
sanction of a thousand ages. Principles have no connection with time,
nor characters with names.

To say that the Government of this country is composed of King, Lords,
and Commons, is the mere phraseology of custom. It is composed of
men; and whoever the men be to whom the Government of any country is
intrusted, they ought to be the best and wisest that can be found, and
if they are not so, they are not fit for the station. A man derives
no more excellence from the change of a name, or calling him King, or
calling him Lord, than I should do by changing my name from Thomas to
George, or from Paine to Guelph. I should not be a whit more able to
write a book because my name was altered; neither would any man, now
called a King or a lord, have a whit the more sense than he now has,
were he to call himself Thomas Paine.

As to the word "Commons," applied as it is in England, it is a term
of degradation and reproach, and ought to be abolished. It is a term
unknown in free countries.

But to the point.--Let us suppose that Government was now to begin in
England, and that the plan of Government, offered to the nation for its
approbation or rejection, consisted of the following parts:

First--That some one individual should be taken from all the rest of the
nation, and to whom all the rest should swear obedience, and never be
permitted to sit down in his presence, and that they should give to him
one million sterling a year.--That the nation should never after have
power or authority to make laws but with his express consent; and that
his sons and his sons' sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or
bad, fit or unfit, should have the same power, and also the same money
annually paid to them for ever.

Secondly--That there should be two houses of Legislators to assist in
making laws, one of which should, in the first instance, be entirely
appointed by the aforesaid person, and that their sons and their sons'
sons, whether wise or foolish, good men or bad, fit or unfit, should for
ever after be hereditary Legislators.

Thirdly--That the other house should be chosen in the same manner as the
house now called the House of Commons is chosen, and should be subject
to the controul of the two aforesaid hereditary Powers in all things.

It would be impossible to cram such a farrago of imposition and
absurdity down the throat of this or any other nation that was capable
of reasoning upon its rights and its interest.

They would ask, in the first place, on what ground of right, or on what
principle, such irrational and preposterous distinctions could, or ought
to be made; and what pretensions any man could have, or what services he
could render, to entitle him to a million a year? They would go
farther, and revolt at the idea of consigning their children, and their
children's children, to the domination of persons hereafter to be born,
who might, for any thing they could foresee, turn out to be knaves or
fools; and they would finally discover, that the project of hereditary
Governors and Legislators _was a treasonable usurpation over the rights
of posterity_. Not only the calm dictates of reason, and the force of
natural affection, but the integrity of manly pride, would impel men to
spurn such proposals.

From the grosser absurdities of such a scheme, they would extend their
examination to the practical defects--They would soon see that it would
end in tyranny accomplished by fraud. That in the operation of it, it
would be two to one against them, because the two parts that were to be
made hereditary would form a common interest, and stick to each other;
and that themselves and representatives would become no better
than hewers of wood and drawers of water for the other parts of the
Government.--Yet call one of those powers King, the other Lords, and the
third the Commons, and it gives the model of what is called the English
Government.

I have asserted, and have shewn, both in the First and Second Parts
of _Rights of Man_, that there is not such a thing as an English
Constitution, and that the people have yet a Constitution to form. _A
Constitution is a thing antecedent to a Government; it is the act of a
people creating a Government and giving it powers, and defining the
limits and exercise of the powers so given_. But whenever did the people
of England, acting in their original constituent character, by a
delegation elected for that express purpose, declare and say, "We, the
people of this land, do constitute and appoint this to be our system and
form of Government." The Government has assumed to constitute itself,
but it never was constituted by the people, in whom alone the right of
constituting resides.

I will here recite the preamble to the Federal Constitution of the
United States of America. I have shewn in the Second Part of _Rights
of Man_, the manner by which the Constitution was formed and afterwards
ratified; and to which I refer the reader. The preamble is in the
following words:

"We, the people, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
constitution for the United States of America."

Then follow the several articles which appoint the manner in which the
several component parts of the Government, legislative and executive,
shall be elected, and the period of their duration, and the powers they
shall have: also, the manner by which future additions, alterations,
or amendments, shall be made to the constitution. Consequently, every
improvement that can be made in the science of government, follows in
that country as a matter of order. It is only in Governments founded on
assumption and false principles, that reasoning upon, and investigating
systems and principles of Government, and shewing their several
excellencies and defects, are termed libellous and seditious. These
terms were made part of the charge brought against Locke, Hampden, and
Sydney, and will continue to be brought against all good men, so long as
bad government shall continue.

The Government of this country has been ostentatiously giving challenges
for more than an hundred years past, upon what it called its own
excellence and perfection. Scarcely a King's Speech, or a Parliamentary
Speech, has been uttered, in which this glove has not been thrown, till
the world has been insulted with their challenges. But it now appears
that all this was vapour and vain boasting, or that it was intended to
conceal abuses and defects, and hush the people into taxes. I have taken
the challenge up, and in behalf of the public have shewn, in a fair,
open, and candid manner, both the radical and practical defects of the
system; when, lo! those champions of the Civil List have fled away,
and sent the Attorney-General to deny the challenge, by turning the
acceptance of it into an attack, and defending their Places and Pensions
by a prosecution.

I will here drop this part of the subject, and state a few particulars
respecting the prosecution now pending, by which the Addressers will
see that they have been used as tools to the prosecuting party and their
dependents. The case is as follows:

The original edition of the First and Second Parts of the Rights of
Man, having been expensively printed, (in the modern stile of printing
pamphlets, that they might be bound up with Mr. Burke's Reflections on
the French Revolution,) the high price(1) precluded the generality
of people from purchasing; and many applications were made to me from
various parts of the country to print the work in a cheaper manner. The
people of Sheffield requested leave to print two thousand copies for
themselves, with which request I immediately complied. The same request
came to me from Rotherham, from Leicester, from Chester, from several
towns in Scotland; and Mr. James Mackintosh, author of _Vindico
Gallico_, brought me a request from Warwickshire, for leave to print ten
thousand copies in that county. I had already sent a cheap edition to
Scotland; and finding the applications increase, I concluded that the
best method of complying therewith, would be to print a very numerous
edition in London, under my own direction, by which means the work would
be more perfect, and the price be reduced lower than it could be by
_printing_ small editions in the country, of only a few thousands each.

     1 Half  a crown.--_Editor_.

The cheap edition of the first part was begun about the first of last
April, and from that moment, and not before, I expected a prosecution,
and the event has proved that I was not mistaken. I had then occasion to
write to Mr. Thomas Walker of Manchester, and after informing him of my
intention of giving up the work for the purpose of general information,
I informed him of what I apprehended would be the consequence; that
while the work was at a price that precluded an extensive circulation,
the government party, not able to controvert the plans, arguments,
and principles it contained, had chosen to remain silent; but that I
expected they would make an attempt to deprive the mass of the nation,
and especially the poor, of the right of reading, by the pretence of
prosecuting either the Author or the Publisher, or both. They chose to
begin with the Publisher.

Nearly a month, however, passed, before I had any information given me
of their intentions. I was then at Bromley, in Kent, upon which I came
immediately to town, (May 14) and went to Mr. Jordan, the publisher of
the original edition. He had that evening been served with a summons to
appear at the Court of King's Bench, on the Monday following, but for
what purpose was not stated. Supposing it to be on account of the
work, I appointed a meeting with him on the next morning, which was
accordingly had, when I provided an attorney, and took the ex-pence of
the defence on myself. But finding afterwards that he absented himself
from the attorney employed, and had engaged another, and that he had
been closeted with the Solicitors of the Treasury, I left him to follow
his own choice, and he chose to plead Guilty. This he might do if he
pleased; and I make no objection against him for it. I believe that his
idea by the word _Guilty_, was no other than declaring himself to be the
publisher, without any regard to the merits or demerits of the work; for
were it to be construed otherwise, it would amount to the absurdity of
converting a publisher into a Jury, and his confession into a verdict
upon the work itself. This would be the highest possible refinement upon
packing of Juries.

On the 21st of May, they commenced their prosecution against me, as the
author, by leaving a summons at my lodgings in town, to appear at the
Court of King's Bench on the 8th of June following; and on the same day,
(May 21,) _they issued also their Proclamation_. Thus the Court of St.
James and the Court of King's Bench, were playing into each other's
hands at the same instant of time, and the farce of Addresses brought up
the rear; and this mode of proceeding is called by the prostituted name
of Law. Such a thundering rapidity, after a ministerial dormancy of
almost eighteen months, can be attributed to no other cause than their
having gained information of the forwardness of the cheap Edition, and
the dread they felt at the progressive increase of political knowledge.

I was strongly advised by several gentlemen, as well those in the
practice of the law, as others, to prefer a bill of indictment
against the publisher of the Proclamation, as a publication tending to
influence, or rather to dictate the verdict of a Jury on the issue of a
matter then pending; but it appeared to me much better to avail myself
of the opportunity which such a precedent justified me in using, by
meeting the Proclamation and the Addressers on their own ground, and
publicly defending the Work which had been thus unwarrantably attacked
and traduced.--And conscious as I now am, that the Work entitled
Rights OF Man so far from being, as has been maliciously or erroneously
represented, a false, wicked, and seditious libel, is a work abounding
with unanswerable truths, with principles of the purest morality and
benevolence, and with arguments not to be controverted--Conscious, I
say, of these things, and having no object in view but the happiness
of mankind, I have now put the matter to the best proof in my power, by
giving to the public a cheap edition of the First and Second Parts of
that Work. Let every man read and judge for himself, not only of the
merits and demerits of the Work, but of the matters therein contained,
which relate to his own interest and happiness.

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy, and every species
of hereditary government--to lessen the oppression of taxes--to propose
plans for the education of helpless infancy, and the comfortable support
of the aged and distressed--to endeavour to conciliate nations to each
other--to extirpate the horrid practice of war--to promote universal
peace, civilization, and commerce--and to break the chains of political
superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank;--if these
things be libellous, let me live the life of a Libeller, and let the
name of Libeller be engraved on my tomb.

Of all the weak and ill-judged measures which fear, ignorance,
or arrogance could suggest, the Proclamation, and the project for
Addresses, are two of the worst. They served to advertise the work which
the promoters of those measures wished to keep unknown; and in doing
this they offered violence to the judgment of the people, by calling on
them to condemn what they forbad them to know, and put the strength
of their party to that hazardous issue that prudence would have
avoided.--The County Meeting for Middlesex was attended by only
one hundred and eighteen Addressers. They, no doubt, expected, that
thousands would flock to their standard, and clamor against the _Rights
of Man_. But the case most probably is, that men in all countries, are
not so blind to their Rights and their Interest as Governments believe.

Having thus shewn the extraordinary manner in which the Government party
commenced their attack, I proceed to offer a few observations on the
prosecution, and on the mode of trial by Special Jury.

In the first place, I have written a book; and if it cannot be refuted,
it cannot be condemned. But I do not consider the prosecution as
particularly levelled against me, but against the general right, or
the right of every man, of investigating systems and principles of
government, and shewing their several excellencies or defects. If the
press be free only to flatter Government, as Mr. Burke has done, and to
cry up and extol what certain Court sycophants are pleased to call a
"glorious Constitution," and not free to examine into its errors or
abuses, or whether a Constitution really exist or not, such freedom is
no other than that of Spain, Turkey, or Russia; and a Jury in this case,
would not be a Jury to try, but an Inquisition to condemn.

I have asserted, and by fair and open argument maintained, the right
of every nation at all times to establish such a system and form of
government for itself as best accords with its disposition, interest,
and happiness; and to change and alter it as it sees occasion. Will any
Jury deny to the Nation this right? If they do, they are traitors, and
their verdict would be null and void. And if they admit the right, the
means must be admitted also; for it would be the highest absurdity to
say, that the right existed, but the means did not. The question then
is, What are the means by which the possession and exercise of
this National Right are to be secured? The answer will be, that
of maintaining, inviolably, the right of free investigation; for
investigation always serves to detect error, and to bring forth truth.

I have, as an individual, given my opinion upon what I believe to be
not only the best, but the true system of Government, which is the
representative system, and I have given reasons for that opinion.

First, Because in the representative system, no office of very
extraordinary power, or extravagant pay, is attached to any individual;
and consequently there is nothing to excite those national contentions
and civil wars with which countries under monarchical governments are
frequently convulsed, and of which the History of England exhibits such
numerous instances.

Secondly, Because the representative is a system of Government always
in maturity; whereas monarchical government fluctuates through all the
stages, from non-age to dotage.

Thirdly, Because the representative system admits of none but men
properly qualified into the Government, or removes them if they prove
to be otherwise. Whereas, in the hereditary system, a nation may be
encumbered with a knave or an ideot for a whole life-time, and not be
benefited by a successor.

Fourthly, Because there does not exist a right to establish hereditary
government, or, in other words, hereditary successors, because
hereditary government always means a government yet to come, and the
case always is, that those who are to live afterwards have the same
right to establish government for themselves, as the people had who
lived before them; and, therefore, all laws attempting to establish
hereditary government, are founded on assumption and political fiction.

If these positions be truths, and I challenge any man to prove the
contrary; if they tend to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to free
them from error, oppression, and political superstition, which are the
objects I have in view in publishing them, that Jury would commit an act
of injustice to their country, and to me, if not an act of perjury, that
should call them _false, wicked, and malicious_.

Dragonetti, in his treatise "On Virtues and Rewards," has a paragraph
worthy of being recorded in every country in the world--"The science
(says he,) of the politician, consists, in, fixing the true point of
happiness and freedom. Those men deserve the gratitude of ages who
should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of
_individual happiness_ with the least _national expence_." But if Juries
are to be made use of to prohibit enquiry, to suppress truth, and
to stop the progress of knowledge, this boasted palladium of liberty
becomes the most successful instrument of tyranny.

Among the arts practised at the Bar, and from the Bench, to impose
upon the understanding of a Jury, and to obtain a Verdict where
the consciences of men could not otherwise consent, one of the most
successful has been that of calling _truth a libel_, and of insinuating
that the words "_falsely, wickedly, and maliciously_," though they
are made the formidable and high sounding part of the charge, are not
matters of consideration with a Jury. For what purpose, then, are they
retained, unless it be for that of imposition and wilful defamation?

I cannot conceive a greater violation of order, nor a more abominable
insult upon morality, and upon human understanding, than to see a man
sitting in the judgment seat, affecting by an antiquated foppery of
dress to impress the audience with awe; then causing witnesses and Jury
to be sworn to truth and justice, himself having officially sworn the
same; then causing to be read a prosecution against a man charging him
with having _wickedly and maliciously written and published a certain
false, wicked, and seditious book_; and having gone through all this
with a shew of solemnity, as if he saw the eye of the Almighty darting
through the roof of the building like a ray of light, turn, in an
instant, the whole into a farce, and, in order to obtain a verdict
that could not otherwise be obtained, tell the Jury that the charge of
_falsely, wickedly, and seditiously_, meant nothing; that _truth_ was
out of the question; and that whether the person accused spoke truth or
falsehood, or intended _virtuously or wickedly_, was the same thing;
and finally conclude the wretched inquisitorial scene, by stating
some antiquated precedent, equally as abominable as that which is then
acting, or giving some opinion of his own, and _falsely calling the one
and the other--Law_. It was, most probably, to such a Judge as this,
that the most solemn of all reproofs was given--"_The Lord will smite
thee, thou whitened wall_."

I now proceed to offer some remarks on what is called a Special Jury. As
to what is called a Special Verdict, I shall make no other remark upon
it, than that it is in reality _not_ a verdict. It is an attempt on the
part of the Jury to delegate, or of the Bench to obtain, the exercise of
that right, which is committed to the Jury only.

With respect to the Special Juries, I shall state such matters as I have
been able to collect, for I do not find any uniform opinion concerning
the mode of appointing them.

In the first place, this mode of trial is but of modern invention, and
the origin of it, as I am told, is as follows:

Formerly, when disputes arose between Merchants, and were brought before
a Court, the case was that the nature of their commerce, and the method
of keeping Merchants' accounts not being sufficiently understood by
persons out of their own line, it became necessary to depart from the
common mode of appointing Juries, and to select such persons for a Jury
whose _practical knowledge_ would enable them to decide upon the case.
From this introduction, Special Juries became more general; but some
doubts having arisen as to their legality, an act was passed in the 3d
of George II. to establish them as legal, and also to extend them to all
cases, not only between individuals, but in cases where _the Government
itself should be the prosecutor_. This most probably gave rise to the
suspicion so generally entertained of packing a Jury; because, by this
act, when the Crown, as it is called, is the Prosecutor, the Master of
the Crown-office, who holds his office under the Crown, is the person
who either wholly nominates, or has great power in nominating the Jury,
and therefore it has greatly the appearance of the prosecuting party
selecting a Jury.

The process is as follows:

On motion being made in Court, by either the Plaintiff or Defendant, for
a Special Jury, the Court grants it or not, at its own discretion.

If it be granted, the Solicitor of the party that applied for the
Special Jury, gives notice to the Solicitor of the adverse party, and a
day and hour are appointed for them to meet at the office of the Master
of the Crown-office. The Master of the Crown-office sends to the Sheriff
or his deputy, who attends with the Sheriff's book of Freeholders. From
this book, forty-eight names are taken, and a copy thereof given to each
of the parties; and, on a future day, notice is again given, and the
Solicitors meet a second time, and each strikes out twelve names. The
list being thus reduced from forty-eight to twenty-four, the first
twelve that appear in Court, and answer to their names, is the Special
Jury for that cause. The first operation, that of taking the forty-eight
names, is called nominating the Jury; and the reducing them to
twenty-four is called striking the Jury.

Having thus stated the general process, I come to particulars, and the
first question will be, how are the forty-eight names, out of which the
Jury is to be struck, obtained from the Sheriff's book? For herein lies
the principal ground of suspicion, with respect to what is understood by
packing of Juries.

Either they must be taken by some rule agreed upon between the parties,
or by some common rule known and established beforehand, or at the
discretion of some person, who in such a case, ought to be perfectly
disinterested in the issue, as well officially as otherwise.

In the case of Merchants, and in all cases between individuals,
the Master of the office, called the Crown-office, is officially an
indifferent person, and as such may be a proper person to act between
the parties, and present them with a list of forty-eight names, out of
which each party is to strike twelve. But the case assumes an entire
difference of character, when the Government itself is the Prosecutor.
The Master of the Crown-office is then an officer holding his office
under the Prosecutor; and it is therefore no wonder that the suspicion
of packing Juries should, in such cases, have been so prevalent.

This will apply with additional force, when the prosecution is commenced
against the Author or Publisher of such Works as treat of reforms, and
of the abolition of superfluous places and offices, &c, because in such
cases every person holding an office, subject to that suspicion, becomes
interested as a party; and the office, called the Crown-office, may,
upon examination, be found to be of this description.

I have heard it asserted, that the Master of the Crown-office is to open
the sheriff's book as it were per hazard, and take thereout forty-eight
_following_ names, to which the word Merchant or Esquire is affixed.
The former of these are certainly proper, when the case is between
Merchants, and it has reference to the origin of the custom, and to
nothing else. As to the word Esquire, every man is an Esquire who
pleases to call himself Esquire; and the sensible part of mankind are
leaving it off. But the matter for enquiry is, whether there be any
existing law to direct the mode by which the forty-eight names shall be
taken, or whether the mode be merely that of custom which the office has
created; or whether the selection of the forty-eight names be wholly
at the discretion and choice of the Master of the Crown-office? One or
other of the two latter appears to be the case, because the act already
mentioned, of the 3d of George II. lays down no rule or mode, nor refers
to any preceding law--but says only, that Special Juries shall hereafter
be struck, "_in such manner as Special Juries have been and are usually
struck_."

This act appears to have been what is generally understood by a "_deep
take in_." It was fitted to the spur of the moment in which it was
passed, 3d of George II. when parties ran high, and it served to throw
into the hands of Walpole, who was then Minister, the management of
Juries in Crown prosecutions, by making the nomination of the
forty-eight persons, from whom the Jury was to be struck, follow the
precedent established by custom between individuals, and by this means
slipt into practice with less suspicion. Now, the manner of obtaining
Special Juries through the medium of an officer of the Government, such,
for instance, as a Master of the Crown-office, may be impartial in the
case of Merchants or other individuals, but it becomes highly improper
and suspicious in cases where the Government itself is one of the
parties. And it must, upon the whole, appear a strange inconsistency,
that a Government should keep one officer to commence prosecutions, and
another officer to nominate the forty-eight persons from whom the Jury
is to be struck, both of whom are _officers of the Civil List_, and yet
continue to call this by the pompous name of _the glorious "Right of
trial by Jury!_"

In the case of the King against Jordan, for publishing the Rights of
Man, the Attorney-General moved for the appointment of a Special Jury,
and the Master of the Crown-office nominated the forty-eight persons
himself, and took them from such part of the Sheriff's book as he
pleased.

The trial did not come on, occasioned by Jordan withdrawing his plea;
but if it had, it might have afforded an opportunity of discussing the
subject of Special Juries; for though such discussion might have had
no effect in the Court of King's Bench, it would, in the present
disposition for enquiry, have had a considerable effect upon the
Country; and, in all national reforms, this is the proper point to begin
at. But a Country right, and it will soon put Government right. Among
the improper things acted by the Government in the case of Special
Juries, on their own motion, one has been that of treating the Jury with
a dinner, and afterwards giving each Juryman two guineas, if a verdict
be found for the prosecution, and only one if otherwise; and it has been
long observed, that, in London and Westminster, there are persons who
appear to make a trade of serving, by being so frequently seen upon
Special Juries.

Thus much for Special Juries. As to what is called a _Common Jury_, upon
any Government prosecution against the Author or Publisher of RIGHTS OF
Man, during the time of the _present Sheriffry_, I have one question
to offer, which is, _whether the present Sheriffs of London, having
publicly prejudged the case, by the part they have taken in procuring
an Address from the county of Middlesex, (however diminutive and
insignificant the number of Addressers were, being only one hundred and
eighteen,) are eligible or proper persons to be intrusted with the power
of returning a Jury to try the issue of any such prosecution_.

But the whole matter appears, at least to me, to be worthy of a more
extensive consideration than what relates to any Jury, whether Special
or Common; for the case is, whether any part of a whole nation, locally
selected as a Jury of twelve men always is, be competent to judge and
determine for the whole nation, on any matter that relates to systems
and principles of Government, and whether it be not applying the
institution of Juries to purposes for which such institutions were not
intended? For example,

I have asserted, in the Work Rights of Man, that as every man in the
nation pays taxes, so has every man a right to a share in government,
and consequently that the people of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield,
Leeds, Halifax, &c have the same right as those of London. Shall, then,
twelve men, picked out between Temple-bar and Whitechapel, because the
book happened to be first published there, decide upon the rights of
the inhabitants of those towns, or of any other town or village in the
nation?

Having thus spoken of Juries, I come next to offer a few observations on
the matter contained in the information or prosecution.

The work, Rights of Man, consists of Part the First, and Fart the
Second. The First Part the prosecutor has thought it most proper to let
alone; and from the Second Fart he has selected a few short paragraphs,
making in the whole not quite two pages of the same printing as in the
cheap edition. Those paragraphs relate chiefly to certain facts, such
as the revolution of 1688, and the coming of George the First, commonly
called of the House of Hanover, or the House of Brunswick, or some such
House. The arguments, plans and principles contained in the work, the
prosecutor has not ventured to attack. They are beyond his reach.

The Act which the prosecutor appears to rest most upon for the support
of the prosecution, is the Act intituled, "An Act, declaring the rights
and liberties of the subject, and settling the succession of the crown,"
passed in the first year of William and Mary, and more commonly known by
the name of the "Bill of Rights."

I have called this bill "_A Bill of wrongs and of insult_." My reasons,
and also my proofs, are as follow:

The method and principle which this Bill takes for declaring rights and
liberties, are in direct contradiction to rights and liberties; it is an
assumed attempt to take them wholly from posterity--for the declaration
in the said Bill is as follows:

"The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in _the name of all
the people_, most humbly and faithfully _submit themselves, their heirs,
and posterity for ever_;" that is, to William and Mary his wife, their
heirs and successors. This is a strange way of declaring rights and
liberties. But the Parliament who made this declaration in the name, and
on the part, of the people, had no authority from them for so doing;
and with respect to _posterity for ever_, they had no right or authority
whatever in the case. It was assumption and usurpation. I have reasoned
very extensively against the principle of this Bill, in the first part
of Rights of Man; the prosecutor has silently admitted that reasoning,
and he now commences a prosecution on the authority of the Bill, after
admitting the reasoning against it.

It is also to be observed, that the declaration in this Bill, abject and
irrational as it is, had no other intentional operation than against the
family of the Stuarts, and their abettors. The idea did not then exist,
that in the space of an hundred years, posterity might discover a
different and much better system of government, and that every species
of hereditary government might fall, as Popes and Monks had fallen
before. This, I say, was not then thought of, and therefore the
application of the Bill, in the present case, is a new, erroneous, and
illegal application, and is the same as creating a new Bill _ex post
facto_.

It has ever been the craft of Courtiers, for the purpose of keeping
up an expensive and enormous Civil List, and a mummery of useless and
antiquated places and offices at the public expence, to be continually
hanging England upon some individual or other, called _King_, though
the man might not have capacity to be a parish constable. The folly and
absurdity of this, is appearing more and more every day; and still those
men continue to act as if no alteration in the public opinion had taken
place. They hear each other's nonsense, and suppose the whole nation
talks the same Gibberish.

Let such men cry up the House of Orange, or the House of Brunswick,
if they please. They would cry up any other house if it suited their
purpose, and give as good reasons for it. But what is this house, or
that house, or any other house to a nation? "_For a nation to be free,
it is sufficient that she wills it_." Her freedom depends wholly upon
herself, and not on any house, nor on any individual. I ask not in what
light this cargo of foreign houses appears to others, but I will say in
what light it appears to me--It was like the trees of the forest, saying
unto the bramble, come thou and reign over us.

Thus much for both their houses. I now come to speak of two other
houses, which are also put into the information, and those are the
House of Lords, and the House of Commons. Here, I suppose, the
Attorney-General intends to prove me guilty of speaking either truth
or falsehood; for, according to the modern interpretation of Libels, it
does not signify which, and the only improvement necessary to shew the
compleat absurdity of such doctrine, would be, to prosecute a man for
uttering a most _false and wicked truth_.

I will quote the part I am going to give, from the Office Copy, with the
Attorney General's inuendoes, enclosed in parentheses as they stand in
the information, and I hope that civil list officer will caution the
Court not to laugh when he reads them, and also to take care not to
laugh himself.

The information states, that _Thomas Paine, being a wicked, malicious,
seditious, and evil-disposed person, hath, with force and arms, and
most wicked cunning, written and published a certain false, scandalous,
malicious, and seditious libel; in one part thereof, to the tenor and
effect following, that is to say_--

"With respect to the two Houses, of which the English Parliament
(_meaning the Parliament of this Kingdom_) is composed, they appear to
be effectually influenced into one, and, as a Legislature, to have no
temper of its own. The Minister, (_meaning the Minuter employed by the
King of this Realm, in the administration of the Government thereof_)
whoever he at any time may be, touches it (_meaning the two Houses of
Parliament of this Kingdom_) as with an opium wand, and it (_meaning the
two Houses of Parliament of this Kingdom_) sleeps obedience."

As I am not malicious enough to disturb their repose, though it be time
they should awake, I leave the two Houses and the Attorney General, to
the enjoyment of their dreams, and proceed to a new subject.

The Gentlemen, to whom I shall next address myself, are those who have
stiled themselves "_Friends of the people_," holding their meeting at
the Freemasons' Tavern, London.(1)

One of the principal Members of this Society, is Mr. Grey, who, I
believe, is also one of the most independent Members in Parliament.(2)
I collect this opinion from what Mr. Burke formerly mentioned to me,
rather than from any knowledge of my own. The occasion was as follows:

I was in England at the time the bubble broke forth about Nootka Sound:
and the day after the King's Message, as it is called, was sent to
Parliament, I wrote a note to Mr. Burke, that upon the condition the
French Revolution should not be a subject (for he was then writing
the book I have since answered) I would call on him the next day, and
mention some matters I was acquainted with, respecting the affair; for
it appeared to me extraordinary that any body of men, calling themselves
Representatives, should commit themselves so precipitately, or "sleep
obedience," as Parliament was then doing, and run a nation into expence,
and perhaps a war, without so much as enquiring into the case, or the
subject, of both which I had some knowledge.

     1 See in the Introduction to this volume Chauvelin's account
     of this Association.--_Editor._

     2  In the debate in the House of Commons, Dec. 14, 1793, Mr.
     Grey is thus reported: "Mr. Grey was not a friend to
     Paine's doctrines, but he was not to be deterred by a man
     from acknowledging that he considered the rights of man as
     the foundation of every government, and those who stood out
     against those rights as conspirators against the people." He
     severely denounced the Proclamation.   Parl. Hist., vol.
     xxvi.--_Editor._

When I saw Mr. Burke, and mentioned the circumstances to him, he
particularly spoke of Mr. Grey, as the fittest Member to bring such
matters forward; "for," said Mr. Burke, "_I am not the proper_ person to
do it, as I am in a treaty with Mr. Pitt about Mr. Hastings's trial." I
hope the Attorney General will allow, that Mr. Burke was then _sleeping
his obedience_.--But to return to the Society------

I cannot bring myself to believe, that the general motive of this
Society is any thing more than that by which every former parliamentary
opposition has been governed, and by which the present is sufficiently
known. Failing in their pursuit of power and place within doors, they
have now (and that in not a very mannerly manner) endeavoured to possess
themselves of that ground out of doors, which, had it not been made
by others, would not have been made by them. They appear to me to have
watched, with more cunning than candour, the progress of a certain
publication, and when they saw it had excited a spirit of enquiry,
and was rapidly spreading, they stepped forward to profit by the
opportunity, and Mr. Fox _then_ called it a Libel. In saying this, he
libelled himself. Politicians of this cast, such, I mean, as those who
trim between parties, and lye by for events, are to be found in every
country, and it never yet happened that they did not do more harm
than good. They embarrass business, fritter it to nothing, perplex the
people, and the event to themselves generally is, that they go just
far enough to make enemies of the few, without going far enough to make
friends of the many.

Whoever will read the declarations of this Society, of the 25th of April
and 5th of May, will find a studied reserve upon all the points that are
real abuses. They speak not once of the extravagance of Government, of
the abominable list of unnecessary and sinecure places and pensions, of
the enormity of the Civil List, of the excess of taxes, nor of any one
matter that substantially affects the nation; and from some conversation
that has passed in that Society, it does not appear to me that it is
any part of their plan to carry this class of reforms into practice. No
Opposition Party ever did, when it gained possession.

In making these free observations, I mean not to enter into contention
with this Society; their incivility towards me is what I should expect
from place-hunting reformers. They are welcome, however, to the ground
they have advanced upon, and I wish that every individual among them may
act in the same upright, uninfluenced, and public spirited manner that I
have done. Whatever reforms may be obtained, and by whatever means,
they will be for the benefit of others and not of me. I have no other
interest in the cause than the interest of my heart. The part I have
acted has been wholly that of a volunteer, unconnected with party; and
when I quit, it shall be as honourably as I began.

I consider the reform of Parliament, by an application to Parliament, as
proposed by the Society, to be a worn-out hackneyed subject, about which
the nation is tired, and the parties are deceiving each other. It is not
a subject that is cognizable before Parliament, because no Government
has a right to alter itself, either in whole or in part. The right,
and the exercise of that right, appertains to the nation only, and the
proper means is by a national convention, elected for the purpose, by
all the people. By this, the will of the nation, whether to reform or
not, or what the reform shall be, or how far it shall extend, will be
known, and it cannot be known by any other means. Partial addresses, or
separate associations, are not testimonies of the general will.

It is, however, certain, that the opinions of men, with respect
to systems and principles of government, are changing fast in all
countries. The alteration in England, within the space of a little more
than a year, is far greater than could have been believed, and it is
daily and hourly increasing. It moves along the country with the silence
of thought. The enormous expence of Government has provoked men to
think, by making them feel; and the Proclamation has served to increase
jealousy and disgust. To prevent, therefore, those commotions which too
often and too suddenly arise from suffocated discontents, it is best
that the general WILL should have the full and free opportunity of being
publicly ascertained and known.

Wretched as the state of representation is in England, it is every
day becoming worse, because the unrepresented parts of the nation are
increasing in population and property, and the represented parts are
decreasing. It is, therefore, no ill-grounded estimation to say, that
as not one person in seven is represented, at least fourteen millions of
taxes out of the seventeen millions, are paid by the unrepresented part;
for although copyholds and leaseholds are assessed to the land-tax, the
holders are unrepresented. Should then a general demur take place as to
the obligation of paying taxes, on the ground of not being represented,
it is not the Representatives of Rotten Boroughs, nor Special Juries,
that can decide the question. This is one of the possible cases that
ought to be foreseen, in order to prevent the inconveniencies that might
arise to numerous individuals, by provoking it.

I confess I have no idea of petitioning for rights. Whatever the rights
of people are, they have a right to them, and none have a right either
to withhold them, or to grant them. Government ought to be established
on such principles of justice as to exclude the occasion of all such
applications, for wherever they appear they are virtually accusations.

I wish that Mr. Grey, since he has embarked in the business, would take
the whole of it into consideration. He will then see that the right of
reforming the state of the Representation does not reside in Parliament,
and that the only motion he could consistently make would be, that
Parliament should _recommend_ the election of a convention of the
people, because all pay taxes. But whether Parliament recommended it
or not, the right of the nation would neither be lessened nor increased
thereby.

As to Petitions from the unrepresented part, they ought not to be looked
for. As well might it be expected that Manchester, Sheffield, &c.
should petition the rotten Boroughs, as that they should petition the
Representatives of those Boroughs. Those two towns alone pay far more
taxes than all the rotten Boroughs put together, and it is scarcely to
be expected they should pay their court either to the Boroughs, or the
Borough-mongers.

It ought also to be observed, that what is called Parliament, is
composed of two houses that have always declared against the right of
each other to interfere in any matter that related to the circumstances
of either, particularly that of election. A reform, therefore, in the
representation cannot, on the ground they have individually taken,
become the subject of an act of Parliament, because such a mode would
include the interference, against which the Commons on their part have
protested; but must, as well on the ground of formality, as on that of
right, proceed from a National Convention.

Let Mr. Grey, or any other man, sit down and endeavour to put his
thoughts together, for the purpose of drawing up an application to
Parliament for a reform of Parliament, and he will soon convince himself
of the folly of the attempt. He will find that he cannot get on; that
he cannot make his thoughts join, so as to produce any effect; for,
whatever formality of words he may use, they will unavoidably include
two ideas directly opposed to each other; the one in setting forth
the reasons, the other in praying for relief, and the two, when placed
together, would stand thus: "_The Representation in Parliament is so
very corrupt, that we can no longer confide in it,--and, therefore,
confiding in the justice and wisdom of Parliament, we pray_," &c, &c.

The heavy manner in which every former proposed application to
Parliament has dragged, sufficiently shews, that though the nation might
not exactly see the awkwardness of the measure, it could not clearly see
its way, by those means. To this also may be added another remark, which
is, that the worse Parliament is, the less will be the inclination to
petition it. This indifference, viewed as it ought to be, is one of the
strongest censures the public express. It is as if they were to say to
them, "Ye are not worth reforming."

Let any man examine the Court-Kalendar of Placemen in both Houses, and
the manner in which the Civil List operates, and he will be at no loss
to account for this indifference and want of confidence on one side, nor
of the opposition to reforms on the other.

Who would have supposed that Mr. Burke, holding forth as he formerly
did against secret influence, and corrupt majorities, should become
a concealed Pensioner? I will now state the case, not for the little
purpose of exposing Mr. Burke, but to shew the inconsistency of any
application to a body of men, more than half of whom, as far as the
nation can at present know, may be in the same case with himself.

Towards the end of Lord North's administration, Mr. Burke brought a bill
into Parliament, generally known by Mr. Burke's Reform Bill; in which,
among other things, it is enacted, "That no pension exceeding the sum
of three hundred pounds a year, shall be granted to any one person,
and that the whole amount of the pensions granted in one year shall not
exceed six hundred pounds; a list of which, together with the _names
of the persons_ to whom the same are granted, shall be laid before
Parliament in twenty days after the beginning of each session, until
the whole pension list shall be reduced to ninety thousand pounds." A
provisory clause is afterwards added, "That it shall be lawful for the
First Commissioner of the Treasury, to return into the Exchequer any
pension or annuity, _without a name_, on his making oath that such
pension or annuity is not directly or indirectly for the benefit, use,
or behoof of any Member of the House of Commons."

But soon after that administration ended, and the party Mr. Burke acted
with came into power, it appears from the circumstances I am going to
relate, that Mr. Burke became himself a Pensioner in disguise; in a
similar manner as if a pension had been granted in the name of John
Nokes, to be privately paid to and enjoyed by Tom Stiles. The name of
Edmund Burke does not appear in the original transaction: but after the
pension was obtained, Mr. Burke wanted to make the most of it at once,
by selling or mortgaging it; and the gentleman in whose name the pension
stands, applied to one of the public offices for that purpose. This
unfortunately brought forth the name of _Edmund Burke_, as the real
Pensioner of 1,500L. per annum.(1) When men trumpet forth what they call
the blessings of the Constitution, it ought to be known what sort of
blessings they allude to.

As to the Civil List of a million a year, it is not to be supposed that
any one man can eat, drink, or consume the whole upon himself. The case
is, that above half the sum is annually apportioned among Courtiers,
and Court Members, of both Houses, in places and offices, altogether
insignificant and perfectly useless as to every purpose of civil,
rational, and manly government. For instance,

Of what use in the science and system of Government is what is called
a Lord Chamberlain, a Master and Mistress of the Robes, a Master of the
Horse, a Master of the Hawks, and one hundred other such things? Laws
derive no additional force, nor additional excellence from such mummery.

In the disbursements of the Civil List for the year 1786, (which may be
seen in Sir John Sinclair's History of the Revenue,) are four separate
charges for this mummery office of Chamberlain:

[Illustration: table110]

From this sample the rest may be guessed at. As to the Master of the
Hawks, (there are no hawks kept, and if there were, it is no reason the
people should pay the expence of feeding them, many of whom are put to
it to get bread for their children,) his salary is 1,372L. 10s.

     1 See note at the end of this chapter.--_Editor._

And besides a list of items of this kind, sufficient to fill a quire of
paper, the Pension lists alone are 107,404L. 13s. 4d. which is a greater
sum than all the expences of the federal Government in America amount
to.

Among the items, there are two I had no expectation of finding, and
which, in this day of enquiry after Civil List influence, ought to be
exposed. The one is an annual payment of one thousand seven hundred
pounds to the Dissenting Ministers in England, and the other, eight
hundred pounds to those of Ireland.

This is the fact; and the distribution, as I am informed, is as follows:
The whole sum of 1,700L. is paid to one person, a Dissenting Minister
in London, who divides it among eight others, and those eight among such
others as they please. The Lay-body of the Dissenters, and many of their
principal Ministers, have long considered it as dishonourable, and have
endeavoured to prevent it, but still it continues to be secretly paid;
and as the world has sometimes seen very fulsome Addresses from parts of
that body, it may naturally be supposed that the receivers, like Bishops
and other Court-Clergy, are not idle in promoting them. How the money is
distributed in Ireland, I know not.

To recount all the secret history of the Civil List, is not the
intention of this publication. It is sufficient, in this place, to
expose its general character, and the mass of influence it keeps alive.
It will necessarily become one of the objects of reform; and therefore
enough is said to shew that, under its operation, no application to
Parliament can be expected to succeed, nor can consistently be made.

Such reforms will not be promoted by the Party that is in possession of
those places, nor by the Opposition who are waiting for them; and as
to a _mere reform_, in the state of the Representation, the idea that
another Parliament, differently elected from the present, but still a
third component part of the same system, and subject to the controul of
the other two parts, will abolish those abuses, is altogether delusion;
because it is not only impracticable on the ground of formality, but is
unwisely exposing another set of men to the same corruptions that have
tainted the present.

Were all the objects that require reform accomplishable by a mere reform
in the state of the Representation, the persons who compose the present
Parliament might, with rather more propriety, be asked to abolish all
the abuses themselves, than be applied to as the more instruments of
doing it by a future Parliament. If the virtue be wanting to abolish the
abuse, it is also wanting to act as the means, and the nation must, from
necessity, proceed by some other plan.

Having thus endeavoured to shew what the abject condition of Parliament
is, and the impropriety of going a second time over the same ground that
has before miscarried, I come to the remaining part of the subject.

There ought to be, in the constitution of every country, a mode of
referring back, on any extraordinary occasion, to the sovereign and
original constituent power, which is the nation itself. The right of
altering any part of a Government, cannot, as already observed, reside
in the Government, or that Government might make itself what it pleased.

It ought also to be taken for granted, that though a nation may feel
inconveniences, either in the excess of taxation, or in the mode of
expenditure, or in any thing else, it may not at first be sufficiently
assured in what part of its government the defect lies, or where the
evil originates. It may be supposed to be in one part, and on enquiry
be found to be in another; or partly in all. This obscurity is naturally
interwoven with what are called mixed Governments.

Be, however, the reform to be accomplished whatever it may, it can only
follow in consequence of obtaining a full knowledge of all the causes
that have rendered such reform necessary, and every thing short of this
is guess-work or frivolous cunning. In this case, it cannot be supposed
that any application to Parliament can bring forward this knowledge.
That body is itself the supposed cause, or one of the supposed causes,
of the abuses in question; and cannot be expected, and ought not to be
asked, to give evidence against itself. The enquiry, therefore, which
is of necessity the first step in the business, cannot be trusted to
Parliament, but must be undertaken by a distinct body of men, separated
from every suspicion of corruption or influence.

Instead, then, of referring to rotten Boroughs and absurd Corporations
for Addresses, or hawking them about the country to be signed by a few
dependant tenants, the real and effectual mode would be to come at once
to the point, and to ascertain the sense of the nation by electing a
National Convention. By this method, as already observed, the general
WILL, whether to reform or not, or what the reform shall be, or how
far it shall extend, will be known, and it cannot be known by any other
means. Such a body, empowered and supported by the nation, will have
authority to demand information upon all matters necessary to be
en-quired into; and no Minister, nor any person, will dare to refuse it.
It will then be seen whether seventeen millions of taxes are necessary,
and for what purposes they are expended. The concealed Pensioners will
then be obliged to unmask; and the source of influence and corruption,
if any such there be, will be laid open to the nation, not for the
purpose of revenge, but of redress.

By taking this public and national ground, all objections against
partial Addresses on the one side, or private associations on the other,
will be done away; THE NATION WILL DECLARE ITS OWN REFORMS; and the
clamour about Party and Faction, or Ins or Outs, will become ridiculous.

The plan and organization of a convention is easy in practice.

In the first place, the number of inhabitants in every county can be
sufficiently ascertained from the number of houses assessed to the
House and Window-light tax in each county. This will give the rule
for apportioning the number of Members to be elected to the National
Convention in each of the counties.

If the total number of inhabitants in England be seven millions, and the
total number of Members to be elected to the Convention be one thousand,
the number of members to be elected in a county containing one hundred
and fifty thousand inhabitants will be _twenty-one_, and in like
proportion for any other county.

As the election of a Convention must, in order to ascertain the general
sense of the nation, go on grounds different from that of Parliamentary
elections, the mode that best promises this end will have no
difficulties to combat with from absurd customs and pretended rights.
The right of every man will be the same, whether he lives in a city,
a town, or a village. The custom of attaching Rights to _place_, or
in other words, to inanimate matter, instead of to the _person_,
independently of place, is too absurd to make any part of a rational
argument.

As every man in the nation, of the age of twenty-one years, pays taxes,
either out of the property he possesses, or out of the product of his
labor, which is property to him; and is amenable in his own person to
every law of the land; so has every one the same equal right to vote,
and no one part of the nation, nor any individual, has a right to
dispute the right of another. The man who should do this ought to
forfeit the exercise of his _own_ right, for a term of years. This would
render the punishment consistent with the crime.

When a qualification to vote is regulated by years, it is placed on the
firmest possible ground; because the qualification is such, as nothing
but dying before the time can take away; and the equality of Rights, as
a principle, is recognized in the act of regulating the exercise. But
when Rights are placed upon, or made dependant upon property, they are
on the most precarious of all tenures. "Riches make themselves wings,
and fly away," and the rights fly with them; and thus they become lost
to the man when they would be of most value.

It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice, that exclusions
have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first,
changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The
Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to
do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of
all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew, that the same
conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely,
a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a
Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the
rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor
to plunder the rich of his property; for the rights of the one are
as much property to him, as wealth is property to the other, and the
_little all_ is as dear as the _much_. It is only by setting out on just
principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will
always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the
poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be
effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.

Exclusions are not only unjust, but they frequently operate as
injuriously to the party who monopolizes, as to those who are excluded.
When men seek to exclude others from participating in the exercise of
any right, they should, at least, be assured, that they can effectually
perform the whole of the business they undertake; for, unless they do
this, themselves will be losers by the monopoly. This has been the case
with respect to the monopolized right of Election. The monopolizing
party has not been able to keep the Parliamentary Representation, to
whom the power of taxation was entrusted, in the state it ought to have
been, and have thereby multiplied taxes upon themselves equally with
those who were excluded.

A great deal has been, and will continue to be said, about
disqualifications, arising from the commission of offences; but were
this subject urged to its full extent, it would disqualify a great
number of the present Electors, together with their Representatives;
for, of all offences, none are more destructive to the morals of Society
than Bribery and Corruption. It is, therefore, civility to such persons
to pass this subject over, and to give them a fair opportunity of
recovering, or rather of creating character.

Every thing, in the present mode of electioneering in England, is the
reverse of what it ought to be, and the vulgarity that attends elections
is no other than the natural consequence of inverting the order of the
system.

In the first place, the Candidate seeks the Elector, instead of the
Elector seeking for a Representative; and the Electors are advertised as
being in the interest of the Candidate, instead of the Candidate being
in the interest of the Electors. The Candidate pays the Elector for his
vote, instead of the Nation paying the Representative for his time and
attendance on public business. The complaint for an undue election is
brought by the Candidate, as if he, and not the Electors, were the party
aggrieved; and he takes on himself, at any period of the election, to
break it up, by declining, as if the election was in his right and not
in theirs.

The compact that was entered into at the last Westminster election
between two of the candidates (Mr. Fox and Lord Hood,) was an indecent
violation of the principles of election. The Candidates assumed, in
their own persons, the rights of the Electors; for, it was only in the
body of the Electors, and not at all in the Candidates, that the
right of making any such compact, or compromise, could exist. But the
principle of Election and Representation is so completely done away,
in every stage thereof, that inconsistency has no longer the power of
surprising.

Neither from elections thus conducted, nor from rotten Borough
Addressers, nor from County-meetings, promoted by Placemen and
Pensioners, can the sense of the nation be known. It is still corruption
appealing to itself. But a Convention of a thousand persons, fairly
elected, would bring every matter to a decided issue.

As to County-meetings, it is only persons of leisure, or those who live
near to the place of meeting, that can attend, and the number on such
occasions is but like a drop in the bucket compared with the whole. The
only consistent service which such meetings could render, would be that
of apportioning the county into convenient districts, and when this is
done, each district might, according to its number of inhabitants, elect
its quota of County Members to the National Convention; and the vote of
each Elector might be taken in the parish where he resided, either by
ballot or by voice, as he should chuse to give it.

A National Convention thus formed, would bring together the sense and
opinions of every part of the nation, fairly taken. The science of
Government, and the interest of the Public, and of the several parts
thereof, would then undergo an ample and rational discussion, freed from
the language of parliamentary disguise.

But in all deliberations of this kind, though men have a right to
reason with, and endeavour to convince each other, upon any matter that
respects their common good, yet, in point of practice, the majority of
opinions, when known, forms a rule for the whole, and to this rule every
good citizen practically conforms.

Mr. Burke, as if he knew, (for every concealed Pensioner has the
opportunity of knowing,) that the abuses acted under the present system,
are too flagrant to be palliated, and that the majority of opinions,
whenever such abuses should be made public, would be for a general and
effectual reform, has endeavoured to preclude the event, by sturdily
denying the right of a majority of a nation to act as a whole. Let us
bestow a thought upon this case.

When any matter is proposed as a subject for consultation, it
necessarily implies some mode of decision. Common consent, arising from
absolute necessity, has placed this in a majority of opinions; because,
without it, there can be no decision, and consequently no order. It is,
perhaps, the only case in which mankind, however various in their ideas
upon other matters, can consistently be unanimous; because it is a mode
of decision derived from the primary original right of every individual
concerned; _that_ right being first individually exercised in giving an
opinion, and whether that opinion shall arrange with the minority or the
majority, is a subsequent accidental thing that neither increases nor
diminishes the individual original right itself. Prior to any debate,
enquiry, or investigation, it is not supposed to be known on which side
the majority of opinions will fall, and therefore, whilst this mode of
decision secures to every one the right of giving an opinion, it admits
to every one an equal chance in the ultimate event.

Among the matters that will present themselves to the consideration of
a national convention, there is one, wholly of a domestic nature, but so
marvellously loaded with con-fusion, as to appear at first sight, almost
impossible to be reformed. I mean the condition of what is called Law.

But, if we examine into the cause from whence this confusion, now so
much the subject of universal complaint, is produced, not only the
remedy will immediately present itself, but, with it, the means of
preventing the like case hereafter.

In the first place, the confusion has generated itself from the
absurdity of every Parliament assuming to be eternal in power, and
the laws partake in a similar manner, of this assumption. They have no
period of legal or natural expiration; and, however absurd in principle,
or inconsistent in practice many of them have become, they still are,
if not especially repealed, considered as making a part of the general
mass. By this means the body of what is called Law, is spread over a
space of _several hundred years_, comprehending laws obsolete, laws
repugnant, laws ridiculous, and every other kind of laws forgotten
or remembered; and what renders the case still worse, is, that the
confusion multiplies with the progress of time. (*)

To bring this misshapen monster into form, and to prevent its lapsing
again into a wilderness state, only two things, and those very simple,
are necessary.

The first is, to review the whole mass of laws, and to bring forward
such only as are worth retaining, and let all the rest drop; and to give
to the laws so brought forward a new era, commencing from the time of
such reform.

     * In the time of Henry IV. a law was passed making it felony
     "to multiply gold or silver, or to make use of the craft of
     multiplication," and this law remained two hundred and
     eighty-six years upon the statute books. It was then
     repealed as being ridiculous and injurious.--_Author_.

Secondly; that at the expiration of every twenty-one years (or any other
stated period) a like review shall again be taken, and the laws, found
proper to be retained, be again carried forward, commencing with that
date, and the useless laws dropped and discontinued.

By this means there can be no obsolete laws, and scarcely such a thing
as laws standing in direct or equivocal contradiction to each other, and
every person will know the period of time to which he is to look back
for all the laws in being.

It is worth remarking, that while every other branch of science is
brought within some commodious system, and the study of it simplified by
easy methods, the laws take the contrary course, and become every year
more complicated, entangled, confused, and obscure.

Among the paragraphs which the Attorney General has taken from the
_Rights of Man_, and put into his information, one is, that where I
have said, "that with respect to regular law, there is _scarcely such a
thing_."

As I do not know whether the Attorney-General means to show this
expression to be libellous, because it is TRUE, or because it is FALSE,
I shall make no other reply to him in this place, than by remarking,
that if almanack-makers had not been more judicious than law-makers,
the study of almanacks would by this time have become as abstruse as the
study of the law, and we should hear of a library of almanacks as we
now do of statutes; but by the simple operation of letting the obsolete
matter drop, and carrying forward that only which is proper to be
retained, all that is necessary to be known is found within the space of
a year, and laws also admit of being kept within some given period.

I shall here close this letter, so far as it respects the Addresses, the
Proclamation, and the Prosecution; and shall offer a few observations to
the Society, styling itself "The Friends of the People."

That the science of government is beginning to be better understood than
in former times, and that the age of fiction and political superstition,
and of craft and mystery, is passing away, are matters which the
experience of every day-proves to be true, as well in England as in
other countries.

As therefore it is impossible to calculate the silent progress of
opinion, and also impossible to govern a nation after it has changed
its habits of thinking, by the craft or policy that it was governed
by before, the only true method to prevent popular discontents and
commotions is, to throw, by every fair and rational argument, all the
light upon the subject that can possibly be thrown; and at the same
time, to open the means of collecting the general sense of the nation;
and this cannot, as already observed, be done by any plan so effectually
as a national convention. Here individual opinion will quiet itself by
having a centre to rest upon.

The society already mentioned, (which is made up of men of various
descriptions, but chiefly of those called Foxites,) appears to me,
either to have taken wrong grounds from want of judgment, or to have
acted with cunning reserve. It is now amusing the people with a
new phrase, namely, that of "a temperate and moderate reform," the
interpretation of which is, _a continuance of the abuses as long as
possible, If we cannot hold all let us hold some_.

Who are those that are frightened at reforms? Are the public afraid that
their taxes should be lessened too much? Are they afraid that sinecure
places and pensions should be abolished too fast? Are the poor afraid
that their condition should be rendered too comfortable? Is the worn-out
mechanic, or the aged and decayed tradesman, frightened at the prospect
of receiving ten pounds a year out of the surplus taxes? Is the soldier
frightened at the thoughts of his discharge, and three shillings per
week during life? Is the sailor afraid that press-warrants will be
abolished? The Society mistakes the fears of borough-mongers, placemen,
and pensioners, for the fears of the people; and the _temperate and
moderate Reform_ it talks of, is calculated to suit the condition of the
former.

Those words, "temperate and moderate," are words either of political
cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction.--A thing, moderately good, is
not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue;
but moderation in principle, is a species of vice. But who is to be the
judge of what is a temperate and moderate Reform? The Society is the
representative of nobody; neither can the unrepresented part of the
nation commit this power to those in Parliament, in whose election they
had no choice; and, therefore, even upon the ground the Society has
taken, recourse must be had to a National Convention.

The objection which Mr. Fox made to Mr. Grey's proposed Motion for a
Parliamentary Reform was, that it contained no plan.--It certainly did
not. But the plan very easily presents itself; and whilst it is fair
for all parties, it prevents the dangers that might otherwise arise from
private or popular discontent.

Thomas Paine.


     Editorial Note on Burke's Alleged Secret Pension.--By
     reference to Vol. II., pp. 271, 360, of this work, it will
     be seen that Paine mentions a report that Burke was a
     "pensioner in a fictitious name." A letter of John Hall to a
     relative in Leicester, (London, May 1,1792.) says: "You will
     remember that there was a vote carried, about the conclusion
     of the American war, that the influence of the Crown had
     increased, was increasing, and should be diminished. Burke,
     poor, and like a good angler, baited a hook with a bill to
     bring into Parliament, that no pensions should be given
     above £300 a year, but what should be publicly granted, and
     for what, (I may not be quite particular.) To stop that he
     took in another person's name £1500 a year for life, and
     some time past he disposed of it, or sold his life out. He
     has been very still since his declension from the Whigs, and
     is not concerned in the slave-trade [question?] as I hear
     of." This letter, now in possession of Hall's kinsman, Dr.
     Dutton Steele of Philadelphia, contains an item not in
     Paine's account, which may have been derived from it. Hall
     was an English scientific engineer, and acquainted with
     intelligent men in London. Paine was rather eager for a
     judicial encounter with Burke, and probably expected to be
     sued by him for libel, as he (Burke) had once sued the
     "Public Advertiser" for a personal accusation. But Burke
     remained quiet under this charge, and Paine, outlawed, and
     in France, had no opportunity for summoning witnesses in its
     support. The biographers of Burke have silently passed over
     the accusation, and this might be fair enough were this
     unconfirmed charge made against a public man of stainless
     reputation in such matters. But though Burke escaped
     parliamentary censure for official corruption (May 16, 1783,
     by only 24 majority) he has never been vindicated. It was
     admitted that he had restored to office a cashier and an
     accountant dismissed for dishonesty by his predecessor.
     ("Pari. Hist.," xxiii., pp. 801,902.) He escaped censure by
     agreeing to suspend them.    One was proved guilty, the
     other committed suicide. It was subsequently shown that one
     of the men had been an agent of the Burkes in raising India
     stock. (Dilke's "Papers of a Critic," ii-, p. 333--"Dict.
     Nat Biography": art Burke.) Paine, in his letter to the
     Attorney-General (IV. of this volume), charged that Burke
     had been a "masked pensioner" ten years. The date
     corresponds with a secret arrangement made in 1782 with
     Burke for a virtual pension to his son, for life, and his
     mother. Under date April 34 of that year, Burke, writing to
     William Burke at Madras, reports his appointment as
     Paymaster: "The office is to be 4000L. certain. Young
     Richard [his son] is the deputy with a salary of 500L. The
     office to be reformed according to the Bill. There is enough
     emoluments. In decency it could not be more. Something
     considerable is also to be secured for the life of young
     Richard to be a security for him and his mother."("Mem. and
     Cor. of Charles James Fox," i., p. 451.) It is thus certain
     that the Rockingham Ministry were doing for the Paymaster
     all they could "in decency," and that while posing as a
     reformer in reducing the expenses of that office, he was
     arranging for secret advantages to his family. It is said
     that the arrangement failed by his loss of office, but while
     so many of Burke's papers are withheld from the public (if
     not destroyed), it cannot be certain that something was not
     done of the kind charged by Paine. That Burke was not strict
     in such matters is further shown by his efforts to secure
     for his son the rich sinecure of the Clerkship of the Polls,
     in which he failed. Burke was again Paymaster in 1783-4, and
     this time remained long enough in office to repeat more
     successfully his secret attempts to secure irregular
     pensions for his family. On April 7, 1894, Messrs. Sotheby,
     Wilkinson, and Hodge sold in London (Lot 404) a letter of
     Burke (which I have not seen in print), dated July 16, 1795.
     It was written to the Chairman of the Commission on Public
     Accounts, who had required him to render his accounts for
     the time he was in office as Paymaster-General, 1783-4.
     Burke refuses to do so in four angry and quibbling pages,
     and declares he will appeal to his country against the
     demand if it is pressed. Why should Burke wish to conceal
     his accounts? There certainly were suspicions around Burke,
     and they may have caused Pitt to renounce his intention,
     conveyed to Burke, August 30, 1794, of asking Parliament to
     bestow on him a pension. "It is not exactly known," says one
     of Burke's editors, "what induced Mr. Pitt to decline
     bringing before Parliament a measure which he had himself
     proposed without any solicitation whatever on the part of
     Burke." (Burke's "Works," English Ed., 1852, ii., p. 252.)
     The pensions were given without consultation with
     Parliament--1200L. granted him by the King from the Civil
     List, and 2500L. by Pitt in West Indian 41/2 per cents.
     Burke, on taking his seat beside Pitt in the great Paine
     Parliament (December, 1792), had protested that he had not
     abandoned his party through expectation of a pension, but
     the general belief of those with whom he had formerly acted
     was that he had been promised a pension.   A couplet of the
     time ran:

     "A pension makes him change his plan,
     And loudly damn the rights of man."

     Writing in 1819, Cobbett says: "As my Lord Grenville
     introduced the name of Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to
     introduce the name of the man [Paine] who put this Burke to
     shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in
     the Pension List, and who is now named fifty million times
     where the name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once."--
     _Editor._




X. ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE.


Paris, Sept. 25, [1792.] First Year of the Republic.

Fellow Citizens,

I RECEIVE, with affectionate gratitude, the honour which the late
National Assembly has conferred upon me, by adopting me a Citizen of
France: and the additional honor of being elected by my fellow citizens
a Member of the National Convention.(1) Happily impressed, as I am, by
those testimonies of respect shown towards me as an individual, I feel
my felicity increased by seeing the barrier broken down that divided
patriotism by spots of earth, and limited citizenship to the soil, like
vegetation.

Had those honours been conferred in an hour of national tranquillity,
they would have afforded no other means of shewing my affection, than
to have accepted and enjoyed them; but they come accompanied with
circumstances that give me the honourable opportunity of commencing
my citizenship in the stormy hour of difficulties. I come not to enjoy
repose. Convinced that the cause of France is the cause of all mankind,
and that liberty cannot be purchased by a wish, I gladly share with you
the dangers and honours necessary to success.

     1 The National Assembly (August 26, 1792) conferred the
     title of "French Citizen" on "Priestley, Payne, Bentham,
     Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, Campe, Cormelle, Paw,
     David Williams, Gorani, Anacharsis Clootz, Pestalozzi,
     Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Klopstoc, Kosciusko,
     Gilleers."--_Editor._. vol ni--7

I am well aware that the moment of any great change, such as that
accomplished on the 10th of August, is unavoidably the moment of
terror and confusion. The mind, highly agitated by hope, suspicion and
apprehension, continues without rest till the change be accomplished.
But let us now look calmly and confidently forward, and success is
certain. It is no longer the paltry cause of kings, or of this, or of
that individual, that calls France and her armies into action. It is the
great cause of all. It is the establishment of a new aera, that shall
blot despotism from the earth, and fix, on the lasting principles of
peace and citizenship, the great Republic of Man.

It has been my fate to have borne a share in the commencement and
complete establishment of one Revolution, (I mean the Revolution of
America.) The success and events of that Revolution are encouraging to
us. The prosperity and happiness that have since flowed to that country,
have amply rewarded her for all the hardships she endured and for all
the dangers she encountered.

The principles on which that Revolution began, have extended themselves
to Europe; and an over-ruling Providence is regenerating the Old World
by the principles of the New. The distance of America from all the
other parts of the globe, did not admit of her carrying those principles
beyond her own situation. It is to the peculiar honour of France, that
she now raises the standard of liberty for all nations; and in fighting
her own battles, contends for the rights of all mankind.

The same spirit of fortitude that insured success to America; will
insure it to France, for it is impossible to conquer a nation determined
to be free! The military circumstances that now unite themselves to
France, are such as the despots of the earth know nothing of, and can
form no calculation upon. They know not what it is to fight against a
nation; they have only been accustomed to make war upon each other,
and they know, from system and practice, how to calculate the probable
success of despot against despot; and here their knowledge and their
experience end.

But in a contest like the present a new and boundless variety of
circumstances arise, that deranges all such customary calculations. When
a whole nation acts as an army, the despot knows not the extent of the
power against which he contends. New armies arise against him with the
necessity of the moment. It is then that the difficulties of an invading
enemy multiply, as in the former case they diminished; and he finds them
at their height when he expected them to end.

The only war that has any similarity of circumstances with the present,
is the late revolution war in America. On her part, as it now is in
France, it was a war of the whole nation:--there it was that the enemy,
by beginning to conquer, put himself in a condition of being conquered.
His first victories prepared him for defeat. He advanced till he could
not retreat, and found himself in the midst of a nation of armies.

Were it now to be proposed to the Austrians and Prussians, to escort
them into the middle of France, and there leave them to make the most
of such a situation, they would see too much into the dangers of it to
accept the offer, and the same dangers would attend them, could they
arrive there by any other means. Where, then, is the military policy of
their attempting to obtain, by force, that which they would refuse by
choice? But to reason with despots is throwing reason away. The best of
arguments is a vigorous preparation.

Man is ever a stranger to the ways by which Providence regulates the
order of things. The interference of foreign despots may serve to
introduce into their own enslaved countries the principles they come
to oppose. Liberty and Equality are blessings too great to be the
inheritance of France alone. It is an honour to her to be their first
champion; and she may now say to her enemies, with a mighty voice, "O!
ye Austrians, ye Prussians! ye who now turn your bayonets against us,
it is for you, it is for all Europe, it is for all mankind, and not for
France alone, that she raises the standard of Liberty and Equality!"

The public cause has hitherto suffered from the contradictions contained
in the Constitution of the Constituent Assembly. Those contradictions
have served to divide the opinions of individuals at home, and to
obscure the great principles of the Revolution in other countries. But
when those contradictions shall be removed, and the Constitution be
made conformable to the declaration of Rights; when the bagatelles of
monarchy, royalty, regency, and hereditary succession, shall be exposed,
with all their absurdities, a new ray of light will be thrown over the
world, and the Revolution will derive new strength by being universally
understood.

The scene that now opens itself to France extends far beyond the
boundaries of her own dominions. Every nation is becoming her colleague,
and every court is become her enemy. It is now the cause of all nations,
against the cause of all courts. The terror that despotism felt,
clandestinely begot a confederation of despots; and their attack upon
France was produced by their fears at home.

In entering on this great scene, greater than any nation has yet been
called to act in, let us say to the agitated mind, be calm. Let us
punish by instructing, rather than by revenge. Let us begin the new
ara by a greatness of friendship, and hail the approach of union and
success.

Your Fellow-Citizen,

Thomas Paine.




XI. ANTI-MONARCHAL ESSAY. FOR THE USE OF NEW REPUBLICANS.(1)

When we reach some great good, long desired, we begin by felicitating
ourselves. We triumph, we give ourselves up to this joy without
rendering to our minds any full account of our reasons for it. Then
comes reflexion: we pass in review all the circumstances of our new
happiness; we compare it in detail with our former condition; and
each of these thoughts becomes a fresh enjoyment. This satisfaction,
elucidated and well-considered, we now desire to procure for our
readers.

In seeing Royalty abolished and the Republic established, all France
has resounded with unanimous plaudits.(2) Yet, Citizen President: In the
name of the Deputies of the Department of the Pas de Calais, I have the
honor of presenting to the Convention the felicitations of the General
Council of the Commune of Calais on the abolition of Royalty.

     1 Translated for this work from Le Patriote François,
     "Samedi 20 Octobre, 1793, l'an Ier de la République.
     Supplement au No. 1167," in the Bibliothèque Nationale,
     Paris. It is headed, "Essai anti-monarchique, à l'usage des
     nouveaux républicains, tiré de la Feuille Villageoise." I
     have not found this Feuille, but no doubt Brissot, in
     editing the essay for his journal (Le Patriote François)
     abridged it, and in one instance Paine is mentioned by name.
     Although in this essay Paine occasionally repeats sentences
     used elsewhere, and naturally maintains his well-known
     principles, the work has a peculiar interest as indicating
     the temper and visions of the opening revolution.--_Editor._

     2 Royalty was abolished by the National Convention on the
     first day of its meeting, September 21, 1792, the
     revolutionary Calendar beginning next day. Paine was chosen
     by his fellow-deputies of Calais to congratulate the
     Convention, and did so in a brief address, dated October 27,
     which was loaned by M. Charavay to the Historical Exposition
     of the Revolution at Paris, 1889, where I made the subjoined
     translation: "folly of oar ancestor», who have placed us
     under the necessity of treating gravely (solennellement) the
     abolition of a phantom (fantôme).--Thomas Paine, Deputy."--
     _Editor._

Amid the joy inspired by this event, one cannot forbear some pain
at the some who clap their hands do not sufficiently understand the
condition they are leaving or that which they are assuming.

The perjuries of Louis, the conspiracies of his court, the wildness of
his worthy brothers, have filled every Frenchman with horror, and this
race was dethroned in their hearts before its fall by legal decree. But
it is little to throw down an idol; it is the pedestal that above all
must be broken down; it is the regal office rather than the incumbent
that is murderous. All do not realize this.

Why is Royalty an absurd and detestable government? Why is the Republic
a government accordant with nature and reason? At the present time a
Frenchman should put himself in a position to answer these two questions
clearly. For, in fine, if you are free and contented it is yet needful
that you should know why.

Let us first discuss Royalty or Monarchy. Although one often wishes to
distinguish between these names, common usage gives them the same sense.


ROYALTY.

Bands of brigands unite to subvert a country, place it under tribute,
seize its lands, enslave its inhabitants. The expedition completed, the
chieftain of the robbers adopts the title of monarch or king. Such
is the origin of Royalty among all tribes--huntsmen, agriculturists,
shepherds.

A second brigand arrives who finds it equitable to take away by force
what was conquered by violence: he dispossesses the first; he chains
him, kills him, reigns in his place. Ere long time effaces the memory
of this origin; the successors rule under a new form; they do a little
good, from policy; they corrupt all who surround them; they invent
fictitious genealogies to make their families sacred (1); the knavery
of priests comes to their aid; they take Religion for a life-guard:
thenceforth tyranny becomes immortal, the usurped power becomes an
hereditary right.

     1 The Boston Investigator's compilation of Paine's Works
     contains the following as  supposed to be Mr. Paine's:

     "Royal Pedigree.--George the Third, who was the grandson of
     George the Second, who was the son of George the First, who
     was the son of the Princess Sophia, who was the cousin of
     Anne, who was the sister of William and Mary, who were the
     daughter and son-in-law of James the Second, who was the son
     of Charles the First, who was a traitor to his country and
     decapitated as such, who was the son of James the First, who
     was the son of Mary, who was the sister of Edward the Sixth,
     who was the son of Henry the Eighth, who was the coldblooded
     murderer of his wives, and the promoter of the Protestant
     religion, who was the son of Henry the Seventh, who slew
     Richard the Third, who smothered his nephew Edward the
     Fifth, who was the son of Edward the Fourth, who with bloody
     Richard slew Henry the Sixth, who succeeded Henry the Fifth,
     who was the son of Henry the Fourth, who was the cousin of
     Richard the Second, who was the son of Edward the Third, who
     was the son of Richard the Second, who was the son of Edward
     the First, who was the son of Henry the Third, who was the
     son of John, who was the brother of Richard the First, who
     was the son of Henry the Second, who was the son of Matilda,
     who was the daughter of Henry the First, who was the brother
     of William Rufus, who was the son of William the Conqueror,
     who was the son of a whore."--_Editor._

The effects of Royalty have been entirely harmonious with its origin.
What scenes of horror, what refinements of iniquity, do the annals of
monarchies present! If we should paint human nature with a baseness of
heart, an hypocrisy, from which all must recoil and humanity disavow, it
would be the portraiture of kings, their ministers and courtiers.

And why should it not be so? What should such a monstrosity produce
but miseries and crimes? What is monarchy? It has been finely disguised,
and the people familiarized with the odious title: in its real sense the
word signifies _the absolute power of one single individual_, who may
with impunity be stupid, treacherous, tyrannical, etc. Is it not an
insult to nations to wish them so governed?

Government by a single individual is vicious in itself, independently of
the individual's vices. For however little a State, the prince is
nearly always too small: where is the proportion between one man and the
affairs of a whole nation?

True, some men of genius have been seen under the diadem; but the evil
is then even greater: the ambition of such a man impels him to conquest
and despotism, his subjects soon have to lament his glory, and sing
their _Te-deums_ while perishing with hunger. Such is the history of
Louis XIV. and so many others.

But if ordinary men in power repay you with incapacity or with princely
vices? But those who come to the front in monarchies are frequently
mere mean mischief-makers, commonplace knaves, petty intriguers, whose
small wits, which in courts reach large places, serve only to display
their ineptitude in public, as soon as they appear. (*) In short,
monarchs do nothing, and their ministers do evil: this is the history of
all monarchies.

But if Royalty as such is baneful, as hereditary succession it is
equally revolting and ridiculous. What! there exists among my kind a man
who pretends that he is born to govern me? Whence derived he such right?
From his and my ancestors, says he. But how could they transmit to him
a right they did not possess? Man has no authority over generations
unborn. I cannot be the slave of the dead, more than of the living.
Suppose that instead of our posterity, it was we who should succeed
ourselves: we should not to-day be able to despoil ourselves of the
rights which would belong to us in our second life: for a stronger
reason we cannot so despoil others.

An hereditary crown! A transmissible throne! What a notion! With even a
little reflexion, can any one tolerate it? Should human beings then be
the property of certain individuals, born or to be born? Are we then to
treat our descendants in advance as cattle, who shall have neither will
nor rights of their own? To inherit government is to inherit peoples,
as if they were herds. It is the basest, the most shameful fantasy that
ever degraded mankind.

It is wrong to reproach kings with their ferocity, their brutal
indifference, the oppressions of the people, and molestations of
citizens: it is hereditary succession that makes them what they are:
this breeds monsters as a marsh breeds vipers.

     * J. J. Rousseau, Contrat Social.--Author.

The logic on which the hereditary prince rests is in effect this: I
derive my power from my birth; I derive my birth from God; therefore
I owe nothing to men. It is little that he has at hand a complacent
minister, he continues to indulge, conscientiously, in all the crimes of
tyranny. This has been seen in all times and countries.

Tell me, then, what is there in common between him who is master of a
people, and the people of whom he is master? Are these masters really of
their kind? It is by sympathy that we are good and human: with whom does
a monarch sympathize? When my neighbor suffers I pity, because I put
myself in his place: a monarch pities none, because he has never been,
can never be, in any other place than his own.

A monarch is an egoist by nature, the _egoist par excellence_. A
thousand traits show that this kind of men have no point of contact with
the rest of humanity. There was demanded of Charles II. the punishment
of Lauderdale, his favorite, who had infamously oppressed the Scotch.
"Yes," said Charles coolly, "this man has done much against the Scotch,
but I cannot see that he has done anything against my interests." Louis
XIV. often said: "If I follow the wishes of the people, I cannot act the
king." Even such phrases as "misfortunes of the State," "safety of the
State," filled Louis XIV. with wrath.

Could nature make a law which should assure virtue and wisdom invariably
in these privileged castes that perpetuate themselves on thrones, there
would be no objection to their hereditary succession. But let us pass
Europe in review: all of its monarchs are the meanest of men. This one
a tyrant, that one an imbecile, another a traitor, the next a debauchee,
while some muster all the vices. It looks as if fate and nature had
aimed to show our epoch, and all nations, the absurdity and enormity of
Royalty.

But I mistake: this epoch has nothing peculiar. For, such is the
essential vice of this royal succession by animal filiation, the peoples
have not even the chances of nature,--they cannot even hope for a good
prince as an alternative. All things conspire to deprive of reason
and justice an individual reared to command others. The word of young
Dionysius was very sensible: his father, reproaching him for a shameful
action, said, "Have I given thee such example?" "Ah," answered the
youth, "thy father was not a king!"

In truth, were laughter on such a subject permissible, nothing would
suggest ideas more burlesque than this fantastic institution of
hereditary kings. Would it not be believed, to look at them, that there
really exist particular lineages possessing certain qualities which
enter the blood of the embryo prince, and adapt him physically
for royalty, as a horse for the racecourse? But then, in this wild
supposition, it yet becomes necessary to assure the genuine family
descent of the heir presumptive. To perpetuate the noble race of
Andalusian chargers, the circumstances pass before witnesses, and
similar precautions seem necessary, however indecent, to make sure that
the trickeries of queens shall not supply thrones with bastards, and
that the kings, like the horses, shall always be thoroughbreds.

Whether one jests or reasons, there is found in this idea of hereditary
royalty only folly and shame. What then is this office, which may be
filled by infants or idiots? Some talent is required to be a simple
workman; to be a king there is need to have only the human shape, to be
a living automaton. We are astonished when reading that the Egyptians
placed on the throne a flint, and called it their king. We smile at
the dog Barkouf, sent by an Asiatic despot to govern one of his
provinces.(*) But mon-archs of this kind are less mischievous and less
absurd than those before whom whole peoples prostrate themselves. The
flint and the dog at least imposed on nobody. None ascribed to them
qualities or characters they did not possess. They were not styled
'Father of the People,'--though this were hardly more ridiculous than
to give that title to a rattle-head whom inheritance crowns at eighteen.
Better a mute than an animate idol. Why, there can hardly be cited an
instance of a great man having children worthy of him, yet you will have
the royal function pass from father to son! As well declare that a wise
man's son will be wise. A king is an administrator, and an hereditary
administrator is as absurd as an author by birthright.

     * See the first year of La Feuille Villageoise, No. 42.--
     Author. [Cf. Montaigne's Essays, chap. xii.--_Editor._]

Royalty is thus as contrary to common sense as to com-mon right. But it
would be a plague even if no more than an absurdity; for a people who
can bow down in honor of a silly thing is a debased people. Can they be
fit for great affairs who render equal homage to vice and virtue, and
yield the same submission to ignorance and wisdom? Of all institutions,
none has caused more intellectual degeneracy. This explains the
often-remarked abjectness of character under monarchies.

Such is also the effect of this contagious institution that it renders
equality impossible, and draws in its train the presumption and the
evils of "Nobility." If you admit inheritance of an office, why not that
of a distinction? The Nobility's heritage asks only homage, that of
the Crown commands submission. When a man says to me, 'I am born
illustrious,' I merely smile; when he says 'I am born your master,' I
set my foot on him.

When the Convention pronounced the abolition of Royalty none rose
for the defence that was expected. On this subject a philosopher, who
thought discussion should always precede enactment, proposed a singular
thing; he desired that the Convention should nominate an orator
commissioned to plead before it the cause of Royalty, so that the
pitiful arguments by which it has in all ages been justified might
appear in broad daylight. Judges give one accused, however certain
his guilt, an official defender. In the ancient Senate of Venice there
existed a public officer whose function was to contest all propositions,
however incontestible, or however perfect their evidence. For the rest,
pleaders for Royalty are not rare: let us open them, and see what the
most specious of royalist reasoners have said.

1. _A king is necessary to preserve a people from the tyranny of
powerful men_.

Establish the Rights of Man(1); enthrone Equality; form a good
Constitution; divide well its powers; let there be no privileges, no
distinctions of birth, no monopolies; make safe the liberty of industry
and of trade, the equal distribution of [family] inheritances, publicity
of administration, freedom of the press: these things all established,
you will be assured of good laws, and need not fear the powerful men.
Willingly or unwillingly, all citizens will be under the Law.

     1 The reader should bear in mind that this phrase, now used
     vaguely, had for Paine and his political school a special
     significance; it implied a fundamental Declaration of
     individual rights, of supreme force and authority, invasion
     which, either by legislatures, law courts, majorities, or
     administrators, was to be regarded as the worst treason and
     despotism.--_Editor._

2. _The Legislature might usurp authority, and a king is needed to
restrain it_.

With representatives, frequently renewed, who neither administer
nor judge, whose functions are determined by the laws; with national
conventions, with primary assemblies, which can be convoked any moment;
with a people knowing how to read, and how to defend itself; with good
journals, guns, and pikes; a Legislature would have a good deal of
trouble in enjoying any months of tyranny. Let us not suppose an evil
for the sake of its remedy.

3. _A king is needed to give force to executive power_.

This might be said while there existed nobles, a priesthood,
parliaments, the privileged of every kind. But at present who can resist
the Law, which is the will of all, whose execution is the interest of
all? On the contrary the existence of an hereditary prince inspires
perpetual distrust among the friends of liberty; his authority is odious
to them; in checking despotism they constantly obstruct the action of
government. Observe how feeble the executive power was found, after our
recent pretence of marrying Royalty with Liberty.

Take note, for the rest, that those who talk in this way are men who
believe that the King and the Executive Power are only one and the same
thing: readers of _La Feuille Villageoise_ are more advanced.(*)

     * See No. 50.--_Author_

Others use this bad reasoning: "Were there no hereditary chief there
would be an elective chief: the citizens would side with this man or
that, and there would be a civil war at every election." In the first
place, it is certain that hereditary succession alone has produced
the civil wars of France and England; and that beyond this are the
pre-tended rights, of royal families which have twenty times drawn on
these nations the scourge of foreign wars. It is, in fine, the heredity
of crowns that has caused the troubles of Regency, which Thomas Paine
calls Monarchy at nurse.

But above all it must be said, that if there be an elective chief, that
chief will not be a king surrounded by courtiers, burdened with pomp,
inflated by idolatries, and endowed with thirty millions of money; also,
that no citizen will be tempted to injure himself by placing another
citizen, his equal, for some years in an office without limited income
and circumscribed power.

In a word, whoever demands a king demands an aristocracy, and thirty
millions of taxes. See why Franklin described Royalism as _a crime like
poisoning_.

Royalty, its fanatical eclat, its superstitious idolatry, the delusive
assumption of its necessity, all these fictions have been invented only
to obtain from men excessive taxes and voluntary servitude. Royalty
and Popery have had the same aim, have sustained themselves by the same
artifices, and crumble under the same Light.




XII. TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, ON THE PROSECUTION AGAINST THE SECOND PART
OF RIGHTS OF MAN.(1)

Paris, 11th of November, 1st Year of the Republic. [1792.]

Mr. Attorney General:

Sir,--As there can be no personal resentment between two strangers, I
write this letter to you, as to a man against whom I have no animosity.

You have, as Attorney General, commenced a prosecution against me, as
the author of Rights of Man. Had not my duty, in consequence of my being
elected a member of the National Convention of France, called me from
England, I should have staid to have contested the injustice of
that prosecution; not upon my own account, for I cared not about the
prosecution, but to have defended the principles I had advanced in the
work.

     1 Read to the Jury by the Attorney General, Sir Archibald
     Macdonald, at the trial of Paine, December 18, 1792, which
     resulted in his outlawry.--_Editor._

The duty I am now engaged in is of too much importance to permit me to
trouble myself about your prosecution: when I have leisure, I shall have
no objection to meet you on that ground; but, as I now stand, whether
you go on with the prosecution, or whether you do not, or whether you
obtain a verdict, or not, is a matter of the most perfect indifference
to me as an individual. If you obtain one, (which you are welcome to
if you can get it,) it cannot affect me either in person, property, or
reputation, otherwise than to increase the latter; and with respect to
yourself, it is as consistent that you obtain a verdict against the Man
in the Moon as against me; neither do I see how you can continue the
prosecution against me as you would have done against one _your own
people, who_ had absented himself because he was prosecuted; what passed
at Dover proves that my departure from England was no secret. (1)

My necessary absence from your country affords the opportunity of
knowing whether the prosecution was intended against Thomas Paine, or
against the Right of the People of England to investigate systems and
principles of government; for as I cannot now be the object of the
prosecution, the going on with the prosecution will shew that something
else was the object, and that something else can be no other than the
People of England, for it is against _their Rights_, and not against
me, that a verdict or sentence can operate, if it can operate at all.
Be then so candid as to tell the Jury, (if you choose to continue the
process,) whom it is you are prosecuting, and on whom it is that the
verdict is to fall.(2)

But I have other reasons than those I have mentioned for writing you
this letter; and, however you may choose to interpret them, they proceed
from a good heart. The time, Sir, is becoming too serious to play
with Court prosecutions, and sport with national rights. The terrible
examples that have taken place here, upon men who, less than a year ago,
thought themselves as secure as any prosecuting Judge, Jury, or Attorney
General, now can in England, ought to have some weight with men in
your situation. That the government of England is as great, if not the
greatest, perfection of fraud and corruption that ever took place since
governments began, is what you cannot be a stranger to, unless the
constant habit of seeing it has blinded your senses; but though you
may not chuse to see it, the people are seeing it very fast, and the
progress is beyond what you may chuse to believe. Is it possible that
you, or I, can believe, or that reason can make any other man believe,
that the capacity of such a man as Mr. Guelph, or any of his profligate
sons, is necessary to the government of a nation? I speak to you as one
man ought to speak to another; and I know also that I speak what other
people are beginning to think.

     1 See Chapter VIII. of this volume.--_Editor._

     2 In reading the letter in court the Attorney General said
     at this point: "Gentlemen, I certainly will comply with
     this request. I am prosecuting both him and his work; and
     if I succeed in this prosecution, he shall never return to
     this country otherwise than _in vintulis_, for I will outlaw
     him."--_Editor._

That you cannot obtain a verdict (and if you do, it will signify
nothing) _without packing a Jury_, (and we _both_ know that such tricks
are practised,) is what I have very good reason to believe, I have gone
into coffee-houses, and places where I was unknown, on purpose to learn
the currency of opinion, and I never yet saw any company of twelve men
that condemned the book; but I have often found a greater number than
twelve approving it, and this I think is _a fair way of collecting the
natural currency of opinion_. Do not then, Sir, be the instrument of
drawing twelve men into a situation that may be _injurious_ to them
afterwards. I do not speak this from policy, but from benevolence; but
if you chuse to go on with the process, I make it my request to you that
you will read this letter in Court, after which the Judge and the Jury
may do as they please. As I do not consider myself the object of the
prosecution, neither can I be affected by the issue, one way or the
other, I shall, though a foreigner in your country, subscribe as much
money as any other man towards supporting the right of the nation
against the prosecution; and it is for this purpose only that I shall do
it.(1)

Thomas Paine.

As I have not time to copy letters, you will excuse the corrections.

     1 In reading this letter at the trial the Attorney
     interspersed comments. At the phrase, "Mr. Guelph and his
     profligate sons," he exclaimed: "This passage is
     contemptuous, scandalous, false, cruel. Why, gentlemen, is
     Mr. Paine, in addition to the political doctrines he is
     teaching us in this country, to teach us the morality and
     religion of implacability? Is he to teach human creatures,
     whose moments of existence depend upon the permission of a
     Being, merciful, long-suffering, and of great goodness, that
     those youthful errors from which even royalty is not
     exempted, are to be treasured up in a vindictive memory, and
     are to receive sentence of irremissible sin at His hands....
     If giving me pain was his object he has that hellish
     gratification." Erskine, Fame's counsel, protested in
     advance against the reading of this letter (of which he had
     heard), as containing matter likely to divert the Jury from
     the subject of prosecution (the book). Lord Kenyon admitted
     the letter.--_Editor._

P. S. I intended, had I staid in England, to have published the
information, with my remarks upon it, before the trial came on; but as
I am otherwise engaged, I reserve myself till the trial is over, when I
shall reply fully to every thing you shall advance.




XIII. ON THE PROPRIETY OF BRINGING LOUIS XVI. TO TRIAL.(1)

Read to the Convention, November 21, 1792.

Paris, Nov. 20, 1792.

Citizen President,

As I do not know precisely what day the Convention will resume the
discussion on the trial of Louis XVI., and, on account of my inability
to express myself in French, I cannot speak at the tribune, I request
permission to deposit in your hands the enclosed paper, which contains
my opinion on that subject. I make this demand with so much more
eagerness, because circumstances will prove how much it imports to
France, that Louis XVI. should continue to enjoy good health. I should
be happy if the Convention would have the goodness to hear this paper
read this morning, as I propose sending a copy of it to London, to be
printed in the English journals.(2)

Thomas Paine.

     1 This address, which has suffered by alterations in all
     editions is here revised and completed by aid of the
     official document: "Opinion de Thomas Payne, Depute du
     Département de la Somme [error], concernant le jugement de
     Louis XVI. Précédé par sa lettre d'envoi au Président de la
     Convention. Imprimé par ordre de la Convention Nationale. À
     Paris. De l'Imprimerie Nationale." Lamartine has censured
     Paine for this speech; but the trial of the King was a
     foregone conclusion, and it will be noted that Paine was
     already trying to avert popular wrath from the individual
     man by directing it against the general league of monarchs,
     and the monarchal system. Nor would his plea for the King's
     life have been listened to but for this previous address.--
     _Editor._

     2 Of course no English journal could then venture to print
     it.--_Editor._

A Secretary read the opinion of Thomas Paine. I think it necessary
that Louis XVI. should be tried; not that this advice is suggested by
a spirit of vengeance, but because this measure appears to me just,
lawful, and conformable to sound policy. If Louis is innocent, let us
put him to prove his innocence; if he is guilty, let the national will
determine whether he shall be pardoned or punished.

But besides the motives personal to Louis XVI., there are others which
make his trial necessary. I am about to develope these motives, in the
language which I think expresses them, and no other. I forbid myself the
use of equivocal expression or of mere ceremony. There was formed among
the crowned brigands of Europe a conspiracy which threatened not only
French liberty, but likewise that of all nations. Every thing tends
to the belief that Louis XVI. was the partner of this horde of
conspirators. You have this man in your power, and he is at present the
only one of the band of whom you can make sure. I consider Louis XVI. in
the same point of view as the two first robbers taken up in the affair
of the Store Room; their trial led to discovery of the gang to which
they belonged. We have seen the unhappy soldiers of Austria, of Prussia,
and the other powers which declared themselves our enemies, torn from
their fire-sides, and drawn to butchery like wretched animals, to
sustain, at the cost of their blood, the common cause of these crowned
brigands. They loaded the inhabitants of those regions with taxes to
support the expenses of the war. All this was not done solely for Louis
XVI. Some of the conspirators have acted openly: but there is reason
to presume that this conspiracy is composed of two classes of brigands;
those who have taken up arms, and those who have lent to their cause
secret encouragement and clandestine assistance. Now it is indispensable
to let France and the whole world know all these accomplices.

A little time after the National Convention was constituted, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs presented the picture of all the
governments of Europe,--those whose hostilities were public, and those
that acted with a mysterious circumspection. This picture supplied
grounds for just suspicions of the part the latter were disposed to
take, and since then various circumstances have occurred to confirm
those suspicions. We have already penetrated into some part of the
conduct of Mr. Guelph, Elector of Hanover, and strong presumptions
involve the same man, his court and ministers, in quality of king
of England. M. Calonne has constantly been favoured with a friendly
reception at that court.(1) The arrival of Mr. Smith, secretary to Mr.
Pitt, at Coblentz, when the emigrants were assembling there; the recall
of the English ambassador; the extravagant joy manifested by the court
of St. James' at the false report of the defeat of Dumouriez, when
it was communicated by Lord Elgin, then Minister of Great Britain at
Brussels--all these circumstances render him [George III.] extremely
suspicious; the trial of Louis XVI. will probably furnish more decisive
proofs.

The long subsisting fear of a revolution in England, would alone, I
believe, prevent that court from manifesting as much publicity in its
operations as Austria and Prussia. Another reason could be added to
this: the inevitable decrease of credit, by means of which alone all
the old governments could obtain fresh loans, in proportion as the
probability of revolutions increased. Whoever invests in the new loans
of such governments must expect to lose his stock.

Every body knows that the Landgrave of Hesse fights only as far as he is
paid. He has been for many years in the pay of the court of London. If
the trial of Louis XVI. could bring it to light, that this detestable
dealer in human flesh has been paid with the produce of the taxes
imposed on the English people, it would be justice to that nation to
disclose that fact. It would at the same time give to France an exact
knowledge of the character of that court, which has not ceased to be the
most intriguing in Europe, ever since its connexion with Germany.

     1 Calonne (1734-1802), made Controller General of the
     Treasury in 1783, lavished the public money on the Queen, on
     courtiers, and on himself (purchasing St. Cloud and
     Rambouillet), borrowing vast sums and deceiving the King as
     to the emptiness of the Treasury, the annual deficit having
     risen in 1787 to 115 millions of francs. He was then
     banished to Lorraine, whence he proceeded to England, where
     he married the wealthy widow Haveley. By his agency for the
     Coblentz party he lost his fortune. In 1802 Napoleon brought
     him back from London to Paris, where he died the same year.
     --_Editor._

Louis XVI., considered as an individual, is an object beneath the notice
of the Republic; but when he is looked upon as a part of that band of
conspirators, as an accused man whose trial may lead all nations in
the world to know and detest the disastrous system of monarchy, and the
plots and intrigues of their own courts, he ought to be tried.

If the crimes for which Louis XVI. is arraigned were absolutely personal
to him, without reference to general conspiracies, and confined to the
affairs of France, the plea of inviolability, that folly of the moment,
might have been urged in his behalf with some appearance of reason; but
he is arraigned not only for treasons against France, but for having
conspired against all Europe, and if France is to be just to all Europe
we ought to use every means in our power to discover the whole extent
of that conspiracy. France is now a republic; she has completed her
revolution; but she cannot earn all its advantages so long as she is
surrounded with despotic governments. Their armies and their marine
oblige her also to keep troops and ships in readiness. It is therefore
her immediate interest that all nations shall be as free as herself;
that revolutions shall be universal; and since the trial of Louis XVI.
can serve to prove to the world the flagitiousness of governments in
general, and the necessity of revolutions, she ought not to let slip so
precious an opportunity.

The despots of Europe have formed alliances to preserve their respective
authority, and to perpetuate the oppression of peoples. This is the end
they proposed to themselves in their invasion of French territory. They
dread the effect of the French revolution in the bosom of their own
countries; and in hopes of preventing it, they are come to attempt
the destruction of this revolution before it should attain its perfect
maturity. Their attempt has not been attended with success. France has
already vanquished their armies; but it remains for her to sound the
particulars of the conspiracy, to discover, to expose to the eyes of
the world, those despots who had the infamy to take part in it; and the
world expects from her that act of justice.

These are my motives for demanding that Louis XVI. be judged; and it is
in this sole point of view that his trial appears to me of sufficient
importance to receive the attention of the Republic.

As to "inviolability," I would not have such a word mentioned. If,
seeing in Louis XVI. only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared,
like all his kind, given, as it is said, to frequent excesses of
drunkenness--a man whom the National Assembly imprudently raised again
on a throne for which he was not made--he is shown hereafter some
compassion, it shall be the result of the national magnanimity, and not
the burlesque notion of a pretended "inviolability."

Thomas Paine.




XIV.  REASONS FOR PRESERVING THE LIFE OF LOUIS CAPET,

As Delivered to the National Convention, January 15, 1703.(1)

Citizen President,

My hatred and abhorrence of monarchy are sufficiently known: they
originate in principles of reason and conviction, nor, except with life,
can they ever be extirpated; but my compassion for the unfortunate,
whether friend or enemy, is equally lively and sincere.

I voted that Louis should be tried, because it was necessary to afford
proofs to the world of the perfidy, corruption, and abomination of the
monarchical system. The infinity of evidence that has been produced
exposes them in the most glaring and hideous colours; thence it results
that monarchy, whatever form it may assume, arbitrary or otherwise,
becomes necessarily a centre round which are united every species of
corruption, and the kingly trade is no less destructive of all morality
in the human breast, than the trade of an executioner is destructive
of its sensibility. I remember, during my residence in another country,
that I was exceedingly struck with a sentence of M. Autheine, at the
Jacobins [Club], which corresponds exactly with my own idea,--"Make me a
king to-day," said he, "and I shall be a robber to-morrow."

     1 Printed in Paris (Hartley, Adlard & Son) and published in
     London with the addition of D. I. Eaton's name, in 1796.
     While Paine was in prison, he was accused in England and
     America of having helped to bring Louis XVI. to the
     scaffold. The English pamphlet has a brief preface in which
     it is presented "as a burnt offering to Truth, in behalf of
     the most zealous friend and advocate of the Rights of Man;
     to protect him against the barbarous shafts of scandal and
     delusion, and as a reply to all the horrors which despots of
     every description have, with such unrelenting malice,
     attempted to fix on his conduct. But truth in the end must
     triumph: cease then such calumnies: all your efforts are
     in vain --you bite a file."--_Editor._

Nevertheless, I am inclined to believe that if Louis Capet had been born
in obscure condition, had he lived within the circle of an amiable and
respectable neighbourhood, at liberty to practice the duties of domestic
life, had he been thus situated, I cannot believe that he would have
shewn himself destitute of social virtues: we are, in a moment of
fermentation like this, naturally little indulgent to his vices, or
rather to those of his government; we regard them with additional
horror and indignation; not that they are more heinous than those of
his predecessors, but because our eyes are now open, and the veil of
delusion at length withdrawn; yet the lamentable, degraded state to
which he is actually reduced, is surely far less imputable to him
than to the Constituent Assembly, which, of its own authority, without
consent or advice of the people, restored him to the throne.

I was in Paris at the time of the flight, or abdication of Louis XVI.,
and when he was taken and brought back. The proposal of restoring him to
supreme power struck me with amazement; and although at that time I was
not a French citizen, yet as a citizen of the world I employed all the
efforts that depended on me to prevent it.

A small society, composed only of five persons, two of whom are
now members of the Convention,(1) took at that time the name of the
Republican Club (Société Républicaine). This society opposed the
restoration of Louis, not so much on account of his personal offences,
as in order to overthrow the monarchy, and to erect on its ruins the
republican system and an equal representation.

With this design, I traced out in the English language certain
propositions, which were translated with some trifling alterations, and
signed by Achille Duchâtelet, now Lieutenant-General in the army of the
French republic, and at that time one of the five members which composed
our little party: the law requiring the signature of a citizen at the
bottom of each printed paper.

     1 Condorect and Paine; the other members were Achille
     Duchitelet, and probably Nicolas de Bonneville and
     Lanthenas,--translator of Paine's "Works."--_Editor._

The paper was indignantly torn by Malouet; and brought forth in this
very room as an article of accusation against the person who had signed
it, the author and their adherents; but such is the revolution of
events, that this paper is now received and brought forth for a very
opposite purpose--to remind the nation of the errors of that unfortunate
day, that fatal error of not having then banished Louis XVI. from its
bosom, and to plead this day in favour of his exile, preferable to his
death.

The paper in question, was conceived in the following terms:

[The address constitutes the first chapter of the present volume.]

Having thus explained the principles and the exertions of the
republicans at that fatal period, when Louis was rein-stated in
full possession of the executive power which by his flight had been
suspended, I return to the subject, and to the deplorable situation in
which the man is now actually involved.

What was neglected at the time of which I have been speaking, has been
since brought about by the force of necessity. The wilful, treacherous
defects in the former constitution have been brought to light; the
continual alarm of treason and conspiracy aroused the nation, and
produced eventually a second revolution. The people have beat down
royalty, never, never to rise again; they have brought Louis Capet to
the bar, and demonstrated in the face of the whole world, the intrigues,
the cabals, the falsehood, corruption, and rooted depravity, the
inevitable effects of monarchical government. There remains then only
one question to be considered, what is to be done with this man?

For myself I seriously confess, that when I reflect on the unaccountable
folly that restored the executive power to his hands, all covered as
he was with perjuries and treason, I am far more ready to condemn the
Constituent Assembly than the unfortunate prisoner Louis Capet.

But abstracted from every other consideration, there is one circumstance
in his life which ought to cover or at least to palliate a great number
of his transgressions, and this very circumstance affords to the French
nation a blessed occasion of extricating itself from the yoke of kings,
without defiling itself in the impurities of their blood.

It is to France alone, I know, that the United States of America owe
that support which enabled them to shake off the unjust and tyrannical
yoke of Britain. The ardour and zeal which she displayed to provide both
men and money, were the natural consequence of a thirst for liberty.
But as the nation at that time, restrained by the shackles of her own
government, could only act by the means of a monarchical organ, this
organ--whatever in other respects the object might be--certainly
performed a good, a great action.

Let then those United States be the safeguard and asylum of Louis Capet.
There, hereafter, far removed from the miseries and crimes of royalty,
he may learn, from the constant aspect of public prosperity, that the
true system of government consists not in kings, but in fair, equal, and
honourable representation.

In relating this circumstance, and in submitting this proposition, I
consider myself as a citizen of both countries. I submit it as a citizen
of America, who feels the debt of gratitude which he owes to every
Frenchman. I submit it also as a man, who, although the enemy of kings,
cannot forget that they are subject to human frailties. I support my
proposition as a citizen of the French republic, because it appears to
me the best, the most politic measure that can be adopted.

As far as my experience in public life extends, I have ever observed,
that the great mass of the people are invariably just, both in their
intentions and in their objects; but the true method of accomplishing an
effect does not always shew itself in the first instance. For example:
the English nation had groaned under the despotism of the Stuarts.
Hence Charles I. lost his life; yet Charles II. was restored to all
the plenitude of power, which his father had lost. Forty years had
not expired when the same family strove to reestablish their ancient
oppression; so the nation then banished from its territories the whole
race. The remedy was effectual. The Stuart family sank into obscurity,
confounded itself with the multitude, and is at length extinct.

The French nation has carried her measures of government to a greater
length. France is not satisfied with exposing the guilt of the monarch.
She has penetrated into the vices and horrors of the monarchy. She has
shown them clear as daylight, and forever crushed that system; and he,
whoever he may be, that should ever dare to reclaim those rights would
be regarded not as a pretender, but punished as a traitor.

Two brothers of Louis Capet have banished themselves from the country;
but they are obliged to comply with the spirit and etiquette of the
courts where they reside. They can advance no pretensions on their own
account, so long as Louis Capet shall live.

Monarchy, in France, was a system pregnant with crime and murders,
cancelling all natural ties, even those by which brothers are united. We
know how often they have assassinated each other to pave a way to power.
As those hopes which the emigrants had reposed in Louis XVI. are fled,
the last that remains rests upon his death, and their situation inclines
them to desire this catastrophe, that they may once again rally around
a more active chief, and try one further effort under the fortune of
the ci-devant Monsieur and d'Artois. That such an enterprize would
precipitate them into a new abyss of calamity and disgrace, it is not
difficult to foresee; yet it might be attended with mutual loss, and it
is our duty as legislators not to spill a drop of blood when our purpose
may be effectually accomplished without it.

It has already been proposed to abolish the punishment of death, and it
is with infinite satisfaction that I recollect the humane and excellent
oration pronounced by Robespierre on that subject in the Constituent
Assembly. This cause must find its advocates in every corner where
enlightened politicians and lovers of humanity exist, and it ought above
all to find them in this assembly.

Monarchical governments have trained the human race, and inured it to
the sanguinary arts and refinements of punishment; and it is exactly the
same punishment which has so long shocked the sight and tormented
the patience of the people, that now, in their turn, they practice in
revenge upon their oppressors. But it becomes us to be strictly on our
guard against the abomination and perversity of monarchical examples:
as France has been the first of European nations to abolish royalty, let
her also be the first to abolish the punishment of death, and to find
out a milder and more effectual substitute.

In the particular case now under consideration, I submit the following
propositions: 1st, That the National Convention shall pronounce sentence
of banishment on Louis and his family. 2d, That Louis Capet shall
be detained in prison till the end of the war, and at that epoch the
sentence of banishment to be executed.




XV. SHALL LOUIS XVI. HAVE RESPITE?

SPEECH IN THE CONVENTION, JANUARY 19, 1793.(1)

(Read in French by Deputy Bancal,)

Very sincerely do I regret the Convention's vote of yesterday for death.

Marat [_interrupting_]: I submit that Thomas Paine is incompetent to
vote on this question; being a Quaker his religious principles are
opposed to capital punishment. [_Much confusion, quieted by cries for
"freedom of speech" on which Bancal proceeds with Paine's speech_.]

     1 Not included in any previous edition of Paine's "Works."
     It is here printed from contemporary French reports,
     modified only by Paine's own quotations of a few sentences
     in his Memorial to Monroe (xxi.).--_Editor._

I have the advantage of some experience; it is near twenty years that I
have been engaged in the cause of liberty, having contributed something
to it in the revolution of the United States of America, My language has
always been that of liberty _and_ humanity, and I know that nothing
so exalts a nation as the union of these two principles, under all
circumstances. I know that the public mind of France, and particularly
that of Paris, has been heated and irritated by the dangers to which
they have been exposed; but could we carry our thoughts into the future,
when the dangers are ended and the irritations forgotten, what
to-day seems an act of justice may then appear an act of vengeance.
[_Murmurs_.] My anxiety for the cause of France has become for the
moment concern for her honor. If, on my return to America, I should
employ myself on a history of the French Revolution, I had rather record
a thousand errors on the side of mercy, than be obliged to tell one act
of severe justice. I voted against an appeal to the people, because it
appeared to me that the Convention was needlessly wearied on that point;
but I so voted in the hope that this Assembly would pronounce against
death, and for the same punishment that the nation would have voted,
at least in my opinion, that is for reclusion during the war, and
banishment thereafter.(1) That is the punishment most efficacious,
because it includes the whole family at once, and none other can so
operate. I am still against the appeal to the primary assemblies,
because there is a better method. This Convention has been elected to
form a Constitution, which will be submitted to the primary assemblies.
After its acceptance a necessary consequence will be an election and
another assembly. We cannot suppose that the present Convention will
last more than five or six months. The choice of new deputies will
express the national opinion, on the propriety or impropriety of your
sentence, with as much efficacy as if those primary assemblies had been
consulted on it. As the duration of our functions here cannot be long,
it is a part of our duty to consider the interests of those who shall
replace us. If by any act of ours the number of the nation's enemies
shall be needlessly increased, and that of its friends diminished,--at a
time when the finances may be more strained than to-day,--we should
not be justifiable for having thus unnecessarily heaped obstacles in
the path of our successors. Let us therefore not be precipitate in our
decisions.

     1 It is possible that the course of the debate may have
     produced some reaction among the people, but when Paine
     voted against submitting the king's fate to the popular vote
     it was believed by the king and his friends that it would be
     fatal. The American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, who had
     long been acting for the king, wrote to President
     Washington, Jan. 6, 1793: "The king's fate is to be decided
     next Monday, the 14th. That unhappy man, conversing with one
     of his Council on his own fate, calmly summed up the motives
     of every kind, and concluded that a majority of the Council
     would vote for referring his case to the people, and that in
     consequence he should be massacred." Writing to Washington
     on Dec. 28, 1792, Morris mentions having heard from Paine
     that he was to move the king's banishment to America, and he
     may then have informed Paine that the king believed
     reference of his case to popular vote would be fatal.
     Genet was to have conducted the royal family to America.--
     _Editor._

France has but one ally--the United States of America. That is the only
nation that can furnish France with naval provisions, for the
kingdoms of northern Europe are, or soon will be, at war with her. It
unfortunately happens that the person now under discussion is considered
by the Americans as having been the friend of their revolution. His
execution will be an affliction to them, and it is in your power not
to wound the feelings of your ally. Could I speak the French language I
would descend to your bar, and in their name become your petitioner to
respite the execution of the sentence on Louis.

Thuriot: This is not the language of Thomas Paine.

Marat: I denounce the interpreter. I maintain that it is not Thomas
Paine's opinion. It is an untrue translation.

Garran: I have read the original, and the translation is correct.(1)

[_Prolonged uproar. Paine, still standing in the tribune beside his
interpreter, Deputy Bancal, declared the sentiments to be his._]

Your Executive Committee will nominate an ambassador to Philadelphia;
my sincere wish is that he may announce to America that the National
Convention of France, out of pure friendship to America, has consented
to respite Louis. That people, by my vote, ask you to delay the
execution.

Ah, citizens, give not the tyrant of England the triumph of seeing the
man perish on the scaffold who had aided my much-loved America to break
his chains!

Marat ["_launching himself into the middle of the hall_"]: Paine voted
against the punishment of death because he is a Quaker.

Paine: I voted against it from both moral motives and motives of public
policy.

     1 See Guizot, "Hist, of France," vi., p. 136. "Hist.
     Parliamentair," vol. ii., p. 350. Louis Blanc says that
     Paine's appeal was so effective that Marat interrupted
     mainly in order to destroy its effect.--"Hist, de la Rev.,"
     tome vii, 396.--_Editor._




XVI. DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.(1)

The object of all union of men in society being maintenance of their
natural rights, civil and political, these rights are the basis of the
social pact: their recognition and their declaration ought to precede
the Constitution which assures their guarantee.

1. The natural rights of men, civil and political, are liberty,
equality, security, property, social protection, and resistance to
oppression.

2. Liberty consists in the right to do whatever is not contrary to
the rights of others: thus, exercise of the natural rights of each
individual has no limits other than those which secure to other members
of society enjoyment of the same rights.

     1 In his appeal from prison to the Convention (August 7,
     1794) Paine states that he had, as a member of the Committee
     for framing the Constitution, prepared a Plan, which was in
     the hands of Barère, also of that Committee. I have not yet
     succeeded in finding Paine's Constitution, but it is certain
     that the work of framing the Constitution of 1793 was mainly
     entrusted to Paine and Condorcet.

     Dr. John Moore, in his work on the French Revolution,
     describes the two at their work; and it is asserted that he
     "assisted in drawing up the French Declaration of Rights,"
     by "Juvencus," author of an able "Essay on the Life and
     Genius of Thomas Paine," whose information came from a
     personal friend of Paine. ("Aphorisms, Opinions, and
     Reflections of Thomas Paine," etc., London, 1826. Pp. 3,
     14.) A translation of the Declaration and Constitution
     appeared in England (Debrett, Picadilly, 1793), but with
     some faults. The present translation is from "Oeuvres
     Complètes de Condorcet," tome xviii. The Committee reported
     their Constitution February 15th, and April 15th was set for
     its discussion, Robespierre then demanded separate
     discussion of the Declaration of Rights, to which he
     objected that it made no mention of the Supreme Being, and
     that its extreme principles of freedom would shield illicit
     traffic. Paine and Jefferson were troubled that the United
     States Constitution contained no Declaration of Rights, it
     being a fundamental principle in Paine's theory of
     government that such a Declaration was the main safeguard of
     the individual against the despotism of numbers.    See
     supra, vol. ii.t pp. 138, 139.--_Editor._.

3. The preservation of liberty depends on submission to the Law, which
is the expression of the general will. Nothing unforbidden by law can be
hindered, and none may be forced to do what the law does not command.

4. Every man is free to make known his thoughts and opinions.

5. Freedom of the press, and every other means of publishing one's
opinion, cannot be interdicted, suspended, or limited.

6. Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his religion
(_culte_).

7. Equality consists in the enjoyment by every one of the same rights.

8. The law should be equal for all, whether it rewards or punishes,
protects or represses.

9. All citizens are admissible to all public positions, employments, and
functions. Free nations recognize no grounds of preference save talents
and virtues.

10. Security consists in the protection accorded by society to every
citizen for the preservation of his person, property, and rights.

11. None should be sued, accused, arrested, or detained, save in cases
determined by the law, and in accordance with forms prescribed by it.
Every other act against a citizen is arbitrary and null.

12. Those who solicit, further, sign, execute, or cause to be executed,
such arbitrary acts are culpable, and should be punished.

13. Citizens against whom the execution of such acts is attempted
have the right to repel force by force; but every citizen summoned or
arrested by authority of the Law, and in the forms by it prescribed,
should instantly obey: he renders himself guilty by resistance.

14. Every man being presumed innocent until legally pronounced guilty,
should his arrest be deemed indispensable, all rigor not necessary to
secure his person should be severely represssed by law.

15. None should be punished save in virtue of a law formally enacted,
promulgated anterior to the offence, and legally applied.

16. Any law that should punish offences committed before its existence
would be an arbitrary act. Retroactive effect given to the law is a
crime.

17. The law should award only penalties strictly and evidently necessary
to the general safety. Penalties should be proportioned to offences, and
useful to society.

18. The right of property consists in every man's being master in the
disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and industry.

19. No kind of labor, commerce, or culture, can be prohibited to any
one: he may make, sell, and transport every species of production.

20. Every man may engage his services and his time; but he cannot sell
himself; his person is not an alienable property.

21. No one can be deprived of the least portion of his property without
his consent, unless evidently required by public necessity, legally
determined, and under the condition of a just indemnity in advance.

22. No tax shall be imposed except for the general welfare, and to meet
public needs. All citizens have the right to unite personally, or by
their representatives, in the fixing of imposts.

23. Instruction is the need of all, and society owes it to all its
members equally.

24. Public succours are a sacred debt of society; it is for the law to
determine their extent and application.

25. The social guarantee of the rights of man rests on the national
sovereignty.

26. This sovereignty is one, indivisible, imprescriptible, and
inalienable.

27. It resides essentially in the whole people, and every citizen has an
equal right to unite in its exercise.

28. No partial assemblage of citizens, and no individual, may attribute
to themselves sovereignty, or exercise any authority, or discharge any
public function, without formal delegation thereto by the law.

29. The social guarantee cannot exist if the limits of public
administration are not clearly determined by law, and if the
responsibility of all public functionaries is not assured.

30. All citizens are bound to unite in this guarantee, and in enforcing
the law when summoned in its name.

31. Men united in society should have legal means of resisting
oppression.

32. There is oppression when any law violates the natural rights, civil
and political, which it should guarantee.

There is oppression when the law is violated by public officials in its
application to individual cases.

There is oppression when arbitrary actions violate the rights of citizen
against the express purpose (_expression_) of the law.

In a free government the mode of resisting these different acts of
oppression should be regulated by the Constitution.

33. A people possesses always the right to reform and alter its
Constitution. A generation has no right to subject a future generation
to its laws; and all heredity in offices is absurd and tyrannical.




XVII. PRIVATE LETTERS TO JEFFERSON.


Paris, 20 April, 1793.

My dear Friend,--The gentleman (Dr. Romer) to whom I entrust this
letter is an intimate acquaintance of Lavater; but I have not had the
opportunity of seeing him, as he had set off for Havre prior to my
writing this letter, which I forward to him under cover from one of his
friends, who is also an acquaintance of mine.

We are now in an extraordinary crisis, and it is not altogether without
some considerable faults here. Dumouriez, partly from having no fixed
principles of his own, and partly from the continual persecution of the
Jacobins, who act without either prudence or morality, has gone off
to the Enemy, and taken a considerable part of the Army with him. The
expedition to Holland has totally failed, and all Brabant is again in
the hands of the Austrians.

You may suppose the consternation which such a sudden reverse of fortune
has occasioned, but it has been without commotion. Dumouriez threatened
to be in Paris in three weeks. It is now three weeks ago; he is still on
the frontier near to Mons with the Enemy, who do not make any progress.
Dumouriez has proposed to re-establish the former Constitution in
which plan the Austrians act with him. But if France and the National
Convention act prudently this project will not succeed. In the first
place there is a popular disposition against it, and there is force
sufficient to prevent it. In the next place, a great deal is to be taken
into the calculation with respect to the Enemy. There are now so many
persons accidentally jumbled together as to render it exceedingly
difficult to them to agree upon any common object.

The first object, that of restoring the old Monarchy, is evidently given
up by the proposal to re-establish the late Constitution. The object of
England and Prussia was to preserve Holland, and the object of Austria
was to recover Brabant; while those separate objects lasted, each party
having one, the Confederation could hold together, each helping the
other; but after this I see not how a common object is to be formed.
To all this is to be added the probable disputes about opportunity,
the expence, and the projects of reimbursements. The Enemy has once
adventured into France, and they had the permission or the good fortune
to get back again. On every military calculation it is a hazardous
adventure, and armies are not much disposed to try a second time the
ground upon which they have been defeated.

Had this revolution been conducted consistently with its principles,
there was once a good prospect of extending liberty through the greatest
part of Europe; but I now relinquish that hope. Should the Enemy by
venturing into France put themselves again in a condition of being
captured, the hope will revive; but this is a risk I do not wish to see
tried, lest it should fail.

As the prospect of a general freedom is now much shortened, I begin
to contemplate returning home. I shall await the event of the proposed
Constitution, and then take my final leave of Europe. I have not written
to the President, as I have nothing to communicate more than in this
letter. Please to present him my affection and compliments, and remember
me among the circle of my friends.

Your sincere and affectionate friend,

Thomas Paine.

P. S. I just now received a letter from General Lewis Morris, who tells
me that the house and Barn on my farm at New Rochelle are burnt down. I
assure you I shall not bring money enough to build another.



Paris, 20 Oct., 1793.

I wrote you by Captain Dominick who was to sail from Havre about the
20th of this month. This will probably be brought you by Mr. Barlow or
Col. Oswald. Since my letter by Dominick I am every day more convinced
and impressed with the propriety of Congress sending Commissioners to
Europe to confer with the Ministers of the Jesuitical Powers on the
means of terminating the War. The enclosed printed paper will shew there
are a variety of subjects to be taken into consideration which did not
appear at first, all of which have some tendency to put an end to the
War. I see not how this War is to terminate if some intermediate power
does not step forward. There is now no prospect that France can carry
revolutions into Europe on the one hand, or that the combined powers can
conquer France on the other hand. It is a sort of defensive War on both
sides. This being the case, how is the War to close? Neither side
will ask for peace though each may wish it. I believe that England
and Holland are tired of the War. Their Commerce and Manufactures have
suffered most exceedingly,--besides this, it is for them a War without
an object. Russia keeps herself at a distance.

I cannot help repeating my wish that Congress would send Commissioners,
and I wish also that yourself would venture once more across the ocean,
as one of them. If the Commissioners rendezvous at Holland they would
know what steps to take. They could call Mr. Pinckney [Gen. Thomas
Pinckney, American Minister in England] to their councils, and it would
be of use, on many accounts, that one of them should come over from
Holland to France. Perhaps a long truce, were it proposed by the neutral
powers, would have all the effects of a Peace, without the difficulties
attending the adjustment of all the forms of Peace.

Yours affectionately,

Thomas Paine.




XVIII. LETTER TO DANTON.(1)

Paris, May 6, 2nd year of the Republic [1793.]

Citoyen Danton: As you read English, I write this letter to you without
passing it through the hands of a translator. I am exceedingly disturbed
at the distractions, jealousies, discontents and uneasiness that reign
among us, and which, if they continue, will bring ruin and disgrace on
the Republic. When I left America in the year 1787, it was my intention
to return the year following, but the French Revolution, and the
prospect it afforded of extending the principles of liberty and
fraternity through the greater part of Europe, have induced me to
prolong my stay upwards of six years. I now despair of seeing the great
object of European liberty accomplished, and my despair arises not from
the combined foreign powers, not from the intrigues of aristocracy and
priestcraft, but from the tumultuous misconduct with which the internal
affairs of the present revolution are conducted.

All that now can be hoped for is limited to France only, and I agree
with your motion of not interfering in the government of any foreign
country, nor permitting any foreign country to interfere in the
government of France. This decree was necessary as a preliminary toward
terminating the war. But while these internal contentions continue,
while the hope remains to the enemy of seeing the Republic fall to
pieces, while not only the representatives of the departments but
representation itself is publicly insulted, as it has lately been and
now is by the people of Paris, or at least by the tribunes, the enemy
will be encouraged to hang about the frontiers and await the issue of
circumstances.

     1 This admirable letter was brought to light by the late M.
     Taine, and first published in full by Taine's translator,
     John Durand ("New Materials for the History of the American
     Revolution," 1889). The letter to Marat mentioned by Paine
     has not been discovered. Danton followed Paine to prison,
     and on meeting him there said: "That which you did for the
     happiness and liberty of your country I tried to do for
     mine. I have been less fortunate, but not less innocent.
     They will send me to the scaffold; very well, my friend, I
     will go gaily." M. Taine in La Révolution (vol. ii., pp.
     382, 413, 414) refers to this letter of Paine, and says:
     "Compared with the speeches and writings of the time, it
     produces the strangest effect by its practical good sense."
     --_Editor._,

I observe that the confederated powers have not yet recognized Monsieur,
or D'Artois, as regent, nor made any proclamation in favour of any
of the Bourbons; but this negative conduct admits of two different
conclusions. The one is that of abandoning the Bourbons and the war
together; the other is that of changing the object of the war and
substituting a partition scheme in the place of their first object, as
they have done by Poland. If this should be their object, the internal
contentions that now rage will favour that object far more than it
favoured their former object. The danger every day increases of a
rupture between Paris and the departments. The departments did not send
their deputies to Paris to be insulted, and every insult shown to them
is an insult to the departments that elected and sent them. I see but
one effectual plan to prevent this rupture taking place, and that is to
fix the residence of the Convention, and of the future assemblies, at a
distance from Paris.

I saw, during the American Revolution, the exceeding inconvenience that
arose by having the government of Congress within the limits of any
Municipal Jurisdiction. Congress first resided in Philadelphia, and
after a residence of four years it found it necessary to leave it. It
then adjourned to the State of Jersey. It afterwards removed to
New York; it again removed from New York to Philadelphia, and after
experiencing in every one of these places the great inconvenience of
a government, it formed the project of building a Town, not within
the limits of any municipal jurisdiction, for the future residence of
Congress. In any one of the places where Congress resided, the municipal
authority privately or openly opposed itself to the authority of
Congress, and the people of each of these places expected more attention
from Congress than their equal share with the other States amounted to.
The same thing now takes place in France, but in a far greater excess.

I see also another embarrassing circumstance arising in Paris of which
we have had full experience in America. I mean that of fixing the price
of provisions. But if this measure is to be attempted it ought to
be done by the Municipality. The Convention has nothing to do with
regulations of this kind; neither can they be carried into practice. The
people of Paris may say they will not give more than a certain price
for provisions, but as they cannot compel the country people to bring
provisions to market the consequence will be directly contrary to their
expectations, and they will find dearness and famine instead of plenty
and cheapness. They may force the price down upon the stock in hand, but
after that the market will be empty.

I will give you an example. In Philadelphia we undertook, among other
regulations of this kind, to regulate the price of Salt; the consequence
was that no Salt was brought to market, and the price rose to thirty-six
shillings sterling per Bushel. The price before the war was only one
shilling and sixpence per Bushel; and we regulated the price of flour
(farina) till there was none in the market, and the people were glad to
procure it at any price.

There is also a circumstance to be taken into the account which is not
much attended to. The assignats are not of the same value they were a
year ago, and as the quantity increases the value of them will diminish.
This gives the appearance of things being dear when they are not so in
fact, for in the same proportion that any kind of money falls in
value articles rise in price. If it were not for this the quantity of
assignats would be too great to be circulated. Paper money in America
fell so much in value from this excessive quantity of it, that in the
year 1781 I gave three hundred paper dollars for one pair of worsted
stockings. What I write you upon this subject is experience, and not
merely opinion. I have no personal interest in any of these matters, nor
in any party disputes. I attend only to general principles.

As soon as a constitution shall be established I shall return to
America; and be the future prosperity of France ever so great, I shall
enjoy no other part of it than the happiness of knowing it. In the mean
time I am distressed to see matters so badly conducted, and so little
attention paid to moral principles. It is these things that injure the
character of the Revolution and discourage the progress of liberty all
over the world. When I began this letter I did not intend making it so
lengthy, but since I have gone thus far I will fill up the remainder of
the sheet with such matters as occur to me.

There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of
denunciation that now prevails. If every individual is to indulge his
private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and
without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all
authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of Treachery that ought to
be punished as well as any other kind of Treachery. It is a private vice
productive of public evils; because it is possible to irritate men into
disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected.
It is therefore, equally as necessary to guard against the evils
of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind
confidence. It is equally as necessary to protect the characters of
public officers from calumny as it is to punish them for treachery or
misconduct. For my own part I shall hold it a matter of doubt, until
better evidence arises than is known at present, whether Dumouriez has
been a traitor from policy or resentment. There was certainly a time
when he acted well, but it is not every man whose mind is strong enough
to bear up against ingratitude, and I think he experienced a great deal
of this before he revolted. Calumny becomes harmless and defeats itself,
when it attempts to act upon too large a scale. Thus the denunciation
of the Sections [of Paris] against the twenty-two deputies [Girondists]
falls to the ground. The departments that elected them are better judges
of their moral and political characters than those who have denounced
them. This denunciation will injure Paris in the opinion of the
departments because it has the appearance of dictating to them what sort
of deputies they shall elect. Most of the acquaintances that I have in
the Convention are among those who are in that list, and I know there
are not better men nor better patriots than what they are.

I have written a letter to Marat of the same date as this but not on the
same subject. He may show it to you if he chuse.

Votre Ami,

Thomas Paine.

Citoyen Danton.




XIX. A CITIZEN OF AMERICA TO THE CITIZENS OF EUROPE (1)


18th Year of Independence.

     1 State Archives, Paris: États Unis, vol. 38, fol. 90. This
     pamphlet is in English, without indication of authorship or
     of the place of publication. It is accompanied by a French
     translation (MS.) inscribed "Par Thomas Payne." In the
     printed pamphlet the date (18th Year, etc) is preceded by
     the French words (printed): "Philadelphie 28 Juillet 1793."
     It was no doubt the pamphlet sent by Paine to Monroe, with
     various documents relating to his imprisonment, describing
     it as "a Letter which I had printed here as an American
     letter, some copies of which I sent to Mr. Jefferson." A
     considerable portion of the pamphlet embodies, with
     occasional changes of phraseology, a manuscript (États Unis,
     vol. 37, Do. 39) endorsed: "January 1793. Thorn. Payne.
     Copie. Observations on the situation of the Powers joined
     against France." This opens with the following paragraph:
     "It is always useful to know the position and the designs of
     one's enemies. It is much easier to do so by combining and
     comparing the events, and by examining the consequences
     which result from them, than by forming one's judgment by
     letters found or intercepted. These letters could be
     fabricated with the intention of deceiving, but events or
     circumstances have a character which is proper to them. If
     in the course of our political operations we mistake the
     designs of our enemy, it leads us to do precisely that which
     he desires we should do, and it happens by the fact, but
     against our intentions, that we work for him." That the date
     written on this MS. is erroneous appears by an allusion to
     the defeat of the Duke of York at Dunkirk in the closing
     paragraph: "There are three distinct parties in England at
     this moment: the government party, the revolutionary party,
     and an intermedial party,--which is only opposed to the war
     on account of the expense it entails, and the harm it does
     commerce and manufactures. I am speaking of the People, and
     not of the Parliament. The latter is divided into two
     parties: the Ministerial, and the Anti-ministerial. The
     revolutionary party, the intermedial party, and the anti-
     ministerial party, will all rejoice, publicly or privately,
     at the defeat of the Duke of York at Dunkirk."   The two
     paragraphs quoted represent the only actual additions to the
     pamphlet. I have a clipping from the London Morning
     Chronicle of Friday, April 25, 1794, containing the part of
     the pamphlet headed "Of the present state of Europe and the
     Confederacy," signed "Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense,
     etc." On February 1,1793, the Convention having declared
     war, appointed Paine, Barère, Condorcet and Faber, a
     Committee to draft an address to the English people. It was
     never done, but these fragments may represent notes written
     by Paine with reference to that task.   The pamphlet
     probably appeared late in September, 1793.--_Editor._,


Understanding that a proposal is intended to be made at the ensuing
meeting of the Congress of the United States of America "to send
commissioners to Europe to confer with the Ministers of all the Neutral
Powers for the purpose of negotiating preliminaries of peace," I address
this letter to you on that subject, and on the several matters connected
therewith.

In order to discuss this subject through all its circumstances, it
will be necessary to take a review of the state of Europe, prior to the
French revolution. It will from thence appear, that the powers leagued
against France are fighting to attain an object, which, were it possible
to be attained, would be injurious to themselves.

This is not an uncommon error in the history of wars and governments, of
which the conduct of the English government in the war against America
is a striking instance. She commenced that war for the avowed purpose of
subjugating America; and after wasting upwards of one hundred millions
sterling, and then abandoning the object, she discovered, in the course
of three or four years, that the prosperity of England was increased,
instead of being diminished, by the independence of America. In short,
every circumstance is pregnant with some natural effect, upon which
intentions and opinions have no influence; and the political error
lies in misjudging what the effect will be. England misjudged it in
the American war, and the reasons I shall now offer will shew, that she
misjudges it in the present war. In discussing this subject, I leave out
of the question everything respecting forms and systems of government;
for as all the governments of Europe differ from each other, there is no
reason that the government of France should not differ from the rest.

The clamours continually raised in all the countries of Europe were,
that the family of the Bourbons was become too powerful; that the
intrigues of the court of France endangered the peace of Europe. Austria
saw with a jealous eye the connection of France with Prussia; and
Prussia, in her turn became jealous of the connection of France with
Austria; England had wasted millions unsuccessfully in attempting to
prevent the family compact with Spain; Russia disliked the alliance
between France and Turkey; and Turkey became apprehensive of the
inclination of France towards an alliance with Russia. Sometimes the
quadruple alliance alarmed some of the powers, and at other times a
contrary system alarmed others, and in all those cases the charge was
always made against the intrigues of the Bourbons.

Admitting those matters to be true, the only thing that could have
quieted the apprehensions of all those powers with respect to the
interference of France, would have been her entire NEUTRALITY in Europe;
but this was impossible to be obtained, or if obtained was impossible
to be secured, because the genius of her government was repugnant to all
such restrictions.

It now happens that by entirely changing the genius of her government,
which France has done for herself, this neutrality, which neither wars
could accomplish nor treaties secure, arises naturally of itself, and
becomes the ground upon which the war should terminate. It is the
thing that approaches the nearest of all others to what ought to be the
political views of all the European powers; and there is nothing that
can so effectually secure this neutrality, as that the genius of the
French government should be different from the rest of Europe.

But if their object is to restore the Bourbons and monarchy together,
they will unavoidably restore with it all the evils of which they have
complained; and the first question of discord will be, whose ally is
that monarchy to be?

Will England agree to the restoration of the family compact against
which she has been fighting and scheming ever since it existed? Will
Prussia agree to restore the alliance between France and Austria, or
will Austria agree to restore the former connection between France and
Prussia, formed on purpose to oppose herself; or will Spain or Russia,
or any of the maritime powers, agree that France and her navy should be
allied to England? In fine, will any of the powers agree to strengthen
the hands of the other against itself? Yet all these cases involve
themselves in the original question of the restoration of the Bourbons;
and on the other hand, all of them disappear by the neutrality of
France.

If their object is not to restore the Bourbons, it must be the
impracticable project of a partition of the country. The Bourbons will
then be out of the question, or, more properly speaking, they will be
put in a worse condition; for as the preservation of the Bourbons made
a part of the first object, the extirpation of them makes a part of the
second. Their pretended friends will then become interested in their
destruction, because it is favourable to the purpose of partition that
none of the nominal claimants should be left in existence.

But however the project of a partition may at first blind the eyes of
the confederacy, or however each of them may hope to outwit the other
in the progress or in the end, the embarrassments that will arise are
insurmountable. But even were the object attainable, it would not be of
such general advantage to the parties as the neutrality of France, which
costs them nothing, and to obtain which they would formerly have gone to
war.



OF THE PRESENT STATE OF EUROPE, AND THE CONFEDERACY.

In the first place the confederacy is not of that kind that forms
itself originally by concert and consent. It has been forced together by
chance--a heterogeneous mass, held only by the accident of the moment;
and the instant that accident ceases to operate, the parties will retire
to their former rivalships.

I will now, independently of the impracticability of a partition
project, trace out some of the embarrassments which will arise among the
confederated parties; for it is contrary to the interest of a majority
of them that such a project should succeed.

To understand this part of the subject it is necessary, in the
first place, to cast an eye over the map of Europe, and observe the
geographical situation of the several parts of the confederacy; for
however strongly the passionate politics of the moment may operate, the
politics that arise from geographical situation are the most certain,
and will in all cases finally prevail.

The world has been long amused with what is called the "_balance of
power_." But it is not upon armies only that this balance depends.
Armies have but a small circle of action. Their progress is slow and
limited. But when we take maritime power into the calculation, the scale
extends universally. It comprehends all the interests connected with
commerce.

The two great maritime powers are England and France. Destroy either of
those, and the balance of naval power is destroyed. The whole world of
commerce that passes on the Ocean would then lie at the mercy of the
other, and the ports of any nation in Europe might be blocked up.

The geographical situation of those two maritime powers comes next under
consideration. Each of them occupies one entire side of the channel from
the straits of Dover and Calais to the opening into the Atlantic. The
commerce of all the northern nations, from Holland to Russia, must pass
the straits of Dover and Calais, and along the Channel, to arrive at the
Atlantic.

This being the case, the systematical politics of all the nations,
northward of the straits of Dover and Calais, can be ascertained from
their geographical situation; for it is necessary to the safety of their
commerce that the two sides of the Channel, either in whole or in part,
should not be in the possession either of England or France. While one
nation possesses the whole of one side, and the other nation the other
side, the northern nations cannot help seeing that in any situation of
things their commerce will always find protection on one side or the
other. It may sometimes be that of England and sometimes that of France.

Again, while the English navy continues in its present condition, it is
necessary that another navy should exist to controul the universal sway
the former would otherwise have over the commerce of all nations. France
is the only nation in Europe where this balance can be placed. The
navies of the North, were they sufficiently powerful, could not be
sufficiently operative. They are blocked up by the ice six months in the
year. Spain lies too remote; besides which, it is only for the sake of
her American mines that she keeps up her navy.

Applying these cases to the project of a partition of France, it will
appear, that the project involves with it a DESTRUCTION OF THE BALANCE
OF MARITIME POWER; because it is only by keeping France entire and
indivisible that the balance can be kept up. This is a case that at
first sight lies remote and almost hidden. But it interests all the
maritime and commercial nations in Europe in as great a degree as any
case that has ever come before them.--In short, it is with war as it
is with law. In law, the first merits of the case become lost in the
multitude of arguments; and in war they become lost in the variety of
events. New objects arise that take the lead of all that went before,
and everything assumes a new aspect. This was the case in the last great
confederacy in what is called the succession war, and most probably will
be the case in the present.

I have now thrown together such thoughts as occurred to me on the
several subjects connected with the confederacy against France, and
interwoven with the interest of the neutral powers. Should a conference
of the neutral powers take place, these observations will, at least,
serve to generate others. The whole matter will then undergo a more
extensive investigation than it is in my power to give; and the evils
attending upon either of the projects, that of restoring the Bourbons,
or of attempting a partition of France, will have the calm opportunity
of being fully discussed.

On the part of England, it is very extraordinary that she should have
engaged in a former confederacy, and a long expensive war, to _prevent_
the family compact, and now engage in another confederacy to _preserve_
it. And on the part of the other powers, it is as inconsistent that they
should engage in a partition project, which, could it be executed, would
immediately destroy the balance of maritime power in Europe, and would
probably produce a second war, to remedy the political errors of the
first.

A Citizen of the United States of America.




XX. APPEAL TO THE CONVENTION.(1)


Citizens Representatives: If I should not express myself with the energy
I used formerly to do, you will attribute it to the very dangerous
illness I have suffered in the prison of the Luxembourg. For several
days I was insensible of my own existence; and though I am much
recovered, it is with exceeding great difficulty that I find power to
write you this letter.

     1 Written in Luxembourg prison, August 7, 1794. Robespierre
     having fallen July 29th, those who had been imprisoned under
     his authority were nearly all at once released, but Paine
     remained. There were still three conspirators against him on
     the Committee of Public Safety, and to that Committee this
     appeal was unfortunately confided; consequently it never
     reached the Convention. The circumstances are related at
     length infra, in the introduction to the Memorial to Monroe
     (XXI.). It will also be seen that Paine was mistaken in his
     belief that his imprisonment was due to the enmity of
     Robespierre, and this he vaguely suspected when his
     imprisonment was prolonged three months after Robespierre's
     death.--_Editor._.

But before I proceed further, I request the Convention to observe: that
this is the first line that has come from me, either to the Convention
or to any of the Committees, since my imprisonment,--which is
approaching to eight months. --Ah, my friends, eight months' loss of
liberty seems almost a life-time to a man who has been, as I have been,
the unceasing defender of Liberty for twenty years.

I have now to inform the Convention of the reason of my not having
written before. It is a year ago that I had strong reason to believe
that Robespierre was my inveterate enemy, as he was the enemy of every
man of virtue and humanity. The address that was sent to the Convention
some time about last August from Arras, the native town of Robespierre,
I have always been informed was the work of that hypocrite and the
partizans he had in the place. The intention of that address was to
prepare the way for destroying me, by making the people declare (though
without assigning any reason) that I had lost their confidence; the
Address, however, failed of success, as it was immediately opposed by a
counter-address from St. Omer, which declared the direct contrary. But
the strange power that Robespierre, by the most consummate hypocrisy and
the most hardened cruelties, had obtained, rendered any attempt on my
part to obtain justice not only useless but dangerous; for it is the
nature of Tyranny always to strike a deeper blow when any attempt has
been made to repel a former one. This being my situation, I submitted
with patience to the hardness of my fate and waited the event of
brighter days. I hope they are now arrived to the nation and to me.

Citizens, when I left the United States in the year 1787 I promised to
all my friends that I would return to them the next year; but the hope
of seeing a revolution happily established in France, that might serve
as a model to the rest of Europe,(1) and the earnest and disinterested
desire of rendering every service in my power to promote it, induced me
to defer my return to that country, and to the society of my friends,
for more than seven years. This long sacrifice of private tranquillity,
especially after having gone through the fatigues and dangers of the
American Revolution which continued almost eight years, deserved a
better fate than the long imprisonment I have silently suffered. But it
is not the nation but a faction that has done me this injustice. Parties
and Factions, various and numerous as they have been, I have always
avoided. My heart was devoted to all France, and the object to which I
applied myself was the Constitution. The Plan which I proposed to the
Committee, of which I was a member, is now in the hands of Barère, and
it will speak for itself.

     1 Revolutions have now acquired such sanguinary associations
     that it is important to bear in mind that by "revolution"
     Paine always means simply a change or reformation of
     government, which might be and ought to be bloodless. See
     "Rights of Man" Part II., vol. ii. of this work, pp. 513,
     523.--:_Editor_.

It is perhaps proper that I inform you of the cause as-assigned in the
order for my imprisonment. It is that I am 'a Foreigner'; whereas, the
_Foreigner_ thus imprisoned was invited into France by a decree of the
late National Assembly, and that in the hour of her greatest danger,
when invaded by Austrians and Prussians. He was, moreover, a citizen of
the United States of America, an ally of France, and not a subject of
any country in Europe, and consequently not within the intentions of any
decree concerning Foreigners. But any excuse can be made to serve the
purpose of malignity when in power.

I will not intrude on your time by offering any apology for the broken
and imperfect manner in which I have expressed myself. I request you to
accept it with the sincerity with which it comes from my heart; and I
conclude with wishing Fraternity and prosperity to France, and union and
happiness to her representatives.

Citizens, I have now stated to you my situation, and I can have no doubt
but your justice will restore me to the Liberty of which I have been
deprived.

Thomas Paine.

Luxembourg, Thermidor 19, 2nd Year of the French Republic, one and
indivisible.




XXI. THE MEMORIAL TO MONROE.

EDITOR'S historical introduction:

The Memorial is here printed from the manuscript of Paine now among the
Morrison Papers, in the British Museum,--no doubt the identical document
penned in Luxembourg prison. The paper in the United States State
Department (vol. vii., Monroe Papers) is accompanied by a note by
Monroe: "Mr. Paine, Luxembourg, on my arrival in France, 1794. My answer
was after the receipt of his second letter. It is thought necessary to
print only those parts of his that relate directly to his confinement,
and to omit all between the parentheses in each." The paper thus
inscribed seems to have been a wrapper for all of Paine's letters.
An examination of the MS. at Washington does not show any such
"parentheses," indicating omissions, whereas that in the British Museum
has such marks, and has evidently been prepared for the press,--being
indeed accompanied by the long title of the French pamphlet. There are
other indications that the British Museum MS. is the original Memorial
from which was printed in Paris the pamphlet entitled:

"Mémoire de Thomas Payne, autographe et signé de sa main: addressé à
M. Monroe, ministre des États-unis en france, pour réclamer sa mise en
liberté comme citoyen Américain, 10 Sept 1794. Robespierre avait fait
arrêter Th. Payne, en 1793--il fut conduit au Luxembourg où le glaive
fut longtemps suspendu sur sa tête. Après onze mois de captivité, il
recouvra la liberté, sur la réclamation du ministre Américain--c'était
après la chute de Robespierre--il reprit sa place à la convention, le 8
décembre 1794. (18 frimaire an iii.) Ce Mémoire contient des renseigne
mens curieux sur la conduite politique de Th. Payne en france, pendant
la Révolution, et à l'époque du procès de Louis XVI. Ce n'est point, dit
il, comme Quaker, qu'il ne vota pas La Mort du Roi mais par un sentiment
d'humanité, qui ne tenait point à ses principes religieux. Villenave."

No date is given, but the pamphlet probably appeared early in 1795.
Matthieu Gillaume Thérèse Villenave (b. 1762, d. 1846) was a journalist,
and it will be noticed that he, or the translator, modifies Paine's
answer to Marat about his Quakerism. There are some loose translations
in the cheap French pamphlet, but it is the only publication which
has given Paine's Memorial with any fulness. Nearly ten pages of
the manuscript were omitted from the Memorial when it appeared as
an Appendix to the pamphlet entitled "Letter to George Washington,
President of the United States of America, on Affairs public and
private." By Thomas Paine, Author of the Works entitled, Common Sense,
Rights of Man, Age of Reason, &c. Philadelphia: Printed by Benj.
Franklin Bache, No. 112 Market Street. 1796. [Entered according to
law.] This much-abridged copy of the Memorial has been followed in
all subsequent editions, so that the real document has not hitherto
appeared.(1)

In appending the Memorial to his "Letter to Washington," Paine would
naturally omit passages rendered unimportant by his release, but his
friend Bache may have suppressed others that might have embarrassed
American partisans of France, such as the scene at the king's trial.

     1 Bache's pamphlet reproduces the portrait engraved in
     Villenave, where it is underlined: "Peint par Ped [Peale] à
     Philadelphie, Dessiné par F. Bonneville, Gravé par Sandoz."
     In Bache it is: "Bolt sc. 1793 "; and beneath this the
     curious inscription: "Thomas Paine. Secretair d. Americ:
     Congr: 1780. Mitgl: d. fr. Nat. Convents. 1793." The
     portrait is a variant of that now in Independence Hall, and
     one of two painted by C. W. Peale. The other (in which the
     chin is supported by the hand) was for religious reasons
     refused by the Boston Museum when it purchased the
     collection of "American Heroes" from Rembrandt Peale. It was
     bought by John McDonough, whose brother sold it to Mr.
     Joseph Jefferson, the eminent actor, and perished when his
     house was burned at Buzzard's Bay. Mr. Jefferson writes me
     that he meant to give the portrait to the Paine Memorial
     Society, Boston; "but the cruel fire roasted the splendid
     _Infidel_, so I presume the saints are satisfied."

This description, however, and a large proportion of the suppressed
pages, are historically among the most interesting parts of the
Memorial, and their restoration renders it necessary to transfer the
document from its place as an appendix to that of a preliminary to the
"Letter to Washington."

Paine's Letter to Washington burdens his reputation today more,
probably, than any other production of his pen. The traditional judgment
was formed in the absence of many materials necessary for a just
verdict. The editor feels under the necessity of introducing at this
point an historical episode; he cannot regard it as fair to the memory
of either Paine or Washington that these two chapters should be printed
without a full statement of the circumstances, the most important of
which, but recently discovered, were unknown to either of those men. In
the editor's "Life of Thomas Paine" (ii., pp. 77-180) newly discovered
facts and documents bearing on the subject are given, which may
be referred to by those who desire to investigate critically such
statements as may here appear insufficiently supported. Considerations
of space require that the history in that work should be only summarized
here, especially as important new details must be added.

Paine was imprisoned (December 28, 1793) through the hostility of
Gouverneur Morris, the American Minister in Paris. The fact that the
United States, after kindling revolution in France by its example, was
then represented in that country by a Minister of vehement royalist
opinions, and one who literally entered into the service of the King to
defeat the Republic, has been shown by that Minister's own biographers.
Some light is cast on the events that led to this strange situation by
a letter written to M. de Mont-morin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, by
a French Chargé d'Affaires, Louis Otto, dated Philadelphia, 10 March,
1792. Otto, a nobleman who married into the Livingston family, was an
astute diplomatist, and enjoyed the intimacy of the Secretary of
State, Jefferson, and of his friends. At the close of a long interview
Jefferson tells him that "The secresy with which the Senate covers its
deliberations serves to veil personal interest, which reigns therein in
all its strength." Otto explains this as referring to the speculative
operations of Senators, and to the commercial connections some of them
have with England, making them unfriendly to French interests.

"Among the latter the most remarkable is Mr. Robert Morris, of English
birth, formerly Superintendent of Finance, a man of greatest talent,
whose mercantile speculations are as unlimited as his ambition. He
directs the Senate as he once did the American finances in making it
keep step with his policy and his business.... About two years ago Mr.
Robert Morris sent to France Mr. Gouverneur Morris to negotiate a loan
in his name, and for different other personal matters.... During his
sojourn in France, Mr. Rob. Morris thought he could make him more useful
for his aims by inducing the President of the United States to entrust
him with a negotiation with England relative to the Commerce of the two
countries. M. Gouv. Morris acquitted himself in this as an adroit man,
and with his customary zeal, but despite his address (insinuation)
obtained only the vague hope of an advantageous commercial treaty on
condition of an _Alliance resembling that between France and the United
States_.... [Mr. Robert Morris] is himself English, and interested in
all the large speculations founded in this country for Great Britain....
His great services as Superintendent of Finance during the Revolution
have assured him the esteem and consideration of General Washington,
who, however, is far from adopting his views about France. The warmth
with which Mr. Rob. Morris opposed in the Senate the exemption of French
_armateurs_ from tonnage, demanded by His Majesty, undoubtedly had
for its object to induce the king, by this bad behavior, to break the
treaty, in order to facilitate hereafter the negotiations begun with
England to form an alliance. As for Mr. Gouv. Morris he is entirely
devoted to his correspondent, with whom he has been constantly connected
in business and opinion. His great talents are recognized, and his
extreme quickness in conceiving new schemes and gaining others to them.
He is perhaps the most eloquent and ingenious man of his country, but
his countrymen themselves distrust his talents. They admire but fear
him." (1)

     1 Archives of the State Department, Paris, États Unis.,
      vol. 35, fol. 301.

The Commission given to Gouverneur Morris by Washington, to which
Otto refers, was in his own handwriting, dated October 13, 1789, and
authorized him "in the capacity of private agent, and in the credit of
this letter, to converse with His Britannic Majesty's ministers on these
points, viz. whether there be any, and what objection to performing
those articles of the treaty which remained to be performed on his part;
and whether they incline to a treaty of commerce on any and what terms.
This communication ought regularly to be made to you by the Secretary
of State; but, that office not being at present filled, my desire of
avoiding delays induces me to make it under my own hand."(1)

The President could hardly have assumed the authority of secretly
appointing a virtual ambassador had there not been a tremendous object
in view: this, as he explains in an accompanying letter, was to
secure the evacuation by Great Britain of the frontier posts. This
all-absorbing purpose of Washington is the key to his administration.
Gouverneur Morris paved the way for Jay's treaty, and he was paid for
it with the French mission. The Senate would not have tolerated his
appointment to England, and only by a majority of four could the
President secure his confirmation as Minister to France (January 12,
1792). The President wrote Gouverneur Morris (January 28th) a friendly
lecture about the objections made to him, chiefly that he favored the
aristocracy and was unfriendly to the revolution, and expressed "the
fullest confidence" that, supposing the allegations founded, he would
"effect a change." But Gouverneur Morris remained the agent of Senator
Robert Morris, and still held Washington's mission to England, and he
knew only as "conspirators" the rulers who succeeded Louis XVI. Even
while utilizing them, he was an agent of Great Britain in its war
against the country to which he was officially commissioned.

     1 Ford's "Writings of George Washington" vol. xi., p. 440.

Lafayette wrote to Washington ("Paris, March 15,1792") the following
appeal:

"Permit me, my dear General, to make an observation for yourself alone,
on the recent selection of an American ambassador. Personally I am a
friend of Gouverneur Morris, and have always been, in private, quite
content with him; but the aristocratic and really contra-revolutionary
principles which he has avowed render him little fit to represent the
only government resembling ours.... I cannot repress the desire that
American and French principles should be in the heart and on the lips of
the ambassador of the United States in France." (1)

In addition to this; two successive Ministers from France, after the
fall of the Monarchy, conveyed to the American Government the most
earnest remonstrances against the continuance of Gouverneur Morris in
their country, one of them reciting the particular offences of which
he was guilty. The President's disregard of all these protests and
entreaties, unexampled perhaps in history, had the effect of giving
Gouverneur Morris enormous power over the country against which he
was intriguing. He was recognized as the Irremovable. He represented
Washington's fixed and unalterable determination, and this at a moment
when the main purpose of the revolutionary leaders was to preserve the
alliance with America. Robespierre at that time ( 1793) had special
charge of diplomatic affairs, and it is shown by the French historian,
Frédéric Masson, that he was very anxious to recover for the republic
the initiative of the American alliance credited to the king; and
"although their Minister, Gouverneur Morris, was justly suspected,
and the American republic was at that time aiming only to utilize the
condition of its ally, the French republic cleared it at a cheap rate of
its debts contracted with the King."(2) Morris adroitly held this
doubt, whether the alliance of his government with Louis XVI. would
be continued to that King's executioners, over the head of the
revolutionists, as a suspended sword. Under that menace, and with
the authentication of being Washington's irremovable mouthpiece, this
Minister had only to speak and it was done.

     1 "Mémoire», etc., du General Lafayette," Bruxelles, 1837,
     tome ii., pp. 484,485.

     2 "Le Département des Affaires Étrangères pendant la
     Révolution," p. 395.

Meanwhile Gouverneur Morris was steadily working in France for the
aim which he held in common with Robert Morris, namely to transfer the
alliance from France to England. These two nations being at war, it was
impossible for France to fulfil all the terms of the alliance; it could
not permit English ships alone to seize American provisions on the seas,
and it was compelled to prevent American vessels from leaving French
ports with cargoes certain of capture by British cruisers. In this way
a large number of American Captains with their ships were detained in
France, to their distress, but to their Minister's satisfaction. He did
not fail to note and magnify all "infractions" of the treaty, with the
hope that they might be the means of annulling it in favor of England,
and he did nothing to mitigate sufferings which were counts in his
indictment of the Treaty.

It was at this point that Paine came in the American Minister's way. He
had been on good terms with Gouverneur Morris, who in 1790 (May 29th)
wrote from London to the President:

"On the 17th Mr. Paine called to tell me that he had conversed on the
same subject [impressment of American seamen] with Mr. Burke, who had
asked him if there was any minister, consul, or other agent of the
United States who could properly make application to the Government: to
which he had replied in the negative; but said that I was here, who had
been a member of Congress, and was therefore the fittest person to step
forward. In consequence of what passed thereupon between them he [Paine]
urged me to take the matter up, which I promised to do. On the 18th I
wrote to the Duke of Leeds requesting an interview."

     1 Force's "American State Papers, For. Rel.," vol. i.

At that time (1790) Paine was as yet a lion in London, thus able to
give Morris a lift. He told Morris, in 1792 that he considered his
appointment to France a mistake. This was only on the ground of his
anti-republican opinions; he never dreamed of the secret commissions
to England. He could not have supposed that the Minister who had so
promptly presented the case of impressed seamen in England would
not equally attend to the distressed Captains in France; but these,
neglected by their Minister, appealed to Paine. Paine went to see
Morris, with whom he had an angry interview, during which he asked
Morris "if he did not feel ashamed to take the money of the country
and do nothing for it." Paine thus incurred the personal enmity of
Gouverneur Morris. By his next step he endangered this Minister's
scheme for increasing the friction between France and America; for
Paine advised the Americans to appeal directly to the Convention, and
introduced them to that body, which at once heeded their application,
Morris being left out of the matter altogether. This was August 22d, and
Morris was very angry. It is probable that the Americans in Paris
felt from that time that Paine was in danger, for on September 13th a
memorial, evidently concocted by them, was sent to the French government
proposing that they should send Commissioners to the United States to
forestall the intrigues of England, and that Paine should go with them,
and set forth their case in the journals, as he "has great influence
with the people." This looks like a design to get Paine safely out of
the country, but it probably sealed his fate. Had Paine gone to America
and reported there Morris's treacheries to France and to his own
country, and his licentiousness, notorious in Paris, which his diary has
recently revealed to the world, the career of the Minister would have
swiftly terminated. Gouverneur Morris wrote to Robert Morris that
Paine was intriguing for his removal, and intimates that he (Paine) was
ambitious of taking his place in Paris. Paine's return to America must
be prevented.

Had the American Minister not been well known as an enemy of the
republic it might have been easy to carry Paine from the Convention to
the guillotine; but under the conditions the case required all of the
ingenuity even of a diplomatist so adroit as Gouverneur Morris. But fate
had played into his hand. It so happened that Louis Otto, whose letter
from Philadelphia has been quoted, had become chief secretary to the
Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris, M. Deforgues. This Minister and
his Secretary, apprehending the fate that presently overtook both, were
anxious to be appointed to America. No one knew better than Otto the
commanding influence of Gouverneur Morris, as Washington's "irremovable"
representative, both in France and America, and this desire of the two
frightened officials to get out of France was confided to him.(1) By
hope of his aid, and by this compromising confidence, Deforgues came
under the power of a giant who used it like a giant. Morris at
once hinted that Paine was fomenting the troubles given by Genêt to
Washington in America, and thus set in motion the procedure by which
Paine was ultimately lodged in prison.

There being no charge against Paine in France, and no ill-will felt
towards him by Robespierre, compliance with the supposed will of
Washington was in this case difficult. Six months before, a law had been
passed to imprison aliens of hostile nationality, which could not affect
Paine, he being a member of the Convention and an American. But a decree
was passed, evidently to reach Paine, "that no foreigner should be
admitted to represent the French people"; by this he was excluded from
the Convention, and the Committee of General Surety enabled to take the
final step of assuming that he was an Englishman, and thus under the
decree against aliens of hostile nations.(2)

     1 Letter of Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Oct 19, 1793.
     Sparks's "Life of Gouverneur Morris," vol. ii., p. 375.

     2 Although, as I have said, there was no charge against
     Paine in France, and none assigned in any document connected
     with his arrest, some kind of insinuation had to be made in
     the Convention to cover proceedings against a Deputy, and
     Bourdon de l'Oise said, "I know that he has intrigued with a
     former agent of the bureau of Foreign Affairs." It will be
     seen by the third addendum to the Memorial to Monroe that
     Paine supposed this to refer to Louis Otto, who had been his
     interpreter in an interview requested by Barère, of the
     Committee of Public Safety. But as Otto was then, early in
     September, 1793, Secretary in the Foreign Office, and Barère
     a fellow-terrorist of Bourdon, there could be no accusation
     based on an interview which, had it been probed, would have
     put Paine's enemies to confusion. It is doubtful, however,
     if Paine was right in his conjecture. The reference of
     Bourdon was probably to the collusion between Paine and
     Genêt suggested by Morris.

Paine was thus lodged in prison simply to please Washington, to whom
it was left to decide whether he had been rightly represented by his
Minister in the case. When the large number of Americans in Paris
hastened in a body to the Convention to demand his release, the
President (Vadier) extolled Paine, but said his birth in England brought
him under the measures of safety, and referred them to the Committees.
There they were told that "their reclamation was only the act of
individuals, without any authority from the American Government."
Unfortunately the American petitioners, not understanding by this a
reference to the President, unsuspiciously repaired to Morris, as
also did Paine by letter. The Minister pretended compliance, thereby
preventing their direct appeal to the President. Knowing, however, that
America would never agree that nativity under the British flag made
Paine any more than other Americans a citizen of England, the American
Minister came from Sain-port, where he resided, to Paris, and secured
from the obedient Deforgues a certificate that he had reclaimed Paine
as an American citizen, but that he was held as a _French_ citizen.
This ingeniously prepared certificate which was sent to the Secretary
of State (Jefferson), and Morris's pretended "reclamation," _which was
never sent to America_, are translated in my "Life of Paine," and here
given in the original.


À Paris le 14 février 1794, 26 pluviôse.

Le Minisire plénipotentiaire des États Unis de l'Amérique près la
République française au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères.

Monsieur:

Thomas Paine vient de s'adresser à moi pour que je le réclame comme
Citoyen des États Unis. Voici (je crois) les Faits que le regardent. Il
est né en Angleterre. Devenu ensuite Citoyen des États Unis il s'y
est acquise une grande célébrité par des Écrits révolutionnaires. En
consequence il fût adopté Citoyen français et ensuite élu membre de la
Convention. Sa conduite depuis cette époque n'est pas de mon ressort.
J'ignore la cause de sa Détention actuelle dans la prison du Luxembourg,
mais je vous prie Monsieur (si des raisons que ne me sont pas connues
s'opposent à sa liberation) de vouloir bien m'en instruire pour que je
puisse les communiquer au Gouvernement des États Unis. J'ai l'honneur
d'être, Monsieur,

Votre très humble Serviteur

Gouv. Morris.

Paris, i Ventôse l'An ad. de la République une et indivisible.

Le Ministre des Affaires Étrangères au Ministre Plénipotentiaire des
États Unis de V Amérique près la République Française.

Par votre lettre du 26 du mois dernier, vous réclamez la liberté de
Thomas Faine, comme Citoyen américain. Né en Angleterre, cet ex-deputé
est devenu successivement Citoyen Américain et Citoyen français. En
acceptant ce dernier titre et en remplissant une place dans le Corps
Législatif, il est soumis aux lob de la République et il a renoncé de
fait à la protection que le droit des gens et les traités conclus avec
les États Unis auraient pu lui assurer.

J'ignore les motifs de sa détention mais je dois présumer qûils bien
fondés. Je vois néanmoins soumettre au Comité de Salut Public la démande
que vous m'avez adressée et je m'empresserai de vous faire connaître sa
décision.

Dir ORGUBS. (1)

     1 Archives of the Foreign Office, Paris, "États Unis," vol.
     xl. Translations:--Morris: "Sir,--Thomas Paine has just
     applied to me to claim him as a citizen of the United
     States. Here (I believe) are the facts relating to him. He
     was born in England. Having afterwards become a citizen of
     the United States, he acquired great celebrity there by his
     revolutionary writings. In consequence he was adopted a
     French citizen and then elected Member of the Convention.
     His conduct since this epoch is out of my jurisdiction. I am
     ignorant of the reason for his present detention in the
     Luxembourg prison, but I beg you, sir (if reasons unknown to
     me prevent his liberation), be so good as to inform me, that
     I may communicate them to the government of the United
     States." Deporgurs: "By your letter of the 36th of last
     month you reclaim the liberty of Thomas Paine as an American
     citizen. Born in England, this ex-deputy has become
     successively an American and a French citizen. In accepting
     this last title, and in occupying a place in the Corps
     Législatif he submitted himself to the laws of the Republic,
     and has certainly renounced the protection which the law of
     nations, and treaties concluded with the United States,
     could have assured him. I am ignorant of the motives of his
     detention, but I must presume they are well founded. I shall
     nevertheless submit to the Committee of Public Safety the
     demand you have addressed to me, and I shall lose no time in
     letting you know its decision."

It will be seen that Deforgues begins his letter with a falsehood: "You
reclaim the liberty of Paine as an American citizen." Morris's letter
had declared him a French citizen out of his (the American Minister's)
"jurisdiction." Morris states for Deforgues his case, and it is
obediently adopted, though quite discordant with the decree, which
imprisoned Paine as a foreigner. Deforgues also makes Paine a member
of a non-existent body, the "Corps Législatif," which might suggest
in Philadelphia previous connection with the defunct Assembly. No such
inquiries as Deforgues promised, nor any, were ever made, and of course
none were intended. Morris had got from Deforgues the certificate he
needed to show in Philadelphia and to Americans in Paris. His pretended
"reclamation" was of course withheld: no copy of it ever reached America
till brought from French archives by the present writer. Morris does
not appear to have ventured even to keep a copy of it himself. The draft
(presumably in English), found among his papers by Sparks, alters the
fatal sentence which deprived Paine of his American citizenship and of
protection. "Res-sort"--jurisdiction--which has a definite technical
meaning in the mouth of a Minister, is changed to "cognizance"; the
sentence is made to read, "his conduct from that time has not come under
my cognizance." (Sparks's "Life of Gouverneur Morris," i., p. 401).
Even as it stands in his book, Sparks says: "The application, it must
be confessed, was neither pressing in its terms, nor cogent in its
arguments."

The American Minister, armed with this French missive, dictated by
himself, enclosed it to the Secretary of State, whom he supposed to be
still Jefferson, with a letter stating that he had reclaimed Paine as an
American, that he (Paine) was held to answer for "crimes," and that any
further attempt to release him would probably be fatal to the prisoner.
By these falsehoods, secured from detection by the profound secrecy of
the Foreign Offices in both countries, Morris paralyzed all interference
from America, as Washington could not of course intervene in behalf of
an American charged with "crimes" committed in a foreign country, except
to demand his trial. But it was important also to paralyze further
action by Americans in Paris, and to them, too, was shown the French
certificate of a reclamation never made. A copy was also sent to Paine,
who returned to Morris an argument which he entreated him to embody in
a further appeal to the French Minister. This document was of course
buried away among the papers of Morris, who never again mentioned Paine
in any communication to the French government, but contented himself
with personal slanders of his victim in private letters to Washington's
friend, Robert Morris, and no doubt others. I quote Sparks's summary of
the argument unsuspectingly sent by Paine to Morris:

"He first proves himself to have been an American citizen, a character
of which he affirms no subsequent act had deprived him. The title of
French citizen was a mere nominal and honorary one, which the
Convention chose to confer, when they asked him to help them in making a
Constitution. But let the nature or honor of the title be what it might,
the Convention had taken it away of their own accord. 'He was
excluded from the Convention on the motion for excluding _foreigners_.
Consequently he was no longer under the law of the Republic as a
_citizen_, but under the protection of the Treaty of Alliance, as fully
and effectually as any other citizen of America. It was therefore the
duty of the American Minister to demand his release.'"

To this Sparks adds:

"Such is the drift of Paine's argument, and it would seem indeed that
he could not be a foreigner and a citizen at the same time. It was hard
that his only privilege of citizenship should be that of imprisonment.
But this logic was a little too refined for the revolutionary tribunals
of the Jacobins in Paris, and Mr. Morris well knew it was not worth
while to preach it to them. He did not believe there was any serious
design at that time against the life of the prisoner, and he considered
his best chance of safety to be in preserving silence for the present.
Here the matter rested, and Paine was left undisturbed till the arrival
of Mr. Monroe, who procured his discharge from confinement." ("Life of
Gouverneur Morris," i., p. 417.)l

Sparks takes the gracious view of the man whose Life he was writing, but
the facts now known turn his words to sarcasm. The Terror by which Paine
suffered was that of Morris, who warned him and his friends, both in
Paris and America, that if his case was stirred the knife would fall
on him. Paine declares (see xx.) that this danger kept him silent till
after the fall of Robespierre. None knew so well as Morris that
there were no charges against Paine for offences in France, and that
Robespierre was awaiting that action by Washington which he (Morris) had
rendered impossible. Having thus suspended the knife over Paine for six
months, Robespierre interpreted the President's silence, and that
of Congress, as confirmation of Morris's story, and resolved on the
execution of Paine "in the interests of America as well as of France";
in other words to conciliate Washington to the endangered alliance with
France.

Paine escaped the guillotine by the strange accident related in a
further chapter. The fall of Robespierre did not of course end his
imprisonment, for he was not Robespierre's but Washington's prisoner.
Morris remained Minister in France nearly a month after Robespierre's
death, but the word needed to open Paine's prison was not spoken.
After his recall, had Monroe been able at once to liberate Paine, an
investigation must have followed, and Morris would probably have taken
his prisoner's place in the Luxembourg. But Morris would not present his
letters of recall, and refused to present his successor, thus keeping
Monroe out of his office four weeks. In this he was aided by Bourdon
de l'Oise (afterwards banished as a royalist conspirator, but now a
commissioner to decide on prisoners); also by tools of Robespierre who
had managed to continue on the Committee of Public Safety by laying
their crimes on the dead scapegoat--Robespierre. Against Barère (who had
signed Paine's death-warrant), Billaud-Varennes, and Colloit d'Her-bois,
Paine, if liberated, would have been a terrible witness. The Committee
ruled by them had suppressed Paine's appeal to the Convention, as they
presently suppressed Monroe's first appeal. Paine, knowing that Monroe
had arrived, but never dreaming that the manoeuvres of Morris were
keeping him out of office, wrote him from prison the following letters,
hitherto unpublished.

     1 There is no need to delay the reader here with any
     argument about Paine's unquestionable citizenship, that
     point having been settled by his release as an American, and
     the sanction of Monroe's action by his government. There was
     no genuineness in any challenge of Paine's citizenship, but
     a mere desire to do him an injury. In this it had marvellous
     success. Ten years after Paine had been reclaimed by Monroe,
     with the sanction of Washington, as an American citizen, his
     vote was refused at New Rochelle, New York, by the
     supervisor, Elisha Ward, on the ground that Washington and
     Morris had refused to Declaim him. Under his picture of the
     dead Paine, Jarvis, the artist, wrote: "A man who devoted
     his whole life to the attainment of two objects--rights of
     man, and freedom of conscience--had his vote denied when
     living, and was denied a grave when dead."--_Editor._


August 17th, 1794.

My Dear Sir: As I believe none of the public papers have announced your
name right I am unable to address you by it, but a _new_ minister from
America is joy to me and will be so to every American in France.

Eight months I have been imprisoned, and I know not for what, except
that the order says that I am a Foreigner. The Illness I have suffered
in this place (and from which I am but just recovering) had nearly put
an end to my existence. My life is but of little value to me in
this situation tho' I have borne it with a firmness of patience and
fortitude.

I enclose you a copy of a letter, (as well the translation as the
English)--which I sent to the Convention after the fall of the Monster
Robespierre--for I was determined not to write a line during the time of
his detestable influence. I sent also a copy to the Committee of public
safety--but I have not heard any thing respecting it. I have now
no expectation of delivery but by your means--_Morris has been my
inveterate enemy_ and I think he has permitted something of the national
Character of America to suffer by quietly letting a Citizen of that
Country remain almost eight months in prison without making every
official exertion to procure him justice,--for every act of violence
offered to a foreigner is offered also to the Nation to which he
belongs.

The gentleman, Mr. Beresford, who will present you this has been very
friendly to me.(1) Wishing you happiness in your appointment, I am your
affectionate friend and humble servant.


August 18th, 1794.

Dear Sir: In addition to my letter of yesterday (sent to Mr. Beresford
to be conveyed to you but which is delayed on account of his being at
St. Germain) I send the following memoranda.

I was in London at the time I was elected a member of this Convention.
I was elected a Deputé in four different departments without my knowing
any thing of the matter, or having the least idea of it. The intention
of electing the Convention before the time of the former Legislature
expired, was for the purpose of reforming the Constitution or rather for
forming a new one. As the former Legislature shewed a disposition that
I should assist in this business of the new Constitution, they prepared
the way by voting me a French Citoyen (they conferred the same title
on General Washington and certainly I had no more idea than he had of
vacating any part of my real Citizenship of America for a nominal one in
France, especially at a time when she did not know whether she would
be a Nation or not, and had it not even in her power to promise me
protection). I was elected (the second person in number of Votes, the
Abbé Sieves being first) a member for forming the Constitution, and
every American in Paris as well as my other acquaintance knew that it
was my intention to return to America as soon as the Constitution should
be established. The violence of Party soon began to shew itself in the
Convention, but it was impossible for me to see upon what principle they
differed--unless it was a contention for power. I acted however as I
did in America, I connected myself with no Party, but considered myself
altogether a National Man--but the case with Parties generally is that
when you are not with one you are supposed to be with the other.

     1 A friendly lamp-lighter, alluded to in the Letter to
     Washington, conveyed this letter to Mr. Beresford.--
     _Editor._

I was taken out of bed between three and four in the morning on the
28 of December last, and brought to the Luxembourg--without any other
accusation inserted in the order than that I was a foreigner; a motion
having been made two days before in the Convention to expel Foreigners
therefrom. I certainly then remained, even upon their own tactics, what
I was before, a Citizen of America.

About three weeks after my imprisonment the Americans that were in Paris
went to the bar of the Convention to reclaim me, but contrary to my
advice, they made their address into a Petition, and it miscarried.
I then applied to G. Morris, to reclaim me as an official part of his
duty, which he found it necessary to do, and here the matter stopt.(1)
I have not heard a single line or word from any American since, which
is now seven months. I rested altogether on the hope that a new Minister
would arrive from America. I have escaped with life from more dangers
than one. Had it not been for the fall of Roberspierre and your timely
arrival I know not what fate might have yet attended me. There seemed to
be a determination to destroy all the Prisoners without regard to merit,
character, or any thing else. During the time I laid at the height of my
illness they took, in one night only, 169 persons out of this prison
and executed all but eight. The distress that I have suffered at being
obliged to exist in the midst of such horrors, exclusive of my own
precarious situation, suspended as it were by the single thread of
accident, is greater than it is possible you can conceive--but thank God
times are at last changed, and I hope that your Authority will release
me from this unjust imprisonment.

     1 The falsehood told Paine, accompanied by an intimation of
     danger in pursuing the pretended reclamation, was of course
     meant to stop any farther action by Paine or his friends.--
     _Editor._.


August 25, 1794.

My Dear Sir: Having nothing to do but to sit and think, I will write
to pass away time, and to say that I am still here. I have received two
notes from Mr. Beresford which are encouraging (as the generality of
notes and letters are that arrive to persons here) but they contain
nothing explicit or decisive with respect to my liberation, and _I
shall be very glad to receive a line from yourself to inform me in what
condition the matter stands_. If I only glide out of prison by a sort
of accident America gains no credit by my liberation, neither can my
attachment to her be increased by such a circumstance. She has had the
services of my best days, she has my allegiance, she receives my portion
of Taxes for my house in Borden Town and my farm at New Rochelle, and
she owes me protection both at home and thro' her Ministers abroad, yet
I remain in prison, in the face of her Minister, at the arbitrary will
of a committee.

Excluded as I am from the knowledge of everything and left to a random
of ideas, I know not what to think or how to act. Before there was
any Minister here (for I consider Morris as none) and while the
Robespierrian faction lasted, I had nothing to do but to keep my mind
tranquil and expect the fate that was every day inflicted upon my
comrades, not individually but by scores. Many a man whom I have passed
an hour with in conversation I have seen marching to his destruction the
next hour, or heard of it the next morning; for what rendered the scene
more horrible was that they were generally taken away at midnight, so
that every man went to bed with the apprehension of never seeing his
friends or the world again.

I wish to impress upon you that all the changes that have taken place in
Paris have been sudden. There is now a moment of calm, but if thro' any
over complaisance to the persons you converse with on the subject of my
liberation, you omit procuring it for me _now_, you may have to lament
the fate of your friend when its too late. The loss of a Battle to the
Northward or other possible accident may happen to bring this about. I
am not out of danger till I am out of Prison.

Yours affectionately.

P. S.--I am now entirely without money. The Convention owes me 1800
livres salary which I know not how to get while I am here, nor do I know
how to draw for money on the rent of my farm in America. It is under
the care of my good friend General Lewis Morris. I have received no rent
since I have been in Europe.

[Addressed] Minister Plenipotentiary from America, Maison des Étrangers,
Rue de la Loi, Rue Richelieu.


Such was the sufficiently cruel situation when there reached Paine in
prison, September 4th, the letter of Peter Whiteside which caused him
to write his Memorial. Whiteside was a Philadelphian whose bankruptcy in
London had swallowed up some of Paine's means. His letter, reporting to
Paine that he was not regarded by the American Government or people as
an American citizen, and that no American Minister could interfere in
his behalf, was evidently inspired by Morris who was still in Paris, the
authorities being unwilling to give him a passport to Switzerland,
as they knew he was going in that direction to join the conspirators
against France. This Whiteside letter put Paine, and through him Monroe,
on a false scent by suggesting that the difficulty of his case lay in a
_bona fide_ question of citizenship, whereas there never had been really
any such question. The knot by which Morris had bound Paine was thus
concealed, and Monroe was appealing to polite wolves in the interest of
their victim. There were thus more delays, inexplicable alike to Monroe
and to Paine, eliciting from the latter some heartbroken letters, not
hitherto printed, which I add at the end of the Memorial. To add to
the difficulties and dangers, Paris was beginning to be agitated by
well-founded rumors of Jay's injurious negotiations in England, and a
coldness towards Monroe was setting in. Had Paine's release been delayed
much longer an American Minister's friendship might even have proved
fatal. Of all this nothing could be known to Paine, who suffered agonies
he had not known during the Reign of Terror. The other prisoners of
Robespierre's time had departed; he alone paced the solitary corridors
of the Luxembourg, chilled by the autumn winds, his cell tireless, unlit
by any candle, insufficiently nourished, an abscess forming in his side;
all this still less cruel than the feeling that he was abandoned, not
only by Washington but by all America.

This is the man of whom Washington wrote to Madison nine years before:
"Must the merits and services of 'Common Sense' continue to glide down
the stream of time unrewarded by this country?" This, then, is his
reward. To his old comrade in the battle-fields of Liberty, George
Washington, Paine owed his ten months of imprisonment, at the end of
which Monroe found him a wreck, and took him (November 4) to his own
house, where he and his wife nursed him back into life. But it was not
for some months supposed that Paine could recover; it was only after
several relapses; and it was under the shadow of death that he wrote the
letter to Washington so much and so ignorantly condemned. Those who have
followed the foregoing narrative will know that Paine's grievances were
genuine, that his infamous treatment stains American history; but they
will also know that they lay chiefly at the door of a treacherous and
unscrupulous American Minister.

Yet it is difficult to find an excuse for the retention of that Minister
in France by Washington. On Monroe's return to America in 1797, he
wrote a pamphlet concerning the mission from which he had been curtly
recalled, in which he said:

"I was persuaded from Mr. Morris's known political character and
principles, that his appointment, and especially at a period when the
French nation was in a course of revolution from an arbitrary to a free
government, would tend to discountenance the republican cause there
and at home, and otherwise weaken, and greatly to our prejudice, the
connexion subsisting between the two countries."

In a copy of this pamphlet found at Mount Vernon, Washington wrote on
the margin of this sentence:

"Mr. Morris was known to be a man of first rate abilities; and his
integrity and honor had never been impeached. Besides, Mr. Morris was
sent whilst the kingly government was in existence, ye end of 91 or
beginning of 92." (1)

But this does not explain why Gouverneur Morris was persistently kept in
France after monarchy was abolished (September 21, 1792), or even after
Lafayette's request for his removal, already quoted. To that letter
of Lafayette no reply has been discovered. After the monarchy was
abolished, Ternant and Genêt successively carried to America protests
from their Foreign Office against the continuance of a Minister in
France, who was known in Paris, and is now known to all acquainted with
his published papers, to have all along made his office the headquarters
of British intrigue against France, American interests being quite
subordinated. Washington did not know this, but he might have known it,
and his disregard of French complaints can hardly be ascribed to any
other cause than his delusion that Morris was deeply occupied with
the treaty negotiations confided to him. It must be remembered that
Washington believed such a treaty with England to be the alternative of
war.(2) On that apprehension the British party in America, and British
agents, played to the utmost, and under such influences Washington
sacrificed many old friendships,--with Jefferson, Madison, Monroe,
Edmund Randolph, Paine,--and also the confidence of his own State,
Virginia.

     1  Washington's marginal notes on Monroe's "View, etc.,"
     were first fully given in Ford's "Writings of Washington,"
     vol. xiii., p. 452, seq.

     2 Ibid., p. 453.

There is a traditional impression that Paine's angry letter to
Washington was caused by the President's failure to inter-pose for
his relief from prison. But Paine believed that the American Minister
(Morris) had reclaimed him in some feeble fashion, as an American
citizen, and he knew that the President had officially approved Monroe's
action in securing his release. His grievance was that Washington, whose
letters of friendship he cherished, who had extolled his services to
America, should have manifested no concern personally, made no use of
his commanding influence to rescue him from daily impending death, sent
to his prison no word of kindness or inquiry, and sent over their mutual
friend Monroe without any instructions concerning him; and finally, that
his private letter, asking explanation, remained unanswered. No doubt
this silence of Washington concerning the fate of Paine, whom he
acknowledged to be an American citizen, was mainly due to his fear
of offending England, which had proclaimed Paine. The "outlaw's"
imprisonment in Paris caused jubilations among the English gentry,
and went on simultaneously with Jay's negotiations in London, when any
expression by Washington of sympathy with Paine (certain of publication)
might have imperilled the Treaty, regarded by the President as vital.

So anxious was the President about this, that what he supposed had been
done for Paine by Morris, and what had really been done by Monroe,
was kept in such profound secrecy, that even his Secretary of State,
Pickering, knew nothing of it. This astounding fact I recently
discovered in the manuscripts of that Secretary.(1) Colonel Pickering,
while flattering enough to the President in public, despised his
intellect, and among his papers is a memorandum concluding as follows:

"But when the hazards of the Revolutionary War had ended, by the
establishment of our Independence, why was the knowledge of General
Washington's comparatively defective mental powers not freely divulged?
Why, even by the enemies of his civil administration were his abilities
very tenderly glanced at? --Because there were few, if any men, who
did not revere him for his distinguished virtues; his modesty--his
unblemished integrity, his pure and disinterested patriotism. These
virtues, of infinitely more value than exalted abilities without them,
secured to him the veneration and love of his fellow citizens at large.
Thus immensely popular, no man was willing to publish, under his hand,
even the simple truth. The only exception, that I recollect, was the
infamous Tom Paine; and this when in France, after he had escaped the
guillotine of Robespierre; and in resentment, because, after he had
participated in the French Revolution, President Washington seemed
not to have thought him so very important a character in the world,
as officially to interpose for his relief from the fangs of the French
ephemeral Rulers. In a word, no man, however well informed, was willing
to hazard his own popularity by exhibiting the real intellectual
character of the immensely popular Washington."

     1 Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 11., p. 171.

How can this ignorance of an astute man, Secretary of State under
Washington and Adams, be explained? Had Washington hidden the letters
showing on their face that he _had_ "officially interposed" for Paine by
two Ministers?

Madison, writing to Monroe, April 7, 1796, says that Pickering had
spoken to him "in harsh terms" of a letter written by Paine to the
President. This was a private letter of September 20, 1795, afterwards
printed in Paine's public Letter to Washington. The Secretary certainly
read that letter on its arrival, January 18, 1796, and yet Washington
does not appear to have told him of what had been officially done in
Paine's case! Such being the secrecy which Washington had carried from
the camp to the cabinet, and the morbid extent of it while the British
Treaty was in negotiation and discussion, one can hardly wonder at his
silence under Paine's private appeal and public reproach.

Much as Pickering hated Paine, he declares him the only man who ever
told the simple truth about Washington. In the lapse of time historical
research, while removing the sacred halo of Washington, has revealed
beneath it a stronger brain than was then known to any one. Paine
published what many whispered, while they were fawning on Washington for
office, or utilizing his power for partisan ends. Washington, during his
second administration, when his mental decline was remarked by
himself, by Jefferson, and others, was regarded by many of his eminent
contemporaries as fallen under the sway of small partisans. Not only
was the influence of Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Monroe, Livingston,
alienated, but the counsels of Hamilton were neutralized by Wolcott and
Pickering, who apparently agreed about the President's "mental powers."
Had not Paine previously incurred the _odium theologicum_, his pamphlet
concerning Washington would have been more damaging; even as it was, the
verdict was by no means generally favorable to the President, especially
as the replies to Paine assumed that Washington had indeed failed to
try and rescue him from impending death.(1) A pamphlet written by Bache,
printed anonymously (1797), Remarks occasioned by the late conduct of
Mr. Washington, indicates the belief of those who raised Washington to
power, that both Randolph and Paine had been sacrificed to please Great
Britain.

The _Bien-informé_ (Paris, November 12, 1797) published a letter from
Philadelphia, which may find translation here as part of the history of
the pamphlet:

"The letter of Thomas Paine to General Washington is read here with
avidity. We gather from the English papers that the Cabinet of St James
has been unable to stop the circulation of that pamphlet in England,
since it is allowable to reprint there any English work already
published elsewhere, however disagreeable to Messrs. Pitt and Dundas.
We read in the letter to Washington that Robespierre had declared to
the Committee of Public Safety that it was desirable in the interests
of both France and America that Thomas Paine, who, for seven or eight
months had been kept a prisoner in the Luxembourg, should forthwith be
brought up for judgment before the revolutionary tribunal. The proof of
this fact is found in Robespierre's papers, and gives ground for strange
suspicions."

     1 The principal ones were "A Letter to Thomas Paine. By an
     American Citizen. New York, 1797," and "A Letter to the
     infamous Tom Paine, in answer to his Letter to General
     Washington. December 1796. By Peter Porcupine" (Cobbett).
     Writing to David Stuart, January 8,1797, Washington,
     speaking of himself in the third person, says: "Although
     he is soon to become a private citizen, his opinions are to
     be knocked down, and his character traduced as low as they
     are capable of sinking it, even by resorting to absolute
     falsehoods. As an evidence whereof, and of the plan they are
     pursuing, I send you a letter of Mr. Paine to me, printed in
     this city and disseminated with great industry. Enclosed you
     will receive also a production of Peter Porcupine, alias
     William Cobbett. Making allowances for the asperity of an
     Englishman, for some of his strong and coarse expressions,
     and a want of official information as to many facts, it is
     not a bad thing." The "many facts" were, of course, the
     action of Monroe, and the supposed action of Morris in
     Paris, but not even to one so intimate as Stuart are these
     disclosed.

"It was long believed that Paine had returned to America with his friend
James Monroe, and the lovers of freedom [there] congratulated themselves
on being able to embrace that illustrious champion of the Rights of Man.
Their hopes have been frustrated. We know positively that Thomas Paine
is still living in France. The partizans of the late presidency [in
America] also know it well, yet they have spread a rumor that after
actually arriving he found his (really popular) _principles no longer
the order of the day_, and thought best to re-embark.

"The English journals, while repeating this idle rumor, observed that it
was unfounded, and that Paine had not left France. Some French journals
have copied these London paragraphs, but without comments; so that at
the very moment when Thomas Paine's Letter on the 18th. Fructidor is
published, _La Clef du Cabinet_ says that this citizen is suffering
unpleasantness in America."

Paine had intended to return with Monroe, in the spring of 1797, but,
suspecting the Captain and a British cruiser in the distance, returned
from Havre to Paris. The packet was indeed searched by the cruiser
for Paine, and, had he been captured, England would have executed the
sentence pronounced by Robespierre to please Washington.



MEMORIAL ADDRESSED TO JAMES MONROE,

MINISTER FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

Prison of the Luxembourg, Sept. 10th, 1794.

I address this memorial to you, in consequence of a letter I received
from a friend, 18 Fructidor (September 4th,) in which he says, "Mr.
Monroe has told me, that he has no orders [meaning from the American
government] respecting you; but I am sure he will leave nothing
undone to liberate you; but, from what I can learn, from all the late
Americans, you are not considered either by the Government, or by
the individuals, as an American citizen. You have been made a french
Citizen, which you have accepted, and you have further made yourself
a servant of the french Republic; and, therefore, it would be out
of character for an American Minister to interfere in their internal
concerns. You must therefore either be liberated out of Compliment to
America, or stand your trial, which you have a right to demand."

This information was so unexpected by me, that I am at a loss how to
answer it. I know not on what principle it originates; whether from an
idea that I had voluntarily abandoned my Citizenship of America for that
of France, or from any article of the American Constitution applied to
me. The first is untrue with respect to any intention on my part; and
the second is without foundation, as I shall shew in the course of this
memorial.

The idea of conferring honor of Citizenship upon foreigners, who had
distinguished themselves in propagating the principles of liberty and
humanity, in opposition to despotism, war, and bloodshed, was first
proposed by me to La Fayette, at the commencement of the french
revolution, when his heart appeared to be warmed with those principles.
My motive in making this proposal, was to render the people of different
nations more fraternal than they had been, or then were. I observed that
almost every branch of Science had possessed itself of the exercise
of this right, so far as it regarded its own institution. Most of the
Academies and Societies in Europe, and also those of America, conferred
the rank of honorary member, upon foreigners eminent in knowledge, and
made them, in fact, citizens of their literary or scientific republic,
without affecting or anyways diminishing their rights of citizenship
in their own country or in other societies: and why the Science of
Government should not have the same advantage, or why the people of
one nation should not, by their representatives, exercise the right of
conferring the honor of Citizenship upon individuals eminent in another
nation, without affecting _their_ rights of citizenship, is a problem
yet to be solved.

I now proceed to remark on that part of the letter, in which the writer
says, that, _from what he can learn from all the late Americans, I
am not considered in America, either by the Government or by the
individuals, as an American citizen_.

In the first place I wish to ask, what is here meant by the Government
of America? The members who compose the Government are only individuals,
when in conversation, and who, most probably, hold very different
opinions upon the subject. Have Congress as a body made any declaration
respecting me, that they now no longer consider me as a citizen? If they
have not, anything they otherwise say is no more than the opinion
of individuals, and consequently is not legal authority, nor anyways
sufficient authority to deprive any man of his Citizenship. Besides,
whether a man has forfeited his rights of Citizenship, is a question not
determinable by Congress, but by a Court of Judicature and a Jury; and
must depend upon evidence, and the application of some law or article of
the Constitution to the case. No such proceeding has yet been had, and
consequently I remain a Citizen until it be had, be that decision what
it may; for there can be no such thing as a suspension of rights in the
interim.

I am very well aware, and always was, of the article of the Constitution
which says, as nearly as I can recollect the words, that "any citizen
of the United States, who shall accept any title, place, or office, from
any foreign king, prince, or state, shall forfeit and lose his right of
Citizenship of the United States."

Had the Article said, that _any citizen of the United States, who shall
be a member of any foreign convention, for the purpose of forming a free
constitution, shall forfeit and lose the right of citizenship of the
United States_, the article had been directly applicable to me; but
the idea of such an article never could have entered the mind of the
American Convention, and the present article _is_ altogether foreign
to the case with respect to me. It supposes a Government in active
existence, and not a Government dissolved; and it supposes a citizen of
America accepting titles and offices under that Government, and not a
citizen of America who gives his assistance in a Convention chosen by
the people, for the purpose of forming a Government _de nouveau_ founded
on their authority.

The late Constitution and Government of France was dissolved the 10th of
August, 1792. The National legislative Assembly then in being, supposed
itself without sufficient authority to continue its sittings, and it
proposed to the departments to elect not another legislative Assembly,
but a Convention for the express purpose of forming a new Constitution.
When the Assembly were discoursing on this matter, some of the members
said, that they wished to gain all the assistance possible upon the
subject of free constitutions; and expressed a wish to elect and invite
foreigners of any Nation to the Convention, who had distinguished
themselves in defending, explaining, and propagating the principles
of liberty. It was on this occasion that my name was mentioned in the
Assembly. (I was then in England.)

     1 In the American pamphlet a footnote, probably added by
     Bache, here says: "Even this article does not exist in the
     manner here stated." It is a pity Paine did not have in his
     prison the article, which says: "No person holding any
     office of profit or trust under them [the United States]
     shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any
     present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever,
     from any king, prince, or foreign State."--_Editor._


After this, a deputation from a body of the french people, in order
to remove any objection that might be made against my assisting at the
proposed Convention, requested the Assembly, as their representatives,
to give me the title of French Citizen; after which, I was elected a
member of the Convention, in four different departments, as is already
known.(1)

The case, therefore, is, that I accepted nothing from any king,
prince, or state, nor from any Government: for France was without any
Government, except what arose from common consent, and the necessity of
the case. Neither did I _make myself a servant of the french Republic_,
as the letter alluded to expresses; for at that time France was not a
republic, not even in name. She was altogether a people in a state of
revolution.

It was not until the Convention met that France was declared a republic,
and monarchy abolished; soon after which a committee was elected, of
which I was a member,(2) to form a Constitution, which was presented to
the Convention [and read by Condorcet, who was also a member] the
15th and 16th of February following, but was not to be taken into
consideration till after the expiration of two months,(3) and if
approved of by the Convention, was then to be referred to the people for
their acceptance, with such additions or amendments as the Convention
should make.

     1 The deputation referred to was described as the
     "Commission Extraordinaire," in whose name M. Guadet moved
     that the title of French Citizen be conferred on Priestley,
     Paine, Bentham, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Mackintosh, David
     Williams, Cormelle, Paw, Pestalozzi, Washington, Madison,
     Hamilton, Klopstock, Koscinsko, Gorani, Campe, Anacharsis
     Clootz, Gilleers. This was on August 26, and Paine was
     elected by Calais on September 6,1792; and in the same week
     by Oise, Somme, and Puy-de-Dome.--_Editor._

     2 Sieves, Paine, Brissot, Pétion, Vergniaud, Gensonne,
     Barère, Danton, Condorcet.--_Editor._

     3 The remainder of this sentence is replaced in the American
     pamphlet by the following: "The disorders and the
     revolutionary government that took place after this put a
     stop to any further progress upon the case."--_Editor._

In thus employing myself upon the formation of a Constitution, I
certainly did nothing inconsistent with the American Constitution. I
took no oath of allegiance to France, or any other oath whatever. I
considered the Citizenship they had presented me with as an honorary
mark of respect paid to me not only as a friend to liberty, but as
an American Citizen. My acceptance of that, or of the deputyship, not
conferred on me by any king, prince, or state, but by a people in a
state of revolution and contending for liberty, required no transfer of
my allegiance or of my citizenship from America to France. There I was
a real citizen, paying Taxes; here, I was a voluntary friend, employing
myself on a temporary service. Every American in Paris knew that it was
my constant intention to return to America, as soon as a constitution
should be established, and that I anxiously waited for that event.

I know not what opinions have been circulated in America. It may have
been supposed there that I had voluntarily and intentionally abandoned
America, and that my citizenship had ceased by my own choice. I can
easily [believe] there are those in that country who would take such
a proceeding on my part somewhat in disgust. The idea of forsaking
old friendships for new acquaintances is not agreeable. I am a little
warranted in making this supposition by a letter I received some time
ago from the wife of one of the Georgia delegates in which she says
"Your friends on this side the water cannot be reconciled to the idea of
your abandoning America."

I have never abandoned her in thought, word or deed; and I feel it
incumbent upon me to give this assurance to the friends I have in that
country and with whom I have always intended and am determined, if the
possibility exists, to close the scene of my life. It is there that I
have made myself a home. It is there that I have given the services of
my best days. America never saw me flinch from her cause in the most
gloomy and perilous of her situations; and I know there are those in
that country who will not flinch from me. If I have enemies (and every
man has some) I leave them to the enjoyment of their ingratitude.*

     * I subjoin in a note, for the sake of wasting the solitude
     of a prison, the answer that I gave to the part of the
     letter above mentioned.   It is not inapplacable to the
     subject of this Memorial; but it contain! somewhat of a
     melancholy idea, a little predictive, that I hope is not
     becoming true so soon.

It is somewhat extraordinary that the idea of my not being a citizen
of America should have arisen only at the time that I am imprisoned
in France because, or on the pretence that, I am a foreigner. The case
involves a strange contradiction of ideas. None of the Americans who
came to France whilst I was in liberty had conceived any such idea or
circulated any such opinion; and why it should arise now is a matter
yet to be explained. However discordant the late American Minister G. M.
[Gouverneur Morris] and the late French Committee of Public Safety were,
it suited the purpose of both that I should be continued in arrestation.
The former wished to prevent my return to America, that I should not
expose his misconduct; and the latter, lest I should publish to the
world the history of its wickedness. Whilst that Minister and the
Committee continued I had no expectation of liberty. I speak here of the
Committee of which Robespierre was member.(1)

     "You touch me on a very tender point when you say that my
     friends on your side the water cannot be reconciled to the
     idea of my abandoning America. They are right. I had rather
     see my horse Button eating the grass of Borden-Town or
     Morrisania than see all the pomp and show of Europe.

     "A thousand years hence (for I must indulge a few thoughts)
     perhaps in less, America may be what Europe now is. The
     innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all
     nations in her favour, may sound like a romance and her
     inimitable virtue as if it had never been. The ruin of that
     liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may
     just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh
     from rustic sensibility, whilst the fashionable of that day,
     enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and
     deny the fact.

     "When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction
     of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to
     excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous
     palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and
     towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire
     of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow
     will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass and marble
     can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple
     of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height;
     or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah,
     painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the
     grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom
     rose and fell. Read this, and then ask if I forget
     America."--Author.


     1 This letter, quoted also in Paine's Letter to Washington,
     was written from London, Jan. 6, 1789, to the wife of Col.
     Few, née Kate Nicholson. It is given in full in my "Life of
     Paine," i., p. 247.--_Editor._



THE MEMORIAL TO MONROE.

I ever must deny, that the article of the American constitution
already mentioned, can be applied either verbally, intentionally,
or constructively, to me. It undoubtedly was the intention of the
Convention that framed it, to preserve the purity of the American
republic from being debased by foreign and foppish customs; but it never
could be its intention to act against the principles of liberty, by
forbidding its citizens to assist in promoting those principles in
foreign Countries; neither could it be its intention to act against
the principles of gratitude.(1) France had aided America in the
establishment of her revolution, when invaded and oppressed by England
and her auxiliaries. France in her turn was invaded and oppressed by a
combination of foreign despots. In this situation, I conceived it an act
of gratitude in me, as a citizen of America, to render her in return the
best services I could perform. I came to France (for I was in England
when I received the invitation) not to enjoy ease, emoluments, and
foppish honours, as the article supposes; but to encounter difficulties
and dangers in defence of liberty; and I much question whether those who
now malignantly seek (for some I believe do) to turn this to my injury,
would have had courage to have done the same thing. I am sure Gouverneur
Morris would not. He told me the second day after my arrival, (in
Paris,) that the Austrians and Prussians, who were then at Verdun,
would be in Paris in a fortnight. I have no idea, said he, that seventy
thousand disciplined troops can be stopped in their march by any power
in France.

     1 This and the two preceding paragraphs, including the
     footnote, are entirely omitted from the American pamphlet.
     It will be seen that Paine had now a suspicion of the
     conspiracy between Gouverneur Morris and those by whom he
     was imprisoned. Soon after his imprisonment he had applied
     to Morris, who replied that he had reclaimed him, and
     enclosed the letter of Deforgues quoted in my Introduction
     to this chapter, of course withholding his own letter to the
     Minister. Paine answered (Feb. 14, 1793): "You must not
     leave me in the situation in which this letter places me.
     You know I do not deserve it, and you see the unpleasant
     situation in which I am thrown. I have made an answer to the
     Minister's letter, which I wish you to make ground of a
     reply to him. They have nothing against me--except that they
     do not choose I should lie in a state of freedom to write my
     mind freely upon things I have seen. Though you and I are
     not on terms of the best harmony, I apply to you as the
     Minister of America, and you may add to that service
     whatever you think my integrity deserves. At any rate I
     expect you to make Congress acquainted with my situation,
     and to send them copies of the letters that have passed on
     the subject. A reply to the Minister's letter is absolutely
     necessary, were it only to continue the reclamation.
     Otherwise your silence will be a sort of consent to his
     observations." Deforgues' "observations" having been
     dictated by Morris himself, no reply was sent to him, and no
     word to Congress.--_Editor_.

     2 In the pamphlet this last clause of the sentence is
     omitted.--_Editor._.

Besides the reasons I have already given for accepting the invitations
to the Convention, I had another that has reference particularly to
America, and which I mentioned to Mr. Pinckney the night before I left
London to come to Paris: "That it was to the interest of America that
the system of European governments should be changed and placed on the
same principle with her own." Mr. Pinckney agreed fully in the same
opinion. I have done my part towards it.(1)

It is certain that governments upon similar systems agree better
together than those that are founded on principles discordant with each
other; and the same rule holds good with respect to the people living
under them. In the latter case they offend each other by pity, or by
reproach; and the discordancy carries itself to matters of commerce. I
am not an ambitious man, but perhaps I have been an ambitious American.
I have wished to see America the _Mother Church_ of government, and I
have done my utmost to exalt her character and her condition.

     1 In the American pamphlet the name of Pinckney (American
     Minister in England) is left blank in this paragraph, and
     the two concluding sentences are omitted from both the
     French and American pamphlets.--_Editor._,

I have now stated sufficient matter, to shew that the Article in
question is not applicable to me; and that any such application to my
injury, as well in circumstances as in Rights, is contrary both to
the letter and intention of that Article, and is illegal and
unconstitutional. Neither do I believe that any Jury in America, when
they are informed of the whole of the case, would give a verdict to
deprive me of my Rights upon that Article. The citizens of America,
I believe, are not very fond of permitting forced and indirect
explanations to be put upon matters of this kind. I know not what were
the merits of the case with respect to the person who was prosecuted for
acting as prize master to a french privateer, but I know that the jury
gave a verdict against the prosecution. The Rights I have acquired
are dear to me. They have been acquired by honourable means, and by
dangerous service in the worst of times, and I cannot passively permit
them to be wrested from me. I conceive it my duty to defend them, as the
case involves a constitutional and public question, which is, how
far the power of the federal government (1) extends, in depriving any
citizen of his Rights of Citizenship, or of suspending them.

That the explanation of National Treaties belongs to Congress is
strictly constitutional; but not the explanation of the Constitution
itself, any more than the explanation of Law in the case of individual
citizens. These are altogether Judiciary questions. It is, however,
worth observing, that Congress, in explaining the Article of the Treaty
with respect to french prizes and french privateers, confined itself
strictly to the letter of the Article. Let them explain the Article
of the Constitution with respect to me in the same manner, and the
decision, did it appertain to them, could not deprive me of my Rights of
Citizenship, or suspend them, for I have accepted nothing from any king,
prince, state, or Government.

You will please to observe, that I speak as if the federal Government
had made some declaration upon the subject of my Citizenship; whereas
the fact is otherwise; and your saying that you have no order respecting
me is a proof of it. Those therefore who propagate the report of my not
being considered as a Citizen of America by Government, do it to the
prolongation of my imprisonment, and without authority; for Congress,
_as a government_, has neither decided upon it, nor yet taken the matter
into consideration; and I request you to caution such persons against
spreading such reports. But be these matters as they may, I cannot have
a doubt that you find and feel the case very different, since you have
heard what I have to say, and known what my situation is [better] than
you did before your arrival.

     1 In the pamphlet occurs here a significant parenthesis by
     Bache:  "it should have been said in this case, how far the
     Executive."--_Editor._.

But it was not the Americans only, but the Convention also, that
knew what my intentions were upon that subject. In my last discourse
delivered at the Tribune of the Convention, January 19,1793, on the
motion for suspending the execution of Louis 16th, I said (the Deputy
Bancal read the translation in French): "It unfortunately happens that
the person who is the subject of the present discussion, is considered
by the Americans as having been the friend of their revolution. His
execution will be an affliction to them, and it is in your power not
to wound the feelings of your ally. Could I speak the french language I
would descend to your bar, and in their name become your petitioner to
respite the execution of the sentence/"--"As the convention was elected
for the express purpose of forming a Constitution, its continuance
cannot be longer than four or five months more at furthest; and if,
after my _return to America_, I should employ myself in writing the
history of the french Revolution, I had rather record a thousand
errors on the side of mercy, than be obliged to tell one act of severe
Justice."--"Ah Citizens! give not the tyrant of England the triumph
of seeing the man perish on a scaffold who had aided my much-loved
America."

Does this look as if I had abandoned America? But if she abandons me
in the situation I am in, to gratify the enemies of humanity, let that
disgrace be to herself. But I know the people of America better than to
believe it,(1) tho' I undertake not to answer for every individual.

When this discourse was pronounced, Marat launched himself into the
middle of the hall and said that "I voted against the punishment of
death because I was a quaker." I replied that "I voted against it both
morally and politically."

     1 In the French pamphlet: "pour jamais lui prêter du tels
     sentiments."

I certainly went a great way, considering the rage of the times, in
endeavouring to prevent that execution. I had many reasons for so doing.
I judged, and events have shewn that I judged rightly, that if they once
began shedding blood, there was no knowing where it would end; and as
to what the world might call _honour_ the execution would appear like a
nation killing a mouse; and in a political view, would serve to transfer
the hereditary claim to some more formidable Enemy. The man could do no
more mischief; and that which he had done was not only from the vice of
his education, but was as much the fault of the Nation in restoring
him after he had absconded June 21st, 1791, as it was his. I made
the proposal for imprisonment until the end of the war and perpetual
banishment after the war, instead of the punishment of death. Upwards of
three hundred members voted for that proposal. The sentence for absolute
death (for some members had voted the punishment of death conditionally)
was carried by a majority of twenty-five out of more than seven hundred.

I return from this digression to the proper subject of my memorial.(1)

     1 This and the preceding five paragraphs, and five following
     the nest, are omitted from the American pamphlet.--
     _Editor._.

Painful as the want of liberty may be, it is a consolation to me to
believe, that my imprisonment proves to the world, that I had no share
in the murderous system that then reigned. That I was an enemy to it,
both morally and politically, is known to all who had any knowledge of
me; and could I have written french as well as I can English, I would
publicly have exposed its wickedness and shewn the ruin with which it
was pregnant. They who have esteemed me on former occasions, whether in
America or in Europe will, I know, feel no cause to abate that esteem,
when they reflect, that _imprisonment with preservation of character is
preferable to liberty with disgrace_.

I here close my Memorial and proceed to offer you a proposal that
appears to me suited to all the circumstances of the case; which is,
that you reclaim me conditionally, until the opinion of Congress can be
obtained on the subject of my citizenship of America; and that I remain
in liberty under your protection during that time.

I found this proposal upon the following grounds.

First, you say you have no orders respecting me; consequently, you
have no orders _not_ to reclaim me; and in this case you are left
discretionary judge whether to reclaim or not. My proposal therefore
unites a consideration of your situation with my own.

Secondly, I am put in arrestation because I am a foreigner. It is
therefore necessary to determine to what country I belong. The right of
determining this question cannot appertain exclusively to the Committee
of Public Safety or General Surety; because I appeal to the Minister of
the United States, and show that my citizenship of that country is good
and valid, referring at the same time, thro' the agency of the Minister,
my claim of right to the opinion of Congress. It being a matter between
two Governments.

Thirdly. France does not claim me fora citizen; neither do I set up any
claim of citizenship in France. The question is simply, whether I am
or am not a citizen of America. I am imprisoned here on the decree for
imprisoning foreigners, because, say they, I was born in England. I
say in answer that, though born in England, I am not a subject of the
English Government any more than any other American who was born, as
they all were, under the same Government, or than the Citizens of France
are subjects of the French Monarchy under which they were born. I have
twice taken the oath of abjuration to the British King and Government
and of Allegiance to America,--once as a citizen of the State of
Pennsylvania in 1776, and again before Congress, administered to me by
the President, Mr. Hancock, when I was appointed Secretary in the Office
of Foreign Affairs in 1777.

The letter before quoted in the first page of this memorial, says, "It
would be out of character for an American minister to interfere in the
internal affairs of France." This goes on the idea that I am a citizen
of France, and a member of the Convention, which is not the fact. The
Convention have declared me to be a foreigner; and consequently the
citizenship and the election are null and void.(1) It also has the
appearance of a Decision, that the article of the Constitution,
respecting grants made to American Citizens by foreign kings, princes,
or states, is applicable to me; which is the very point in question,
and against the application of which I contend. I state evidence to the
Minister, to shew that I am not within the letter or meaning of that
Article; that it cannot operate against me; and I apply to him for the
protection that I conceive I have a right to ask and to receive. The
internal affairs of France are out of the question with respect to my
application or his interference. I ask it not as a citizen of France,
for I am not one: I ask it not as a member of the Convention, for I am
not one; both these, as before said, have been rendered null and void;
I ask it not as a man against whom there is any accusation, for there
is none; I ask it not as an exile from America, whose liberties I
have honourably and generously contributed to establish; I ask it as a
Citizen of America, deprived of his liberty in France, under the plea of
being a foreigner; and I ask it because I conceive I am entitled to it,
upon every principle of Constitutional Justice and National honour.(2)

     1 In the pamphlet: "The Convention included me in the vote
     for dismissing foreigners from the Convention, and the
     Committees imprisoned me as a foreigner."--_Editor._

     2 All  previous editions of the pamphlet end with this
     word.--_Editor._

But tho' I thus positively assert my claim because I believe I have a
right to do so, it is perhaps most eligible, in the present situation
of things, to put that claim upon the footing I have already mentioned;
that is, that the Minister reclaims me conditionally until the opinion
of Congress can be obtained on the subject of my citizenship of America,
and that I remain in liberty under the protection of the Minister during
that interval.

N. B. I should have added that as Gouverneur Morris could not inform
Congress of the cause of my arrestation, as he knew it not himself, it
is to be supposed that Congress was not enough acquainted with the case
to give any directions respecting me when you came away.

T.P.



ADDENDA.

Letters, hitherto unpublished, written by Paine to Monroe before his
release on November 4., 1794.


1. Luxembourg Mem Vendemaire, Old Style Oct 4th 1794

Dear Sir: I thank you for your very friendly and affectionate letter of
the 18th September which I did not receive till this morning.(1) It has
relieved my mind from a load of disquietude. You will easily suppose
that if the information I received had been exact, my situation was
without hope. I had in that case neither section, department nor
Country, to reclaim me; but that is not all, I felt a poignancy of
grief, in having the least reason to suppose that America had so soon
forgotten me who had never forgotten her.

Mr. Labonadaire, in a note of yesterday, directed me to write to the
Convention. As I suppose this measure has been taken in concert with
you, I have requested him to shew you the letter, of which he will make
a translation to accompany the original.

(I cannot see what motive can induce them to keep me in prison. It
will gratify the English Government and afflict the friends I have in
America. The supporters of the system of Terror might apprehend that if
I was in liberty and in America I should publish the history of their
crimes, but the present persons who have overset that immoral System
ought to have no such apprehension. On the contrary, they ought to
consider me as one of themselves, at least as one of their friends. Had
I been an insignificant character I had not been in arrestation. It was
the literary and philosophical reputation I had gained, in the world,
that made them my Enemies; and I am the victim of the principles, and
if I may be permitted to say it, of the talents, that procured me the
esteem of America. My character is the _secret_ of my arrestation.)

     1 Printed in the letter to Washington, chap. XXII. The delay
     of sixteen days in Monroe's letter was probably due to the
     manouvres of Paine's enemies on the Committee of Public
     Safety. He was released only after their removal from the
     Committee, and the departure of Gouverneur Morris.--
     _Editor._,

If the letter I have written be not covered by other authority than my
own it will have no effect, for they already know all that I can say. On
what ground do they pretend to deprive America of the service of any
of her citizens without assigning a cause, or only the flimsy one of
my being born in England? Gates, were he here, might be arrested on the
same pretence, and he and Burgoyne be confounded together.

It is difficult for me to give an opinion, but among other things
that occur to me, I think that if you were to say that, as it will be
necessary to you to inform the Government of America of my situation,
you require an explanation with the Committee upon that subject; that
you are induced to make this proposal not only out of esteem for the
character of the person who is the personal object of it, but because
you know that his arrestation will distress the Americans, and the more
so as it will appear to them to be contrary to their ideas of civil and
national justice, it might perhaps have some effect. If the Committee
[of Public Safety] will do nothing, it will be necessary to bring this
matter openly before the Convention, for I do most sincerely assure you,
from the observations that I hear, and I suppose the same are made in
other places, that the character of America lies under some reproach.
All the world knows that I have served her, and they see that I am still
in prison; and you know that when people can form a conclusion upon a
simple fact, they trouble not themselves about reasons. I had rather
that America cleared herself of all suspicion of ingratitude, though I
were to be the victim.

You advise me to have patience, but I am fully persuaded that the longer
I continue in prison the more difficult will be my liberation. There
are two reasons for this: the one is that the present Committee, by
continuing so long my imprisonment, will naturally suppose that my mind
will be soured against them, as it was against those who put me in, and
they will continue my imprisonment from the same apprehensions as the
former Committee did; the other reason is, that it is now about two
months since your arrival, and I am still in prison. They will explain
this into an indifference upon my fate that will encourage them to
continue my imprisonment. When I hear some people say that it is the
Government of America that now keeps me in prison by not reclaiming me,
and then pour forth a volley of execrations against her, I know not
how to answer them otherwise than by a direct denial which they do not
appear to believe. You will easily conclude that whatever relates to
imprisonments and liberations makes a topic of prison conversation;
and as I am now the oldest inhabitant within these walls, except two
or three, I am often the subject of their remarks, because from the
continuance of my imprisonment they auger ill to themselves. You see I
write you every thing that occurs to me, and I conclude with thanking
you again for your very friendly and affectionate letter, and am with
great respect,

Your's affectionately,

Thomas Paine.

(To day is the anniversary of the action at German Town. [October 4,
1777.] Your letter has enabled me to contradict the observations before
mentioned.)



2. Oct 13, 1794 Dear Sir: On the 28th of this Month (October) I shall
have suffered ten months imprisonment, to the dishonour of America as
well as of myself, and I speak to you very honestly when I say that my
patience is exhausted. It is only my actual liberation that can make me
believe it. Had any person told me that I should remain in prison two
months after the arrival of a new Minister, I should have supposed that
he meant to affront me as an American. By the friendship and sympathy
you express in your letter you seem to consider my imprisonment as
having connection only with myself, but I am certain that the inferences
that follow from it have relation also to the National character of
America, I already feel this in myself, for I no longer speak with pride
of being a citizen of that country. Is it possible Sir that I should,
when I am suffering unjust imprisonment under the very eye of her new
Minister?

While there was no Minister here (for I consider Morris as none) nobody
wondered at my imprisonment, but now everybody wonders. The continuance
of it under a change of diplomatic circumstances, subjects me to the
suspicion of having merited it, and also to the suspicion of having
forfeited my reputation with America; and it subjects her at the same
time to the suspicion of ingratitude, or to the reproach of wanting
national or diplomatic importance. The language that some Americans
have held of my not being considered as an American citizen, tho'
contradicted by yourself, proceeds, I believe, from no other motive,
than the shame and dishonour they feel at the imprisonment of a
fellow-citizen, and they adopt this apology, at my expence, to get rid
of that disgrace. Is it not enough that I suffer imprisonment, but my
mind also must be wounded and tortured with subjects of this kind? Did I
reason from personal considerations only, independent of principles and
the pride of having practiced those principles honourably, I should be
tempted to curse the day I knew America. By contributing to her liberty
I have lost my own, and yet her Government beholds my situation in
silence. Wonder not, Sir, at the ideas I express or the language in
which I express them. If I have a heart to feel for others I can feel
also for myself, and if I have anxiety for my own honour, I have it also
for a country whose suffering infancy I endeavoured to nourish and
to which I have been enthusiastically attached. As to patience I have
practiced it long--as long as it was honorable to do so, and when it
goes beyond that point it becomes meanness.

I am inclined to believe that you have attended to my imprisonment
more as a friend than as a Minister. As a friend I thank you for your
affectionate attachment. As a Minister you have to look beyond me to the
honour and reputation of your Government; and your Countrymen, who have
accustomed themselves to consider any subject in one line of thinking
only, more especially if it makes a strong [impression] upon them, as
I believe my situation has made upon you, do not immediately see the
matters that have relation to it in another line; and it is to bring
these two into one point that I offer you these observations. A citizen
and his country, in a case like mine, are so closely connected that the
case of one is the case of both.

When you first arrived the path you had to pursue with respect to my
liberation was simple. I was imprisoned as a foreigner; you knew that
foreigner to be a citizen of America, and you knew also his character,
and as such you should immediately have reclaimed him. You could lose
nothing by taking strong ground, but you might lose much by taking an
inferior one; but instead of this, which I conceive would have been the
right line of acting, you left me in their hands on the loose intimation
that my liberation would take place without your direct interference,
and you strongly recommended it to me to wait the issue. This is more
than seven weeks ago and I am still in prison. I suspect these people
are trifling with you, and if they once believe they can do that, you
will not easily get any business done except what they wish to have
done.

When I take a review of my whole situation--my circumstances ruined,
my health half destroyed, my person imprisoned, and the prospect of
imprisonment still staring me in the face, can you wonder at the
agony of my feelings? You lie down in safety and rise to plenty; it
is otherwise with me; I am deprived of more than half the common
necessaries of life; I have not a candle to burn and cannot get one.
Fuel can be procured only in small quantities and that with great
difficulty and very dear, and to add to the rest, I am fallen into a
relapse and am again on the sick list. Did you feel the whole force of
what I suffer, and the disgrace put upon America by this injustice done
to one of her best and most affectionate citizens, you would not, either
as a friend or Minister, rest a day till you had procured my liberation.
It is the work of two or three hours when you set heartily about
it, that is, when you demand me as an American citizen, or propose a
conference with the Committee upon that subject; or you may make it the
work of a twelve-month and not succeed. I know these people better than
you do.

You desire me to believe that "you are placed here on a difficult
Theatre with many important objects to attend to, and with but few to
consult with, and that it becomes you in pursuit of these to regulate
your conduct with respect to each, as to manner and time, as will in
your judgment be best calculated to accomplish the whole." As I know
not what these objects are I can say nothing to that point. But I have
always been taught to believe that the liberty of a Citizen was the
first object of all free Governments, and that it ought not to give
preference to, or be blended with, any other. It is that public object
that all the world can see, and which obtains an influence upon public
opinion more than any other. This is not the case with the objects you
allude to. But be those objects what they may, can you suppose you will
accomplish them the easier by holding me in the back-ground, or making
me only an accident in the negotiation? Those with whom you confer will
conclude from thence that you do not feel yourself very strong upon
those points, and that you politically keep me out of sight in the
meantime to make your approach the easier.

There is one part in your letter that is equally as proper should be
communicated to the Committee as to me, and which I conceive you are
under some diplomatic obligation to do. It is that part which you
conclude by saying that "_to the welfare of Thomas Paine the Americans
are not and cannot be indifferent_." As it is impossible the Americans
can preserve their esteem for me and for my oppressors at the same
time, the injustice to me strikes at the popular part of the Treaty of
Alliance. If it be the wish of the Committee to reduce the treaty to a
mere skeleton of Government forms, they are taking the right method to
do it, and it is not improbable they will blame you afterwards for not
in-forming them upon the subject. The disposition to retort has been so
notorious here, that you ought to be guarded against it at all points.

You say in your letter that you doubt whether the gentleman who informed
me of the language held by some Americans respecting my citizenship of
America conveyed even his own ideas clearly upon the subject.(1) I know
not how this may be, but I believe he told me the truth. I received a
letter a few days ago from a friend and former comrade of mine in which
he tells me, that all the Americans he converses with, say, that
I should have been in liberty long ago if the Minister could have
reclaimed me as an American citizen. When I compare this with the
counter-declarations in your letter I can explain the case no otherwise
than I have already done, that it is an apology to get rid of the shame
and dishonour they feel at the imprisonment of an American citizen,
and because they are not willing it should be supposed there is want
of influence in the American Embassy. But they ought to see that this
language is injurious to me.

On the 2d of this month Vendemaire I received a line from Mr. Beresford
in which he tells me I shall be in liberty in two or three days, and
that he has this from good authority. On the 12th I received a note from
Mr. Labonadaire, written at the Bureau of the Concierge, in which he
tells me of the interest you take in procuring my liberation, and that
after the steps that had been already taken that I ought to write to the
Convention to demand my liberty _purely and simply_ as a citizen of the
United States of America. He advised me to send the letter to him, and
he would translate it. I sent the letter inclosing at the same time
a letter to you. I have heard nothing since of the letter to the
Convention. On the 17th I received a letter from my former comrade
Vanhuele, in which he says "I am just come from Mr. Russell who had
yesterday a conversation with your Minister and your liberation is
certain--you will be in liberty to-morrow." Vanhuele also adds, "I find
the advice of Mr. Labonadaire good, for tho' you have some enemies in
the Convention, the strongest and best part are in your favour." But
the case is, and I felt it whilst I was writing the letter to the
Convention, that there is an awkwardness in my appearing, you being
present; for every foreigner should apply thro' his Minister, or rather
his Minister for him.

     1 The letter of Peter Whiteside, quoted at the beginning of
     the Memorial. See introduction to the Memorial. It would
     seem from this whole letter that it was not known by
     Americans in Paris that Monroe had been kept ont of his
     office by Morris for nearly a month after his arrival in
     Paris.--_Editor._

When I thus see day after day and month after month, and promise after
promise, pass away without effect, what can I conclude but that either
the Committees are secretly determined not to let me go, or that the
measures you take are not pursued with the vigor necessary to give them
effect; or that the American National character is without sufficient
importance in the French Republic? The latter will be gratifying to
the English Government. In short, Sir, the case is now arrived to that
crisis, that for the sake of your own reputation as a Minister you ought
to require a positive answer from the Committee. As to myself, it is
more agreeable to me now to contemplate an honourable destruction, and
to perish in the act of protesting against the injustice I suffer,
and to caution the people of America against confiding too much in the
Treaty of Alliance, violated as it has been in every principle, and in
my imprisonment though an American Citizen, than remain in the wretched
condition I am. I am no longer of any use to the world or to myself.

There was a time when I beheld the Revolution of the 10th. Thermidor
[the fall of Robespierre] with enthusiasm. It was the first news
my comrade Vanhuele communicated to me during my illness, and it
contributed to my recovery. But there is still something rotten at the
Center, and the Enemies that I have, though perhaps not numerous, are
more active than my friends. If I form a wrong opinion of men or things
it is to you I must look to set me right. You are in possession of the
secret. I know nothing of it. But that I may be guarded against as many
wants as possible I shall set about writing a memorial to Congress,
another to the State of Pennsylvania, and an address to the people of
America; but it will be difficult for me to finish these until I know
from yourself what applications you have made for my liberation, and
what answers you have received.

Ah, Sir, you would have gotten a load of trouble and difficulties off
your hands that I fear will multiply every day, had you made it a point
to procure my liberty when you first arrived, and not left me floating
on the promises of men whom you did not know. You were then a new
character. You had come in consequence of their own request that Morris
should be recalled; and had you then, before you opened any subject
of negociation that might arise into controversy, demanded my liberty
either as a Civility or as a Right I see not how they could have refused
it.

I have already said that after all the promises that have been made I
am still in prison. I am in the dark upon all the matters that relate
to myself. I know not if it be to the Convention, to the Committee of
Public Safety, of General Surety, or to the deputies who come
sometimes to the Luxembourg to examine and put persons in liberty, that
applications have been made for my liberation. But be it to whom it
may, my earnest and pressing request to you as Minister is that you
will bring this matter to a conclusion by reclaiming me as an American
citizen imprisoned in France under the plea of being a foreigner born in
England; that I may know the result, and how to prepare the Memorials
I have mentioned, should there be occasion for them. The right of
determining who are American citizens can belong only to America. The
Convention have declared I am not a French Citizen because she has
declared me to be a foreigner, and have by that declaration cancelled
and annulled the vote of the former assembly that conferred the Title
of Citizen upon Citizens or subjects of other Countries. I should not be
honest to you nor to myself were I not to express myself as I have done
in this letter, and I confide and request you will accept it in that
sense and in no other.

I am, with great respect, your suffering fellow-citizen,

Thomas Paine.

P. S.--If my imprisonment is to continue, and I indulge very little hope
to the contrary, I shall be under the absolute necessity of applying
to you for a supply of several articles. Every person here have their
families or friends upon the spot who make provision for them. This is
not the case with me; I have no person I can apply to but the American
Minister, and I can have no doubt that if events should prevent
my repaying the expence Congress or the State of Pennsylvania will
discharge it for me.

To day is 22 Vendemaire Monday October 13, but you will not receive this
letter till the 14th. I will send the bearer to you again on the 15th,
Wednesday, and I will be obliged to you to send me for the present,
three or four candles, a little sugar of any kind, and some soap for
shaving; and I should be glad at the same time to receive a line from
you and a memorandum of the articles. Were I in your place I would order
a Hogshead of Sugar, some boxes of Candles and Soap from America, for
they will become still more scarce. Perhaps the best method for you
to procure them at present is by applying to the American Consuls at
Bordeaux and Havre, and have them up by the diligence.



3. [Undated.]

Dear Sir: As I have not yet received any answer to my last, I have
amused myself with writing you the inclosed memoranda. Though
you recommend patience to me I cannot but feel very pointedly the
uncomfortableness of my situation, and among other reflections that
occur to me I cannot think that America receives any credit from the
long imprisonment that I suffer. It has the appearance of neglecting
her citizens and her friends and of encouraging the insults of foreign
nations upon them, and upon her commerce. My imprisonment is as well
and perhaps more known in England than in France, and they (the English)
will not be intimidated from molesting an American ship when they see
that one of her best citizens (for I have a right to call myself so) can
be imprisoned in another country at the mere discretion of a Committee,
because he is a foreigner.

When you first arrived every body congratulated me that I should soon,
if not immediately, be in liberty. Since that time about two hundred
have been set free from this prison on the applications of their
sections or of individuals--and I am continually hurt by the
observations that are made--"that a section in Paris has more influence
than America."

It is right that I furnish you with these circumstances. It is the
effect of my anxiety that the character of America suffer no reproach;
for the world knows that I have acted a generous duty by her. I am the
third American that has been imprisoned. Griffiths nine weeks, Haskins
about five, and myself eight [months] and yet in prison. With respect
to the two former there was then no Minister, for I consider Morris as
none; and they were liberated on the applications of the Americans in
Paris. As to myself I had rather be publicly and honorably reclaimed,
tho' the reclamation was refused, than remain in the uncertain situation
that I am. Though my health has suffered my spirits are not broken. I
have nothing to fear unless innocence and fortitude be crimes. America,
whatever may be my fate, will have no cause to blush for me as a
citizen; I hope I shall have none to blush for her as a country. If, my
dear Sir, there is any-thing in the perplexity of ideas I have mistaken,
only suppose yourself in my situation, and you will easily find an
excuse for it. I need not say how much I shall rejoice to pay my
respects to you without-side the walls of this prison, and to enquire
after my American friends. But I know that nothing can be
accomplished here but by unceasing perseverance and application. Yours
affectionately.



4. October 20, 1794.

Dear Sir: I recd. your friendly letter of the 26 Vendemaire on the day
it was written, and I thank you for communicating to me your opinion
upon my case. Ideas serve to beget ideas, and as it is from a review of
every thing that can be said upon a subject, or is any ways connected
with it, that the best judgment can be formed how to proceed, I present
you with such ideas as occur to me. I am sure of one thing, which is
that you will give them a patient and attentive perusal.

You say in your letter that "I must be sensible that although I am an
American citizen, yet if you interfere in my behalf as the Minister of
my country you must demand my liberation only in case there be no charge
against me; and that if there is I must be brought to trial previously,
since no person in a _private_ character can be exempt from the laws of
the country in which he resides."--This is what I have twice attempted
to do. I wrote a letter on the 3d Sans Culottodi(1) to the Deputies,
members of the Committee of Surety General, who came to the Luxembourg
to examine the persons detained. The letter was as follows:--"Citizens
Representatives: I offer myself for examination. Justice is due to every
Man. It is Justice only that I ask.--Thomas Paine."

As I was not called for examination, nor heard anything in consequence
of my letter the first time of sending it, I sent a duplicate of it a
few days after. It was carried to them by my good friend and comrade
Vanhuele, who was then going in liberty, having been examined the day
before. Vanhuele wrote me on the next day and said: "Bourdon de l'Oise
[who was one of the examining Deputies] is the most inveterate enemy you
can have. The answer he gave me when I presented your letter put me in
such a passion with him that I expected I should be sent back again
to prison." I then wrote a third letter but had not an opportunity of
sending it, as Bourdon did not come any more till after I received Mr.
Labonadaire's letter advising me to write to the Convention. The letter
was as follows:--"Citizens, I have twice offered myself for examination,
and I chose to do this while Bourdon de l'Oise was one of the
Commissioners.

     1 Festival of Labour, September 19, 1794.--_Editor._.

This Deputy has said in the Convention that I intrigued with an ancient
agent of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs. My examination therefore while
he is present will give him an opportunity of proving his charge or of
convincing himself of his error. If Bourdon de l'Oise is an honest man
he will examine me, but lest he should not I subjoin the following. That
which B[ourdon] calls an intrigue was at the request of a member of the
former Committee of Salut Public, last August was a twelvemonth. I met
the member on the Boulevard. He asked me something in French which I
did not understand and we went together to the Bureau of Foreign Affairs
which was near at hand. The Agent (Otto, whom you probably knew in
America) served as interpreter, The member (it was Barère) then asked
me 1st, If I could furnish him with the plan of Constitution I had
presented to the Committee of Constitution of which I was member with
himself, because, he said, it contained several things which he
wished had been adopted: 2dly, He asked me my opinion upon sending
Commissioners to the United States of America: 3dly, If fifty or an
hundred ship loads of flour could be procured from America. As verbal
interpretation was tedious, it was agreed that I should give him my
opinion in writing, and that the Agent [Otto] should translate it, which
he did. I answered the first question by sending him the plan [of
a Constitution] which he still has. To the second, I replied that
I thought it would be proper to send Commissioners, because that in
Revolutions circumstances change so fast that it was often necessary
to send a better supply of information to an Ally than could be
communicated by writing; and that Congress had done the same thing
during the American War; and I gave him some information that the
Commissioners would find useful on their arrival. I answered the third
question by sending him a list of American exports two years before,
distinguishing the several articles by which he would see that the
supply he mentioned could be obtained. I sent him also the plan of Paul
Jones, giving it as his, for procuring salt-petre, which was to send
a squadron (it did not require a large one) to take possession of the
Island of St. Helen's, to keep the English flag flying at the port,
that the English East India ships coming from the East Indies, and that
ballast with salt-petre, might be induced to enter as usual; And that it
would be a considerable time before the English Government could know
of what had happened at St. Helen's. See here what Bourdon de l'Oise has
called an intrigue.--If it was an intrigue it was between a Committee of
Salut Public and myself, for the Agent was no more than the interpreter
and translator, and the object of the intrigue was to furnish France
with flour and salt-petre."--I suppose Bourdon had heard that the agent
and I were seen together talking English, and this was enough for _him_
to found his charge upon.(1)

You next say that "I must likewise be sensible that although I am an
American citizen that it is likewise believed there [in America] that
I am become a citizen of France, and that in consequence this latter
character has so far [illegible] the former as to weaken if not destroy
any claim you might have to interpose in my behalf." I am sorry I cannot
add any new arguments to those I have already advanced on this part of
the subject. But I cannot help asking myself, and I wish you would
ask the Committee, if it could possibly be the intention of France to
_kidnap_ citizens from America under the pretence of dubbing them
with the title of French citizens, and then, after inviting or rather
enveigling them into France, make it a pretence for detaining them? If
it was, (which I am sure it was not, tho' they now act as if it was) the
insult was to America, tho' the injury was to me, and the treachery was
to both.

     1 The communications of Paine to Barère are given in my
     "Life of Paine," vol. ii-i PP. 73, 87. Otto was Secretary to
     the Minister of Foreign Affairs when he acted as interpreter
     between Paine and Barère. There was never any charge at all
     made against Paine, as the Archives of France now prove,
     save that he was a "foreigner." Paine was of coarse ignorant
     of the conspiracy between Morris and Deforgues which had
     imprisoned him. Bourdon de l'Oise, one of the most cruel
     Jacobins and Terrorists, afterwards conspired with Pichegru
     to overthrow the Republic, and was with him banished (1797)
     to Sinamari, South America, where he died soon after his
     arrival.--_Editor._.

Did they mean to kidnap General Washington, Mr. Madison, and several
other Americans whom they dubbed with the same title as well as me? Let
any man look at the condition of France when I arrived in it,--invaded
by Austrians and Prussians and declared to be in danger,--and then ask
if any man who had a home and a country to go to, as I had in America,
would have come amongst them from any other motive than of assisting
them. If I could possibly have supposed them capable of treachery
I certainly would not have trusted myself in their power. Instead
therefore of your being unwilling or apprehensive of meeting the
question of French citizenship, they ought to be ashamed of advancing
it, and this will be the case unless you admit their arguments or
objections too passively. It is a case on their part fit only for
the continuations of Robespierre to set up. As to the name of French
citizen, I never considered it in any other light, so far as regarded
myself, than as a token of honorary respect. I never made them any
promise nor took any oath of allegiance or of citizenship, nor bound
myself by an act or means whatever to the performance of any thing.
I acted altogether as a friend invited among them as I supposed on
honorable terms. I did not come to join myself to a Government already
formed, but to assist in forming one _de nouveau_, which was afterwards
to be submitted to the people whether they would accept it or not, and
this any foreigner might do. And strictly speaking there are no citizens
before this is a government. They are all of the People. The Americans
were not called citizens till after Government was established, and not
even then until they had taken the oath of allegiance. This was the
case in Pennsylvania. But be this French citizenship more or less, the
Convention have swept it away by declaring me to be a foreigner, and
imprisoning me as such; and this is a short answer to all those who
affect to say or to believe that I am French Citizen. A Citizen without
Citizenship is a term non-descript.

After the two preceeding paragraphs you ask--"If it be my wish that you
should embark in this controversy (meaning that of reclaiming me)
and risque the consequences with respect to myself and the good
understanding subsisting between the two countries, or, without
relinquishing any point of right, and which might be insisted on in
case of extremities, pursue according to your best judgment and with the
light before you, the object of my liberation?"

As I believe from the apparent obstinacy of the Committees that
circumstances will grow towards the extremity you mention, unless
prevented beforehand, I will endeavour to throw into your hands all the
lights I can upon the subject.

In the first place, reclamation may mean two distinct things. All the
reclamations that are made by the sections in behalf of persons detained
as _suspect_ are made on the ground that the persons so detained are
patriots, and the reclamation is good against the charge of "suspect"
because it proves the contrary. But my situation includes another
circumstance. I am imprisoned on the charge (if it can be called one)
of being a foreigner born in England. You know that foreigner to be a
citizen of the United States of America, and that he has been such since
the 4th of July 1776, the political birthday of the United States,
and of every American citizen, for before that period all were British
subjects, and the States, then provinces, were British dominions.--Your
reclamation of me therefore as a citizen of the United States (all other
considerations apart) is good against the pretence for imprisoning me,
or that pretence is equally good against every American citizen born
in England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, or Holland, and you know this
description of men compose a very great part of the population of the
three States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and make also a
part of Congress, and of the State Legislatures.

Every politician ought to know, and every civilian does know, that the
Law of Treaty of Alliance, and also that of Amity and Commerce knows no
distinction of American Citizens on account of the place of their birth,
but recognizes all to be Citizens whom the Constitution and laws of the
United States of America recognize as such; and if I recollect rightly
there is an article in the Treaty of Commerce particular to this
point. The law therefore which they have here, to put all persons in
arrestation born in any of the Countries at war with France, is, when
applied to Citizens of America born in England, Ireland, Scotland,
Germany, or holland, a violation of the treaties of Alliance and of
Commerce, because it assumes to make a distinction of Citizens which
those Treaties and the Constitution of America know nothing of. This is
a subject that officially comes under your cognizance as Minister, and
it would be consistent that you expostulated with them upon the Case.
That foolish old man Vadier, who was president of the Convention and of
the Committee of Surety general when the Americans then in Paris went
to the Bar of the Convention to reclaim me, gave them for answer that
my being born in England was cause sufficient for imprisoning me. It
happened that at least half those who went up with that address were in
the same case with myself.

As to reclamations on the ground of Patriotism it is difficult to know
what is to be understood by Patriotism here. There is not a vice, and
scarcely a virtue, that has not as the fashion of the moment suited
been called by the name of Patriotism. The wretches who composed the
revolutionary tribunal of Nantz were the Patriots of that day and the
criminals of this. The Jacobins called themselves Patriots of the first
order, men up to the height of the circumstances, and they are now
considered as an antidote to Patriotism. But if we give to Patriotism a
fixed idea consistent with that of a Republic, it would signify a strict
adherence to the principles of Moral Justice, to the equality of civil
and political Rights, to the System of representative Government, and an
opposition to every hereditary claim to govern; and of this species
of Patriotism you know my character. But, Sir, there are men on the
Committee who have changed their Party but not their principles. Their
aim is to hold power as long as possible by preventing the establishment
of a Constitution, and these men are and will be my Enemies, and seek to
hold me in prison as long as they can. I am too good a Patriot for them.
It is not improbable that they have heard of the strange language held
by some Americans that I am not considered in America as an American
citizen, and they may also have heard say, that you had no orders
respecting me, and it is not improbable that they interpret that
language and that silence into a connivance at my imprisonment. If they
had not some ideas of this kind would they resist so long the civil
efforts you make for my liberation, or would they attach so much
importance to the imprisonment of an Individual as _to risque_ (as
you say to me) _the good understanding that exists between the two
Countries?_You also say that _it is impossible for any person to do more
than you have done without adopting the other means_, meaning that of
reclaiming me. How then can you account for the want of success after so
many efforts, and such a length of time, upwards of ten weeks, without
supposing that they fortify themselves in the interpretation I have just
mentioned? I can admit that it was not necessary to give orders, and
that it was difficult to give direct orders, for I much question if
Morris had informed Congress or the President of the whole of the case,
or had sent copies of my letters to him as I had desired him to do.
You would find the case here when you came, and you could not fully
understand it till you did come, and as Minister you would have
authority to act upon it. But as you inform me that you know what the
wishes of the President are, you will see also that his reputation is
exposed to some risque, admitting there to be ground for the supposition
I have made. It will not add to his popularity to have it believed in
America, as I am inclined to think the Committee believe here, that he
connives at my imprisonment. You say also that _it is known to everybody
that you wish my liberation_. It is, Sir, because they know your wishes
that they misinterpret the means you use. They suppose that those mild
means arise from a restriction that you cannot use others, or from a
consciousness of some defect on my part of which you are unwilling to
provoke the enquiry.

But as you ask me if it be my wish that you should embark in this
controversy and risque the consequences with respect to myself, I will
answer this part of the question by marking out precisely the part I
wish you to take. What I mean is a sort of middle line above what you
have yet gone, and not up to the full extremity of the case, which will
still lie in reserve. It is to write a letter to the Committee that
shall in the first place defeat by anticipation all the objections they
might make to a simple reclamation, and at the same time make the ground
good for that object. But, instead of sending the letter immediately, to
invite some of the Committee to your house and to make that invitation
the opportunity of shewing them the letter, expressing at the same time
a wish that you had done this, from a hope that the business might be
settled in an amicable manner without your being forced into an official
interference, that would excite the observations of the Enemies of both
Countries, and probably interrupt the harmony that subsisted between the
two republics. But as I can not convey the ideas I wish you to use by
any means so concisely or so well as to suppose myself the writer of the
letter I shall adopt this method and you will make use of such parts or
such ideas of it as you please if you approve the plan. Here follows the
supposed letter:

Citizens: When I first arrived amongst you as Minister from the United
States of America I was given to understand that the liberation of
Thomas Paine would take place without any official interference on my
part. This was the more agreeable to me as it would not only supercede
the necessity of that interference, but would leave to yourselves the
whole opportunity of doing justice to a man who as far as I have been
able to learn has suffered much cruel treatment under what you have
denominated the system of Terror. But as I find my expectations have not
been fulfilled I am under the official necessity of being more explicit
upon the subject than I have hitherto been.

Permit me, in the first place, to observe that as it is impossible for
me to suppose that it could have been the intention of France to seduce
any citizens of America from their allegiance to their proper country
by offering them the title of French citizen, so must I be compelled to
believe, that the title of French citizen conferred on Thomas Paine was
intended only as a mark of honorary respect towards a man who had
so eminently distinguished himself in defence of liberty, and on no
occasion more so than in promoting and defending your own revolution.
For a proof of this I refer you to his two works entitled _Rights of
Man_. Those works have procured to him an addition of esteem in America,
and I am sorry they have been so ill rewarded in France. But be this
title of French Citizen more or less, it is now entirely swept away by
the vote of the Convention which declares him to be a foreigner, and
which supercedes the vote of the Assembly that conferred that title upon
him, consequently upon the case superceded with it.

In consequence of this vote of the Convention declaring him to be a
foreigner the former Committees have imprisoned him. It is therefore
become my official duty to declare to you that the foreigner thus
imprisoned is a citizen of the United States of America as fully, as
legally, as constitutionally as myself, and that he is moreover one of
the principal founders of the American Republic.

I have been informed of a law or decree of the Convention which
subjects foreigners born in any of the countries at war with France
to arrestation and imprisonment. This law when applied to citizens of
America born in England is an infraction of the Treaty of Alliance and
of Amity and Commerce, which knows no distinction of American citizens
on account of the place of their birth, but recognizes all to be
citizens whom the Constitution and laws of America recognize as such.
The circumstances under which America has been peopled requires this
guard on her Treaties, because the mass of her citizens are composed not
of natives only but also of the natives of almost all the countries
of Europe who have sought an asylum there from the persecutions they
experienced in their own countries. After this intimation you will
without doubt see the propriety of modelling that law to the principles
of the Treaty, because the law of Treaty in cases where it applies is
the governing law to both parties alike, and it cannot be infracted
without hazarding the existence of the Treaty.

Of the Patriotism of Thomas Paine I can speak fully, if we agree to give
to patriotism a fixed idea consistent with that of a republic. It would
then signify a strict adherence to Moral Justice, to the equality of
civil and political rights, to the system of representative government,
and an opposition to all hereditary claims to govern. Admitting
patriotism to consist in these principles, I know of no man who has gone
beyond Thomas Paine in promulgating and defending them, and that for
almost twenty years past.

I have now spoken to you on the principal matters concerned in the case
of Thomas Paine. The title of French citizen which you had enforced upon
him, you have since taken away by declaring him to be a foreigner, and
consequently this part of the subject ceases of itself. I have declared
to you that this foreigner is a citizen of the United States of America,
and have assured you of his patriotism.

I cannot help at the same time repeating to you my wish that his
liberation had taken place without my being obliged to go thus far into
the subject, because it is the mutual interest of both republics to
avoid as much as possible all subjects of controversy, especially those
from which no possible good can flow. I still hope that you will save me
the unpleasant task of proceeding any farther by sending me an order
for his liberation, which the injured state of his health absolutely
requires. I shall be happy to receive such an order from you and
happy in presenting it to him, for to the welfare of Thomas Paine the
Americans are not and cannot be indifferent.

This is the sort of letter I wish you to write, for I have no idea that
you will succeed by any measures that can, by any kind of construction,
be interpreted into a want of confidence or an apprehension of
consequences. It is themselves that ought to be apprehensive of
consequences if any are to be apprehended. They, I mean the Committees,
are not certain that the Convention or the nation would support them
in forcing any question to extremity that might interrupt the good
understanding subsisting between the two countries; and I know of no
question [so likely] to do this as that which involves the rights and
liberty of a citizen.

You will please to observe that I have put the case of French
citizenship in a point of view that ought not only to preclude, but to
make them ashamed to advance any thing upon this subject; and this is
better than to have to answer their counter-reclamation afterwards.
Either the Citizenship was intended as a token of honorary respect, or
it was in-tended to deprive America of a citizen or to seduce him from
his allegiance to his proper country. If it was intended as an honour
they must act consistently with the principle of honour. But if they
make a pretence for detaining me, they convict themselves of the act
of seduction. Had America singled out any particular French citizen,
complimented him with the title of Citizen of America, which he without
suspecting any fraudulent intention might accept, and then after having
invited or rather inveigled him into America made his acceptance of
that Title a pretence for seducing or forcing him from his allegiance to
France, would not France have just cause to be offended at America? And
ought not America to have the same right to be offended at France? And
will the Committees take upon themselves to answer for the dishonour
they bring upon the National Character of their Country? If these
arguments are stated beforehand they will prevent the Committees going
into the subject of French Citizenship. They must be ashamed of it.
But after all the case comes to this, that this French Citizenship
appertains no longer to me because the Convention, as I have already
said, have swept it away by declaring me to be foreigner, and it is not
in the power of the Committees to reverse it. But if I am to be citizen
and foreigner, and citizen again, just when and how and for any purpose
they please, they take the Government of America into their own hands
and make her only a Cypher in their system.

Though these ideas have been long with me they have been more
particularly matured by reading your last Communication, and I have
many reasons to wish you had opened that Communication sooner. I am best
acquainted with the persons you have to deal with and the circumstances
of my own case. If you chuse to adopt the letter as it is, I send you a
translation for the sake of expediting the business. I have endeavoured
to conceive your own manner of expression as well as I could, and the
civility of language you would use, but the matter of the letter is
essential to me.

If you chuse to confer with some of the members of the Committee at
your own house on the subject of the letter it may render the sending it
unnecessary; but in either case I must request and press you not to give
away to evasion and delay, and that you will fix positively with them
that they shall give you an answer in three or four days whether they
will liberate me on the representation you have made in the letter, or
whether you must be forced to go further into the subject. The state of
my health will not admit of delay, and besides the tortured state of
my mind wears me down. If they talk of bringing me to trial (and I well
know there is no accusation against me and that they can bring none)
I certainly summons you as an Evidence to my Character. This you may
mention to them either as what I intend to do or what you intend to do
voluntarily for me.

I am anxious that you undertake this business without losing time,
because if I am not liberated in the course of this decade, I intend, if
in case the seventy-one detained deputies are liberated, to follow the
same track that they have done, and publish my own case myself.(1)
I cannot rest any longer in this state of miserable suspense, be the
consequences what they may.

Thomas Paine.

     1 Those deputies, imprisoned for having protested against
     the overthrow of the Girondin government, May 31,1793, when
     the Convention was invaded and overawed by the armed
     communes of Paris. These deputies were liberated and
     recalled to the Convention, December 8, 1794. Paine was
     invited to resume his seat the day before, by a special act
     of the Convention, after an eloquent speech by Thibaudeau.--
     _Editor._.


Dear Sir: I need not mention to you the happiness I received from the
information you sent me by Mr. Beresford. I easily guess the persons
you have conversed with on the subject of my liberation--but matters
and even promises that pass in conversation are not quite so strictly
attended to here as in the Country you come from. I am not, my Dear Sir,
impatient from any thing in my disposition, but the state of my health
requires liberty and a better air; and besides this, the rules of the
prison do not permit me, though I have all the indulgences the Concierge
can give, to procure the things necessary to my recovery, which is
slow as to strength. I have a tolerable appetite but the allowance of
provision is scanty. We are not allowed a knife to cut our victuals
with, nor a razor to shave; but they have lately allowed some barbers
that are here to shave. The room where I am lodged is a ground floor
level with the earth in the garden and floored with brick, and is so
wet after every rain that I cannot guard against taking colds that
continually cheat my recovery. If you could, without interfering with or
deranging the mode proposed for my liberation, inform the Committee that
the state of my health requires liberty and air, it would be good ground
to hasten my liberation. The length of my imprisonment is also a reason,
for I am now almost the oldest inhabitant of this uncomfortable mansion,
and I see twenty, thirty and sometimes forty persons a day put in
liberty who have not been so long confined as myself. Their liberation
is a happiness to me; but I feel sometimes, a little mortification
that I am thus left behind. I leave it entirely to you to arrange this
matter. The messenger waits. Your's affectionately,

T. P.

I hope and wish much to see you. I have much to say. I have had the
attendance of Dr. Graham (Physician to Genl. O'Hara, who is prisoner
here) and of Dr. Makouski, house physician, who has been most
exceedingly kind to me. After I am at liberty I shall be glad to
introduce him to you.

     1 This letter, written in a feeble handwriting, is not
     dated, but Monroe's endorsement, "2d. Luxembourg,"
     indicates November 2, two days before Paine's liberation.--
     _Editor._.




XXII. LETTER TO GEORGE WASHINGTON.

Paris, July 30, 1796.

As censure is but awkwardly softened by apology. I shall offer you
no apology for this letter. The eventful crisis to which your double
politics have conducted the affairs of your country, requires an
investigation uncramped by ceremony.

There was a time when the fame of America, moral and political, stood
fair and high in the world. The lustre of her revolution extended itself
to every individual; and to be a citizen of America gave a title to
respect in Europe. Neither meanness nor ingratitude had been mingled
in the composition of her character. Her resistance to the attempted
tyranny of England left her unsuspected of the one, and her open
acknowledgment of the aid she received from France precluded all
suspicion of the other. The Washington of politics had not then
appeared.

At the time I left America (April 1787) the Continental Convention, that
formed the federal Constitution was on the point of meeting. Since that
time new schemes of politics, and new distinctions of parties, have
arisen. The term _Antifederalist_ has been applied to all those who
combated the defects of that constitution, or opposed the measures
of your administration. It was only to the absolute necessity of
establishing some federal authority, extending equally over all the
States, that an instrument so inconsistent as the present federal
Constitution is, obtained a suffrage. I would have voted for it myself,
had I been in America, or even for a worse, rather than have had none,
provided it contained the means of remedying its defects by the same
appeal to the people by which it was to be established. It is always
better policy to leave removeable errors to expose themselves, than
to hazard too much in contending against them theoretically. I have
introduced these observations, not only to mark the general difference
between Antifederalist and Anti-constitutionalist, but to preclude
the effect, and even the application, of the former of these terms to
myself. I declare myself opposed to several matters in the Constitution,
particularly to the manner in which what is called the Executive is
formed, and to the long duration of the Senate; and if I live to return
to America, I will use all my endeavours to have them altered.(*) I also
declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for
I know it to have been deceitful, if not perfidious, as I shall shew
in the course of this letter. But as to the point of consolidating the
States into a Federal Government, it so happens, that the proposition
for that purpose came originally from myself. I proposed it in a letter
to Chancellor Livingston in the spring of 1782, while that gentleman
was Minister for Foreign Affairs. The five per cent, duty recommended
by Congress had then fallen through, having been adopted by some of the
States, altered by others, rejected by Rhode Island, and repealed by
Virginia after it had been consented to. The proposal in the letter I
allude to, was to get over the whole difficulty at once, by annexing a
continental legislative body to Congress; for in order to have any law
of the Union uniform, the case could only be, that either Congress, as
it then stood, must frame the law, and the States severally adopt it
without alteration, or the States must erect a Continental Legislature
for the purpose. Chancellor Livingston, Robert Morris, Gouverneur
Morris, and myself, had a meeting at the house of Robert Morris on
the subject of that letter. There was no diversity of opinion on the
proposition for a Continental Legislature: the only difficulty was on
the manner of bringing the proposition forward. For my own part, as I
considered it as a remedy in reserve, that could be applied at any time
_when the States saw themselves wrong enough to be put right_, (which
did not appear to be the case at that time) I did not see the propriety
of urging it precipitately, and declined being the publisher of it
myself. After this account of a fact, the leaders of your party will
scarcely have the hardiness to apply to me the term of Antifederalist.
But I can go to a date and to a fact beyond this; for the proposition
for electing a continental convention to form the Continental Government
is one of the subjects treated of in the pamphlet _Common Sense_.(1)

     * I have always been opposed to the mode of refining
     Government up to an individual, or what is called a single
     Executive. Such a man will always be the chief of a party. A
     plurality is far better: It combines the mass of a nation
     better together: And besides this, it is necessary to the
     manly mind of a republic that it loses the debasing idea of
     obeying an individual.--_Author_.


     1 See vol. i. of this work, pp. 97, 98, 109, no.--_Editor._.

Having thus cleared away a little of the rubbish that might otherwise
have lain in my way, I return to the point of time at which the present
Federal Constitution and your administration began. It was very well
said by an anonymous writer in Philadelphia, about a year before that
period, that "_thirteen staves and ne'er a hoop will not make a barrel_"
and as any kind of hooping the barrel, however defectively executed,
would be better than none, it was scarcely possible but that
considerable advantages must arise from the federal hooping of the
States. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend of America
beheld, as the natural effect of union, her rising prosperity; and it
was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom,
with the germ of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your
administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands
obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest
of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted
under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron
of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than
what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one
nation; treachery and ingratitude to another.

     2 The history of the Scioto Company, by which so many
     Frenchmen as well as Americans were ruined, warranted an
     even stronger statement. Though Washington did not know what
     was going on, he cannot be acquitted of a lack of due
     precaution in patronizing leading agents of these
     speculations, and introducing them in France.--_Editor._

Some vices make their approach with such a splendid appearance, that we
scarcely know to what class of moral distinctions they belong. They
are rather virtues corrupted than vices, originally. But meanness and
ingratitude have nothing equivocal in their character. There is not a
trait in them that renders them doubtful. They are so originally vice,
that they are generated in the dung of other vices, and crawl into
existence with the filth upon their back. The fugitives have found
protection in you, and the levee-room is their place of rendezvous.

As the Federal Constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as the
original, of the form of the British Government, an imitation of its
vices was naturally to be expected. So intimate is the connection
between _form and practice_, that to adopt the one is to invite the
other. Imitation is naturally progressive, and is rapidly so in matters
that are vicious.

Soon after the Federal Constitution arrived in England, I received a
letter from a female literary correspondent (a native of New York) very
well mixed with friendship, sentiment, and politics. In my answer
to that letter, I permitted myself to ramble into the wilderness of
imagination, and to anticipate what might hereafter be the condition
of America. I had no idea that the picture I then drew was realizing
so fast, and still less that Mr. Washington was hurrying it on. As the
extract I allude to is congenial with the subject I am upon, I here
transcribe it:

     [_The extract is the same as that given in a footnote, in
     the Memorial to Monroe, p. 180_.]

Impressed, as I was, with apprehensions of this kind, I had America
constantly in my mind in all the publications I afterwards made. The
First, and still more the Second, Part of the Rights of Man, bear
evident marks of this watchfulness; and the Dissertation on First
Principles of Government [XXIV.] goes more directly to the point than
either of the former. I now pass on to other subjects.

It will be supposed by those into whose hands this letter may fall, that
I have some personal resentment against you; I will therefore settle
this point before I proceed further.

If I have any resentment, you must acknowledge that I have not been
hasty in declaring it; neither would it now be declared (for what are
private resentments to the public) if the cause of it did not unite
itself as well with your public as with your private character, and with
the motives of your political conduct.

The part I acted in the American revolution is well known; I shall not
here repeat it. I know also that had it not been for the aid received
from France, in men, money and ships, that your cold and unmilitary
conduct (as I shall shew in the course of this letter) would in all
probability have lost America; at least she would not have been the
independent nation she now is. You slept away your time in the field,
till the finances of the country were completely exhausted, and you have
but little share in the glory of the final event. It is time, sir, to
speak the undisguised language of historical truth.

Elevated to the chair of the Presidency, you assumed the merit of every
thing to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution
began to appear. You commenced your Presidential career by encouraging
and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you travelled America from
one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You
have as many addresses in your chest as James the II. As to what were
your views, for if you are not great enough to have ambition you are
little enough to have vanity, they cannot be directly inferred from
expressions of your own; but the partizans of your politics have
divulged the secret.

John Adams has said, (and John it is known was always a speller after
places and offices, and never thought his little services were highly
enough paid,)--John has said, that as Mr. Washington had no child, the
Presidency should be made hereditary in the family of Lund Washington.
John might then have counted upon some sinecure himself, and a provision
for his descendants. He did not go so far as to say, also, that the
Vice-Presidency should be hereditary in the family of John Adams. He
prudently left that to stand on the ground that one good turn deserves
another.(*)

John Adams is one of those men who never contemplated the origin of
government, or comprehended any thing of first principles. If he had,
he might have seen, that the right to set up and establish hereditary
government, never did, and never can, exist in any generation at any
time whatever; that it is of the nature of treason; because it is an
attempt to take away the rights of all the minors living at that time,
and of all succeeding generations. It is of a degree beyond common
treason. It is a sin against nature. The equal right of every generation
is a right fixed in the nature of things. It belongs to the son when of
age, as it belonged to the father before him. John Adams would himself
deny the right that any former deceased generation could have to
decree authoritatively a succession of governors over him, or over his
children; and yet he assumes the pretended right, treasonable as it is,
of acting it himself. His ignorance is his best excuse.

John Jay has said,(**) (and this John was always the sycophant of
every thing in power, from Mr. Girard in America, to Grenville in
England,)--John Jay has said, that the Senate should have been appointed
for life. He would then have been sure of never wanting a lucrative
appointment for himself, and have had no fears about impeachment. These
are the disguised traitors that call themselves Federalists.(**)

Could I have known to what degree of corruption and perfidy the
administrative part of the government of America had descended, I
could have been at no loss to have understood the reservedness of Mr.
Washington towards me, during my imprisonment in the Luxembourg. There
are cases in which silence is a loud language. I will here explain the
cause of that imprisonment, and return to Mr. Washington afterwards.

     * Two persons to whom John Adams said this, told me of it.
     The secretary of Mr. Jay was present when it was told to
     me.--_Author_.

     **  If Mr. John Jay desires to know on what authority I say
     this, I will give that authority publicly when he chooses to
     call for it--_Author_.

In the course of that rage, terror and suspicion, which the brutal
letter of the Duke of Brunswick first started into existence in France,
it happened that almost every man who was opposed to violence, or who
was not violent himself, became suspected. I had constantly been opposed
to every thing which was of the nature or of the appearance of violence;
but as I had always done it in a manner that shewed it to be a principle
founded in my heart, and not a political manouvre, it precluded the
pretence of accusing me. I was reached, however, under another pretence.

A decree was passed to imprison all persons born in England; but as
I was a member of the Convention, and had been complimented with the
honorary style of Citizen of France, as Mr. Washington and some other
Americans had been, this decree fell short of reaching me. A motion was
afterwards made and carried, supported chiefly by Bourdon de l'Oise,
for expelling foreigners from the Convention. My expulsion being thus
effected, the two committees of Public Safety and of General Surety,
of which Robespierre was the dictator, put me in arrestation under the
former decree for imprisoning persons born in England. Having thus shewn
under what pretence the imprisonment was effected, I come to speak of
such parts of the case as apply between me and Mr. Washington, either as
a President or as an individual.

I have always considered that a foreigner, such as I was in fact, with
respect to France, might be a member of a Convention for framing a
Constitution, without affecting his right of citizenship in the
country to which he belongs, but not a member of a government after
a Constitution is formed; and I have uniformly acted upon this
distinction» To be a member of a government requires that a person be
in allegiance to that government and to the country locally. But a
Constitution, being a thing of principle, and not of action, and
which, after it is formed, is to be referred to the people for their
approbation or rejection, does not require allegiance in the persons
forming and proposing it; and besides this, it is only to the thing
after it be formed and established, and to the country after its
governmental character is fixed by the adoption of a constitution, that
the allegiance can be given. No oath of allegiance or of citizenship was
required of the members who composed the Convention: there was nothing
existing in form to swear allegiance to. If any such condition had been
required, I could not, as Citizen of America in fact, though Citizen of
France by compliment, have accepted a seat in the Convention.

As my citizenship in America was not altered or diminished by any thing
I had done in Europe, (on the contrary, it ought to be considered as
strengthened, for it was the American principle of government that I
was endeavouring to spread in Europe,) and as it is the duty of every
govern-ment to charge itself with the care of any of its citizens who
may happen to fall under an arbitrary persecution abroad, and is also
one of the reasons for which ambassadors or ministers are appointed,--it
was the duty of the Executive department in America, to have made (at
least) some enquiries about me, as soon as it heard of my imprisonment.
But if this had not been the case, that government owed it to me on
every ground and principle of honour and gratitude. Mr. Washington owed
it to me on every score of private acquaintance, I will not now say,
friendship; for it has some time been known by those who know him, that
he has no friendships; that he is incapable of forming any; he can serve
or desert a man, or a cause, with constitutional indifference; and it is
this cold hermaphrodite faculty that imposed itself upon the world,
and was credited for a while by enemies as by friends, for prudence,
moderation and impartiality.(1)

     1 "L'on pent dire qu'il [Washington] jouit de tous les
     avantages possibles a l'exception des douceurs de
     l'amitié."--Louis Otto, Chargé d'Affaires (at New York) to
     his government, 13 June, 1790. French Archives, vol. 35, No.
     32.--Editor.

Soon after I was put into arrestation, and imprisoned in the Luxembourg,
the Americans who were then in Paris went in a body to the bar of the
Convention to reclaim me. They were answered by the then President
Vadier, who has since absconded, that _I was born in England_, and it
was signified to them, by some of the Committee of _General Surety_, to
whom they were referred (I have been told it was Billaud Varennes,) that
their reclamation of me was only the act of individuals, without any
authority from the American government.

A few days after this, all communications from persons imprisoned to
any person without the prison was cut off by an order of the Police. I
neither saw, nor heard from, any body for six months; and the only hope
that remained to me was, that a new Minister would arrive from America
to supercede Morris, and that he would be authorized to enquire into
the cause of my imprisonment. But even this hope, in the state to which
matters were daily arriving, was too remote to have any consolatory
effect, and I contented myself with the thought, that I might be
remembered when it would be too late. There is perhaps no condition from
which a man conscious of his own uprightness cannot derive consolation;
for it is in itself a consolation for him to find, that he can bear that
condition with calmness and fortitude.

From about the middle of March (1794) to the fall of Robespierre
July 29, (9th of Thermidor,) the state of things in the prisons was a
continued scene of horror. No man could count upon life for twenty-four
hours. To such a pitch of rage and suspicion were Robespierre and his
Committee arrived, that it seemed as if they feared to leave a man
living. Scarcely a night passed in which ten, twenty, thirty, forty,
fifty, or more, were not taken out of the prison, carried before a
pretended tribunal in the morning, and guillotined before night. One
hundred and sixty-nine were taken out of the Luxembourg one night, in
the month of July, and one hundred and sixty of them guillotined. A
list of two hundred more, according to the report in the prison, was
preparing a few days before Robespierre fell. In this last list I have
good reason to believe I was included. A memorandum in the hand-writing
of Robespierre was afterwards produced in the Convention, by the
committee to whom the papers of Robespierre were referred, in these
words:

     "Demander que Thomas           "I Demand that Thomas Paine
     "Payne soit décrété d'ac-       be decreed of accusation
     "cusation pour les inté-        for the interests of America
     "rôtsde l'Amérique,autant       as well as of France."
     "que de la France."


     1 In reading this the Committee added, "Why Thomas Payne
     more than another? Because He helped to establish the
     liberty of both worlds."--_Editor_.

I had then been imprisoned seven months, and the silence of the
Executive part of the government of America (Mr. Washington) upon the
case, and upon every thing respecting me, was explanation enough to
Robespierre that he might proceed to extremities.

A violent fever which had nearly terminated my existence, was, I
believe, the circumstance that preserved it. I was not in a condition to
be removed, or to know of what was passing, or of what had passed, for
more than a month. It makes a blank in my remembrance of life. The first
thing I was informed of was the fall of Robespierre.

About a week after this, Mr. Monroe arrived to supercede Gouverneur
Morris, and as soon as I was able to write a note legible enough to be
read, I found a way to convey one to him by means of the man who lighted
the lamps in the prison; and whose unabated friendship to me, from whom
he had never received any service, and with difficulty accepted any
recompense, puts the character of Mr. Washington to shame.

In a few days I received a message from Mr. Monroe, conveyed to me in a
note from an intermediate person, with assurance of his friendship, and
expressing a desire that I would rest the case in his hands. After a
fortnight or more had passed, and hearing nothing farther, I wrote to a
friend who was then in Paris, a citizen of Philadelphia, requesting him
to inform me what was the true situation of things with respect to me. I
was sure that something was the matter; I began to have hard thoughts of
Mr. Washington, but I was unwilling to encourage them.

In about ten days, I received an answer to my letter, in which the
writer says, "Mr. Monroe has told me that he has no order [meaning from
the President, Mr. Washington] respecting you, but that he (Mr. Monroe)
will do every thing in his power to liberate you; but, from what I learn
from the Americans lately arrived in Paris, you are not considered,
either by the American government, or by the individuals, as an American
citizen."

I was now at no loss to understand Mr. Washington and his new fangled
faction, and that their policy was silently to leave me to fall in
France. They were rushing as fast as they could venture, without
awakening the jealousy of America, into all the vices and corruptions of
the British government; and it was no more consistent with the policy
of Mr. Washington, and those who immediately surrounded him, than it was
with that of Robespierre or of Pitt, that I should survive. They have,
however, missed the mark, and the reaction is upon themselves.

Upon the receipt of the letter just alluded to, I sent a memorial to Mr.
Monroe, which the reader will find in the appendix, and I received from
him the following answer.(1) It is dated the 18th of September, but did
not come to hand till about the 4th of October. I was then failing into
a relapse, the weather was becoming damp and cold, fuel was not to be
had, and the abscess in my side, the consequence of these things, and
of the want of air and exercise, was beginning to form, and which has
continued immoveable ever since. Here follows Mr. Monroe's letter.

     1 The appendix consisted of an abridgment of the Memorial,
     which forms the preceding chapter (XXI.) in this volume.--
     _Editor._.


Paris, September 18th, 1794. "Dear Sir,

"I was favoured soon after my arrival here with several letters from
you, and more latterly with one in the character of memorial upon the
subject of your confinement; and should have answered them at the
times they were respectively written had I not concluded you would have
calculated with certainty upon the deep interest I take in your welfare,
and the pleasure with which I shall embrace every opportunity in my
power to serve you. I should still pursue the same course, and for
reasons which must obviously occur, if I did not find that you are
disquieted with apprehensions upon interesting points, and which justice
to you and our country equally forbid you should entertain. You mention
that you have been informed you are not considered as an American
citizen by the Americans, and that you have likewise heard that I had
no instructions respecting you by the government. I doubt not the person
who gave you the information meant well, but I suspect he did not even
convey accurately his own ideas on the first point: for I presume the
most he could say is, that you had likewise become a French citizen,
and which by no means deprived you of being an American one. Even
this, however, may be doubted, I mean the acquisition of citizenship in
France, and I confess you have said much to show that it has not been
made. I really suspect that this was all that the gentleman who wrote
to you, and those Americans he heard speak upon the subject meant. It
becomes my duty, however, to declare to you, that I consider you as
an American citizen, and that you are considered universally in that
character by the people of America. As such you are entitled to my
attention; and so far as it can be given consistently with those
obligations which are mutual between every government and even a
transient passenger, you shall receive it.

"The Congress have never decided upon the subject of citizenship in
a manner to regard the present case. By being with us through the
revolution you are of our country as absolutely as if you had been born
there, and you are no more of England, than every native American is.
This is the true doctrine in the present case, so far as it becomes
complicated with any other consideration. I have mentioned it to make
you easy upon the only point which could give you any disquietude.

"Is it necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen, I
speak of the great mass of the people, are interested in your welfare?
They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution and the
difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they review its
several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the
merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict. The
crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain,
our national character. You are considered by them as not only having
rendered important service in our own revolution, but as being, on a
more extensive scale, the friend of human rights, and a distinguished
and able advocate in favour of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas
Paine, the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent.

"Of the sense which the President has always entertained of your merits,
and of his friendly disposition towards you, you are too well assured
to require any declaration of it from me. That I forward his wishes
in seeking your safety is what I well know, and this will form an
additional obligation on me to perform what I should otherwise consider
as a duty.

"You are, in my opinion, at present menaced by no kind of danger.
To liberate you, will be an object of my endeavours, and as soon as
possible. But you must, until that event shall be accomplished, bear
your situation with patience and fortitude. You will likewise have the
justice to recollect, that I am placed here upon a difficult theatre*
many important objects to attend to, with few to consult It becomes me
in pursuit of those to regulate my conduct in respect to each, as to
the manner and the time, as will, in my judgment, be best calculated to
accomplish the whole.

"With great esteem and respect consider me personally your friend,

"James Monroe."


The part in Mr. Monroe's letter, in which he speaks of the President,
(Mr. Washington,) is put in soft language. Mr. Monroe knew what Mr.
Washington had said formerly, and he was willing to keep that in view.
But the fact is, not only that Mr. Washington had given no orders to Mr.
Monroe, as the letter [of Whiteside] stated, but he did not so much as
say to him, enquire if Mr. Paine be dead or alive, in prison or out, or
see if there be any assistance we can give him.

     This I presume alludes to the embarrassments which the
     strange conduct of Gouverneur Morris had occasioned, and
     which, I well know, had created suspicions of the sincerity
     of Mr. Washington.--_Author_. voi. m--ij

While these matters were passing, the liberations from the prisons were
numerous; from twenty to forty in the course of almost every twenty-four
hours. The continuance of my imprisonment after a new Minister had
arrived immediately from America, which was now more than two months,
was a matter so obviously strange, that I found the character of the
American government spoken of in very unqualified terms of reproach;
not only by those who still remained in prison, but by those who were
liberated, and by persons who had access to the prison from without.
Under these circumstances I wrote again to Mr. Monroe, and found
occasion, among other things, to say: "It will not add to the popularity
of Mr. Washington to have it believed in America, as it is believed
here, that he connives at my imprisonment."

The case, so far as it respected Mr. Monroe, was, that having to get
over the difficulties, which the strange conduct of Gouverneur Morris
had thrown in the way of a successor, and having no authority from the
American government to speak officially upon any thing relating to me,
he found himself obliged to proceed by unofficial means with individual
members; for though Robespierre was overthrown, the Robespierrian
members of the Committee of Public Safety still remained in considerable
force, and had they found out that Mr. Monroe had no official authority
upon the case, they would have paid little or no regard to his
reclamation of me. In the mean time my health was suffering exceedingly,
the dreary prospect of winter was coming on, and imprisonment was still
a thing of danger. After the Robespierrian members of the Committee were
removed by the expiration of their time of serving, Mr. Monroe reclaimed
me, and I was liberated the 4th of November. Mr. Monroe arrived in Paris
the beginning of August before. All that period of my imprisonment,
at least, I owe not to Robespierre, but to his colleague in projects,
George Washington. Immediately upon my liberation, Mr. Monroe invited me
to his house, where I remained more than a year and a half; and I speak
of his aid and friendship, as an open-hearted man will always do in such
a case, with respect and gratitude.

Soon after my liberation, the Convention passed an unanimous vote,
to invite me to return to my seat among them. The times were still
unsettled and dangerous, as well from without as within, for the
coalition was unbroken, and the constitution not settled. I chose,
however, to accept the invitation: for as I undertake nothing but what
I believe to be right, I abandon nothing that I undertake; and I
was willing also to shew, that, as I was not of a cast of mind to be
deterred by prospects or retrospects of danger, so neither were my
principles to be weakened by misfortune or perverted by disgust.

Being now once more abroad in the world, I began to find that I was
not the only one who had conceived an unfavourable opinion of Mr.
Washington; it was evident that his character was on the decline as well
among Americans as among foreigners of different nations. From being the
chief of the government, he had made himself the chief of a party;
and his integrity was questioned, for his politics had a doubtful
appearance. The mission of Mr. Jay to London, notwithstanding there
was an American Minister there already, had then taken place, and was
beginning to be talked of. It appeared to others, as it did to me, to
be enveloped in mystery, which every day served either to increase or to
explain into matter of suspicion.

In the year 1790, or about that time, Mr. Washington, as President,
had sent Gouverneur Morris to London, as his secret agent to have some
communication with the British Ministry. To cover the agency of Morris
it was given out, I know not by whom, that he went as an agent from
Robert Morris to borrow money in Europe, and the report was permitted
to pass uncontradicted. The event of Morris's negociation was, that Mr.
Hammond was sent Minister from England to America, Pinckney from
America to England, and himself Minister to France. If, while Morris was
Minister in France, he was not a emissary of the British Ministry and
the coalesced powers, he gave strong reasons to suspect him of it. No
one who saw his conduct, and heard his conversation, could doubt his
being in their interest; and had he not got off the time he did, after
his recall, he would have been in arrestation. Some letters of his had
fallen into the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, and enquiry was
making after him.

A great bustle had been made by Mr. Washington about the conduct of
Genet in America, while that of his own Minister, Morris, in France, was
infinitely more reproachable. If Genet was imprudent or rash, he was not
treacherous; but Morris was all three. He was the enemy of the French
revolution, in every stage of it. But notwithstanding this conduct
on the part of Morris, and the known profligacy of his character, Mr.
Washington in a letter he wrote to him at the time of recalling him on
the complaint and request of the Committee of Public Safety, assures
him, that though he had complied with that request, he still retained
the same esteem and friendship for him as before. This letter Morris was
foolish enough to tell of; and, as his own char-acter and conduct were
notorious, the telling of it could have but one effect, which was that
of implicating the character of the writer.(1) Morris still loiters
in Europe, chiefly in England; and Mr. Washington is still in
correspondence with him. Mr. Washington ought, therefore, to expect,
especially since his conduct in the affairs of Jay's treaty, that France
must consider Morris and Washington as men of the same description. The
chief difference, however, between the two is, (for in politics there
is none,) that the one is profligate enough to profess an indifference
about _moral_ principles, and the other is prudent enough to conceal the
want of them.

     1 Washington wrote to Morris, June 19,1794, "my confidence
     in and friendship for you remain undiminished." It was not
     "foolish" but sagacious to show this one sentence, without
     which Morris might not have escaped out of France. The
     letter reveals Washington's mental decline. He says "until
     then [Fauchet's demand for recall of Morris, early 1794] I
     had supposed you stood well with the powers that were."
     Lafayette had pleaded for Morris's removal, and two French
     Ministers before Fauchet, Ternant and Genet, had expressed
     their Government's dissatisfaction with him. See Ford's
     Writings of Washington, vii., p. 453; also Editor's
     Introduction to XXI.--_Editor._

About three months after I was at liberty, the official note of Jay
to Grenville on the subject of the capture of American vessels by the
British cruisers, appeared in the American papers that arrived at Paris.
Every thing was of a-piece. Every thing was mean. The same kind of
character went to all circumstances public or private. Disgusted at
this national degradation, as well as at the particular conduct of Mr.
Washington to me, I wrote to him (Mr. Washington) on the 22d of February
(1795) under cover to the then Secretary of State, (Mr. Randolph,) and
entrusted the letter to Mr. Le-tombe, who was appointed French consul
to Philadelphia, and was on the point of taking his departure. When I
supposed Mr. Letombe had sailed, I mentioned the letter to Mr. Monroe,
and as I was then in his house, I shewed it to him. He expressed a
wish that I would recall it, which he supposed might be done, as he had
learnt that Mr. Letombe had not then sailed. I agreed to do so, and it
was returned by Mr. Letombe under cover to Mr. Monroe.

The letter, however, will now reach Mr. Washington publicly in the
course of this work.

About the month of September following, I had a severe relapse which
gave occasion to the report of my death. I had felt it coming on a
considerable time before, which occasioned me to hasten the work I
had then in hand, the _Second part of the Age of Reason_. When I had
finished that work, I bestowed another letter on Mr. Washington, which I
sent under cover to Mr. Benj. Franklin Bache of Philadelphia. The letter
is as follows:


"Paris, September 20th, 1795.

"Sir,

"I had written you a letter by Mr. Letombe, French consul, but, at the
request of Mr. Monroe, I withdrew it, and the letter is still by me.
I was the more easily prevailed upon to do this, as it was then my
intention to have returned to America the latter end of the present
year, 1795; but the illness I now suffer prevents me. In case I had
come, I should have applied to you for such parts of your official
letters (and of your private ones, if you had chosen to give them) as
contained any instructions or directions either to Mr. Monroe, or to
Mr. Morris, or to any other person respecting me; for after you were
informed of my imprisonment in France, it was incumbent on you to have
made some enquiry into the cause, as you might very well conclude that I
had not the opportunity of informing you of it. I cannot understand your
silence upon this subject upon any other ground, than as _connivance_ at
my imprisonment; and this is the manner it is understood here, and will
be understood in America, unless you give me authority for contradicting
it. I therefore write you this letter, to propose to you to send me
copies of any letters you have written, that may remove that suspicion.
In the preface to the second part of the Age of Reason, I have given a
memorandum from the hand-writing of Robespierre, in which he proposed a
decree of accusation against me, '_for the interests of America as well
as of France!_' He could have no cause for putting America in the
case, but by interpreting the silence of the American government into
connivance and consent. I was imprisoned on the ground of being born
in England; and your silence in not enquiring into the cause of that
imprisonment, and reclaiming me against it, was tacitly giving me up. I
ought not to have suspected you of treachery; but whether I recover
from the illness I now suffer or not, I shall continue to think you
treacherous, till you give me cause to think otherwise. I am sure you
would have found yourself more at your ease, had you acted by me as
you ought; for whether your desertion of me was intended to gratify the
English Government, or to let me fall into destruction in France that
you might exclaim the louder against the French Revolution, or whether
you hoped by my extinction to meet with less opposition in mounting up
the American government--either of these will involve you in reproach
you will not easily shake off.

"THOMAS Paine."

     1 Washington Papers in State Department. Endorsed by Bache:
     "Jan. 18, 1796. Enclosed to Benj. Franklin Bache, and by him
     forwarded immediately upon receipt."--_Editor._.

Here follows the letter above alluded to, which I had stopped in
complaisance to Mr. Monroe.


"Paris, February aad, 1795.

"Sir,

"As it is always painful to reproach those one would wish to respect, it
is not without some difficulty that I have taken the resolution to
write to you. The dangers to which I have been exposed cannot have been
unknown to you, and the guarded silence you have observed upon that
circumstance is what I ought not to have expected from you, either as a
friend or as President of the United States.

"You knew enough of my character to be assured that I could not have
deserved imprisonment in France; and, without knowing any thing more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for my
safety. Every motive arising from recollection of times past, ought to
have suggested to you the propriety of such a measure. But I cannot find
that you have so much as directed any enquiry to be made whether I
was in prison or at liberty, dead or alive; what the cause of that
imprisonment was, or whether there was any service or assistance you
could render. Is this what I ought to have expected from America, after
the part I had acted towards her, or will it redound to her honour or
to yours, that I tell the story? I do not hesitate to say, that you have
not served America with more disinterestedness, or greater zeal, or more
fidelity, than myself, and I know not if with better effect. After the
revolution of America was established I ventured into new scenes
of difficulties to extend the principles which that revolution had
produced, and you rested at home to partake of the advantages. In the
progress of events, you beheld yourself a President in America, and me a
prisoner in France. You folded your arms, forgot your friend, and became
silent.

"As every thing I have been doing in Europe was connected with my wishes
for the prosperity of America, I ought to be the more surprised at this
conduct on the part of her government. It leaves me but one mode of
explanation, which is, _that every thing is not as it ought to be
amongst you_, and that the presence of a man who might disapprove, and
who had credit enough with the country to be heard and believed, was not
wished for. This was the operating motive with the despotic faction
that imprisoned me in France, (though the pretence was, that I was a
foreigner,) and those that have been silent and inactive towards me
in America, appear to me to have acted from the same motive. It is
impossible for me to discover any other.(1)

"After the part I have taken in the revolution of America, it is
natural that I feel interested in whatever relates to her character
and prosperity. Though I am not on the spot to see what is immediately
acting there, I see some part of what she is acting in Europe. For
your own sake, as well as for that of America, I was both surprised
and concerned at the appointment of Gouverneur Morris to be Minister
to France. His conduct has proved that the opinion I had formed of that
appointment was well founded. I wrote that opinion to Mr. Jefferson at
the time, and I was frank enough to say the same thing to Morris--_that
it was an unfortunate appointment?_ His prating, insignificant
pomposity, rendered him at once offensive, suspected, and ridiculous;
and his total neglect of all business had so disgusted the Americans,
that they proposed drawing up a protest against him. He carried this
neglect to such an extreme, that it was necessary to inform him of it;
and I asked him one day, if he did not feel himself ashamed to take the
money of the country, and do nothing for it?' But Morris is so fond of
profit and voluptousness, that he cares nothing about character. Had
he not been removed at the time he was, I think his conduct would have
precipitated the two countries into a rupture; and in this case,
hated _systematically_ as America is and ever will be by the British
government, and at the same time suspected by France, the commerce of
America would have fallen a prey to both countries.

     1 This paragraph of the original letter was omitted from the
     American pamphlet, probably by the prudence of Mr. Bache.--
     _Editor._

     2 "I have just heard of Gouverneur Morris's appointment. It
     is a most unfortunate one; and, as I shall mention the same
     thing to him when I see him, I do not express it to you with
     the injunction of confidence."--Paine to Jefferson, Feb.
     13,1792.--_Editor._

     3  Paine could not of course know that Morris was willing
     that the Americans, to whom he alludes, captains of captured
     vessels, should suffer, in order that there might be a case
     against France of violation of treaty, which would leave the
     United States free to transfer the alliance to England. See
     Introduction to XXI.. also my "Life of Paine," ii., p.
     83.--_Editor._.

"If the inconsistent conduct of Morris exposed the interest of America
to some hazard in France, the pusillanimous conduct of Mr. Jay in
England has rendered the American government contemptible in Europe.
Is it possible that any man who has contributed to the independence of
Amer-ica, and to free her from the tyranny and injustice of the British
government, can read without shame and indignation the note of Jay to
Grenville? It is a satire upon the declaration of Independence, and an
encouragement to the British government to treat America with contempt.
At the time this Minister of Petitions was acting this miserable part,
he had every means in his hands to enable him to have done his business
as he ought. The success or failure of his mission depended upon the
success or failure of the French arms. Had France failed, Mr. Jay might
have put his humble petition in his pocket, and gone home. The case
happened to be otherwise, and he has sacrificed the honour and perhaps
all the advantages of it, by turning petitioner. I take it for granted,
that he was sent over to demand indemnification for the captured
property; and, in this case, if he thought he wanted a preamble to his
demand, he might have said,

'That, tho' the government of England might suppose itself under
the necessity of seizing American property bound to France, yet
that supposed necessity could not preclude indemnification to the
proprietors, who, acting under the authority of their own government,
were not accountable to any other.'

"But Mr. Jay sets out with an implied recognition of the right of the
British government to seize and condemn: for he enters his complaint
against the _irregularity_ of the seizures and the condemnation, as if
they were reprehensible only by not being _conformable_ to the _terms_
of the proclamation under which they were seized. Instead of being the
Envoy of a government, he goes over like a lawyer to demand a new trial.
I can hardly help thinking that Grenville wrote that note himself and
Jay signed it; for the style of it is domestic and not diplomatic.
The term, _His_ Majesty, used without any descriptive epithet, always
signifies the King whom the Minister that speaks represents. If this
sinking of the demand into a petition was a juggle between Grenville
and Jay, to cover the indemnification, I think it will end in another
juggle, that of never paying the money, and be made use of afterwards to
preclude the right of demanding it: for Mr. Jay has virtually disowned
the right _by appealing to the magnanimity of his Majesty against the
capturers_. He has made this magnanimous Majesty the umpire in the case,
and the government of the United States must abide by the decision. If,
Sir, I turn some part of this business into ridicule, it is to avoid the
unpleasant sensation of serious indignation.

"Among other things which I confess I do not understand, is the
proclamation of neutrality. This has always appeared to me as
an assumption on the part of the executive not warranted by the
Constitution. But passing this over, as a disputable case, and
considering it only as political, the consequence has been that of
sustaining the losses of war, without the balance of reprisals. When
the profession of neutrality, on the part of America, was answered by
hostilities on the part of Britain, the object and intention of that
neutrality existed no longer; and to maintain it after this, was not
only to encourage farther insults and depredations, but was an informal
breach of neutrality towards France, by passively contributing to the
aid of her enemy. That the government of England considered the American
government as pusillanimous, is evident from the encreasing insolence of
the conduct of the former towards the latter, till the affair of General
Wayne. She then saw that it might be possible to kick a government into
some degree of spirit.(1) So far as the proclamation of neutrality was
intended to prevent a dissolute spirit of privateering in America under
foreign colors, it was undoubtedly laudable; but to continue it as a
government neutrality, after the commerce of America was made war upon,
was submission and not neutrality. I have heard so much about this thing
called neutrality, that I know not if the ungenerous and dishonorable
silence (for I must call it such,) that has been observed by your part
of the government towards me, during my imprisonment, has not in some
measure arisen from that policy.

     1 Wayne's success against the Indians of the Six Nations,
     1794, was regarded by Washington also as a check on England.
     Writing to Pendleton, Jan. 22, 1795, he says: "There is
     reason to believe that the Indians...._together with their
     abettors_; begin to see things in a different point of
     view." (Italics mine).--_Editor._

"Tho' I have written you this letter, you ought not to suppose it has
been an agreeable undertaking to me. On the contrary, I assure you, it
has caused me some disquietude. I am sorry you have given me cause to
do it; for, as I have always remembered your former friendship with
pleasure, I suffer a loss by your depriving me of that sentiment.

"Thomas Paine."


That this letter was not written in very good temper, is very evident;
but it was just such a letter as his conduct appeared to me to merit,
and every thing on his part since has served to confirm that
opinion. Had I wanted a commentary on his silence, with respect to my
imprisonment in France, some of his faction have furnished me with it.
What I here allude to, is a publication in a Philadelphia paper, copied
afterwards into a New York paper, both under the patronage of the
Washington faction, in which the writer, still supposing me in prison
in France, wonders at my lengthy respite from the scaffold; and he marks
his politics still farther, by saying:

"It appears, moreover, that the people of England did not relish his
(Thomas Paine's) opinions quite so well as he expected, and that for one
of his last pieces, as destructive to the peace and happiness of their
country, (meaning, I suppose, the _Rights of Man_,) they threatened
our knight-errant with such serious vengeance, that, to avoid a trip to
Botany Bay, he fled over to France, as a less dangerous voyage."

I am not refuting or contradicting the falsehood of this publication,
for it is sufficiently notorious; neither am I censuring the writer: on
the contrary, I thank him for the explanation he has incautiously given
of the principles of the Washington faction. Insignificant, however, as
the piece is, it was capable of having some ill effects, had it arrived
in France during my imprisonment, and in the time of Robespierre; and I
am not uncharitable in supposing that this was one of the intentions of
the writer.(*)

     * I know not who the writer of the piece is, but some of the
     Americans say it is Phineas Bond, an American refugee, but
     now a British consul; and that he writes under the
     signature of Peter Skunk or Peter Porcupine, or some such
     signature.--Author.

     This footnote probably added to the gall of Porcupine's
     (Cobbett's) "Letter to the Infamous Tom Paine, in Answer to
     his Letter to General Washington" (Polit. Censor, Dec.,
     1796), of which he (Cobbett) afterwards repented. Phineas
     Bond had nothing to do with it.--Editor.

I have now done with Mr. Washington on the score of private affairs. It
would have been far more agreeable to me, had his conduct been such as
not to have merited these reproaches. Errors or caprices of the temper
can be pardoned and forgotten; but a cold deliberate crime of the heart,
such as Mr. Washington is capable of acting, is not to be washed away. I
now proceed to other matter.

After Jay's note to Grenville arrived in Paris from America, the
character of every thing that was to follow might be easily foreseen;
and it was upon this anticipation that _my_ letter of February the 22d
was founded. The event has proved that I was not mistaken, except that
it has been much worse than I expected.

It would naturally occur to Mr. Washington, that the secrecy of Jay's
mission to England, where there was already an American Minister, could
not but create some suspicion in the French government; especially
as the conduct of Morris had been notorious, and the intimacy of Mr.
Washington with Morris was known.

The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world, is
a sort of non-describable, camelion-colored thing, called _prudence_. It
is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly allied
to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for prudence
furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served, as is
the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish the
embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for
he authorized it to be made known to the French government, as a
confidential matter, (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a
member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here
state) he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the
purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr. Jay's
mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr. Jay's
authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of the
western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in American
vessels. Mr. Washington knows that this was untrue; and knowing this,
he had good reason to himself for refusing to furnish the House of
Representatives with copies of the instructions given to Jay, as he
might suspect, among other things, that he should also be called upon
for copies of instructions given to other Ministers, and that, in
the contradiction of instructions, his want of integrity would be
detected.(1) Mr. Washington may now, perhaps, learn, when it is too late
to be of any use to him, that a man will pass better through the world
with a thousand open errors upon his back, than in being detected in
_one_ sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.

The first account that arrived in Paris of a treaty being negotiated by
Mr. Jay, (for nobody suspected any,) came in an English newspaper, which
announced that a treaty _offensive and defensive_ had been concluded
between the United States of America and England. This was immediately
denied by every American in Paris, as an impossible thing; and though
it was disbelieved by the French, it imprinted a suspicion that some
underhand business was going forward.(*) At length the treaty itself
arrived, and every well-affected American blushed with shame.

     1 When the British treaty had been ratified by the Senate
     (with one stipulation) and signed by the President, the
     House of Representatives, required to supply the means for
     carrying into effect, believed that its power over the
     supplies authorized it to check what a large majority
     considered an outrage on the country and on France. This was
     the opinion of Edmund Randolph (the first Attorney General),
     of Jefferson, Madison, and other eminent men. The House
     having respectfully requested the President to send them
     such papers on the treaty as would not affect any existing
     negotiations, he refused in a message (March 30, 1796),
     whose tenor Madison described as "improper and indelicate."
     He said "the assent of the House of Representatives is not
     necessary to the validity of a treaty." The House regarded
     the message as menacing a serious conflict, and receded.--
     _Editor._

     * It was the embarrassment into which the affairs and credit
     of America were thrown at this instant by the report above
     alluded to, that made it necessary to contradict it, and
     that by every means arising from opinion or founded upon
     authority. The Committee of Public Safety, existing at that
     time, had agreed to the full execution, on their part, of
     the treaty between America and France, notwithstanding some
     equivocal conduct on the part of the American government,
     not very consistent with the good faith of an ally; but they
     were not in a disposition to be imposed upon by a counter-
     treaty. That Jay had no instructions beyond the points above
     stated, or none that could possibly be construed to extend
     to the length the British treaty goes, was a matter believed
     in America, in England, and in France; and without going to
     any other source it followed naturally from the message of
     the President to Congress, when he nominated Jay upon that
     mission. The secretary of Mr. Jay came to Paris soon after
     the treaty with England had been concluded, and brought with
     him a copy of Mr. Jay's instructions, which he offered to
     shew to me as _justification of Jay_. I advised him, as a
     friend, not to shew them to anybody, and did not permit him
     to shew them to me. "Who is it," said I to him, "that you
     intend to implicate as censureable by shewing those
     instructions? Perhaps that implication may fall upon your
     own government." Though I did not see the instructions, I
     could not be at a loss to understand that the American
     administration had been playing a double game.--Author.

     That there was a "double game" in this business, from first
     to last, is now a fact of history. Jay was confirmed by the
     Senate on a declaration of the President in which no
     faintest hint of a treaty was given, but only the
     "adjustment of our complaints," "vindication of our rights,"
     and cultivation of "peace." Only after the Envoy's
     confirmation did the Cabinet add the main thing, his
     authority to negotiate a commercial treaty. This was done
     against the protest of the only lawyer among them, Edmund
     Randolph, Secretary of State, who said the exercise of such
     a power by Jay would be an abridgment of the rights of the
     Senate and of the nation. See my "Life of Randolph," p. 220.
     For Jay's Instructions, etc., see I. Am. State Papers,
     Foreign Relations.--Editor.

It is curious to observe, how the appearance of characters will change,
whilst the root that produces them remains the same. The Washington
faction having waded through the slough of negociation, and whilst it
amused France with professions of friendship contrived to injure her,
immediately throws off the hypocrite, and assumes the swaggering air of
a bravado. The party papers of that imbecile administration were on
this occasion filled with paragraphs about _Sovereignty_. A paltroon may
boast of his sovereign right to let another kick him, and this is the
only kind of sovereignty shewn in the treaty with England. But those
daring paragraphs, as Timothy Pickering(1) well knows, were intended
for France; without whose assistance, in men, money, and ships, Mr.
Washington would have cut but a poor figure in the American war. But of
his military talents I shall speak hereafter.

I mean not to enter into any discussion of any article of Jay's treaty;
I shall speak only upon the whole of it. It is attempted to be justified
on the ground of its not being a violation of any article or articles
of the treaty pre-existing with France. But the sovereign right of
explanation does not lie with George Washington and his man Timothy;
France, on her part, has, at least, an equal right: and when nations
dispute, it is not so much about words as about things.

A man, such as the world calls a sharper, and versed as Jay must be
supposed to be in the quibbles of the law, may find a way to enter into
engagements, and make bargains, in such a manner as to cheat some other
party, without that party being able, as the phrase is, _to take the law
of him_. This often happens in the cabalistical circle of what is called
law. But when this is attempted to be acted on the national scale of
treaties, it is too despicable to be defended, or to be permitted to
exist. Yet this is the trick upon which Jay's treaty is founded, so
far as it has relation to the treaty pre-existing with France. It is a
counter-treaty to that treaty, and perverts all the great articles of
that treaty to the injury of France, and makes them operate as a bounty
to England, with whom France is at war.

     1 Secretary of State.--_Editor._.

The Washington administration shews great desire that the treaty between
France and the United States be preserved. Nobody can doubt their
sincerity upon this matter. There is not a British Minister, a British
merchant, or a British agent or sailor in America, that does not
anxiously wish the same thing. The treaty with France serves now as
a passport to supply England with naval stores and other articles of
American produce, whilst the same articles, when coming to France, are
made contraband or seizable by Jay's treaty with England. The treaty
with France says, that neutral ships make neutral property, and thereby
gives protection to English property on board American ships; and Jay's
treaty delivers up French property on board American ships to be seized
by the English. It is too paltry to talk of faith, of national honour,
and of the preservation of treaties, whilst such a bare-faced treachery
as this stares the world in the face.

The Washington administration may save itself the trouble of proving to
the French government its _most faithful_ intentions of preserving
the treaty with France; for France has now no desire that it should be
preserved. She had nominated an Envoy extraordinary to America, to make
Mr. Washington and his government a present of the treaty, and to
have no more to do with _that_, or with _him_. It was at the same time
officially declared to the American Minister at Paris, _that the French
Republic had rather have the American government for an open enemy
than a treacherous friend_. This, sir, together with the internal
distractions caused in America, and the loss of character in the world,
is the _eventful crisis_, alluded to in the beginning of this letter, to
which your double politics have brought the affairs of your country. It
is time that the eyes of America be opened upon you.

How France would have conducted herself towards America and American
commerce, after all treaty stipulations had ceased, and under the sense
of services rendered and injuries received, I know not. It is, however,
an unpleasant reflection, that in all national quarrels, the innocent,
and even the friendly part of the community, become involved with the
culpable and the unfriendly; and as the accounts that arrived from
America continued to manifest an invariable attachment in the general
mass of the people to their original ally, in opposition to the
new-fangled Washington faction,--the resolutions that had been taken
in France were suspended. It happened also, fortunately enough, that
Gouverneur Morris was not Minister at this time.

There is, however, one point that still remains in embryo, and
which, among other things, serves to shew the ignorance of Washington
treaty-makers, and their inattention to preexisting treaties, when they
were employing themselves in framing or ratifying the new treaty with
England.

The second article of the treaty of commerce between the United States
and France says:

"The most christian king and the United States engage mutually, not to
grant any particular favour to other nations in respect of commerce and
navigation that shall not immediately become common to the other party,
who shall enjoy the same favour freely, if the concession was freely
made, or on allowing the same compensation if the concession was
conditional."

All the concessions, therefore, made to England by Jay's treaty are,
through the medium of this second article in the pre-existing treaty,
made to France, and become engrafted into the treaty with France, and
can be exercised by her as a matter of right, the same as by England.

Jay's treaty makes a concession to England, and that unconditionally,
of seizing naval stores in American ships, and condemning them as
contraband. It makes also a concession to England to seize provisions
and _other articles_ in American ships. _Other articles are all other
articles_, and none but an ignoramus, or something worse, would have put
such a phrase into a treaty. The condition annexed in this case is, that
the provisions and other articles so seized, are to be paid for at a
price to be agreed upon. Mr. Washington, as President, ratified
this treaty after he knew the British Government had recommended an
indiscriminate seizure of provisions and all other articles in American
ships; and it is now known that those seizures were made to fit out the
expedition going to Quiberon Bay, and it was known before hand that they
would be made. The evidence goes also a good way to prove that Jay and
Grenville understood each other upon that subject. Mr. Pinckney,(1)
when he passed through France on his way to Spain, spoke of the
recommencement of the seizures as a thing that would take place.

     1 Gen. Thomas Pinckney, U. S. Minister to England.--
     _Editor._

The French government had by some means received information from London
to the same purpose, with the addition, that the recommencement of
the seizures would cause no misunderstanding between the British and
American governments. Grenville, in defending himself against the
opposition in Parliament, on account of the scarcity of corn, said (see
his speech at the opening of the Parliament that met October 29, 1795)
that _the supplies for the Quiberon expedition were furnished out of the
American ships_, and all the accounts received at that time from
England stated that those seizures were made under the treaty. After the
supplies for the Quiberon expedition had been procured, and the expected
success had failed, the seizures were countermanded; and had the French
seized provision vessels going to England, it is probable that the
Quiberon expedition could not have been attempted.

In one point of view, the treaty with England operates as a loan to
the English government. It gives permission to that government to take
American property at sea, to any amount, and pay for it when it suits
her; and besides this, the treaty is in every point of view a surrender
of the rights of American commerce and navigation, and a refusal to
France of the rights of neutrality. The American flag is not now a
neutral flag to France; Jay's treaty of surrender gives a monopoly of it
to England.

On the contrary, the treaty of commerce between America and France
was formed on the most liberal principles, and calculated to give the
greatest encouragement to the infant commerce of America. France was
neither a carrier nor an exporter of naval stores or of provisions.
Those articles belonged wholly to America, and they had all the
protection in that treaty which a treaty could give. But so much has
that treaty been perverted, that the liberality of it on the part
of France, has served to encourage Jay to form a counter-treaty with
England; for he must have supposed the hands of France tied up by her
treaty with America, when he was making such large concessions in favour
of England. The injury which Mr. Washington's administration has done to
the character as well as to the commerce of America, is too great to be
repaired by him. Foreign nations will be shy of making treaties with
a government that has given the faithless example of perverting the
liberality of a former treaty to the injury of the party with whom it
was made.(1)

     1 For an analysis of the British Treaty see Wharton's
     "Digest of the International Law of the United States," vol.
     it, § 150 a. Paine's analysis is perfectly correct.--
     _Editor._.

In what a fraudulent light must Mr. Washington's character appear in the
world, when his declarations and his conduct are compared together! Here
follows the letter he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety, while Jay
was negotiating in profound secrecy this treacherous treaty:

"George Washington, President of the United States of America, to the
Representatives of the French people, members of the Committee of Public
Safety of the French Republic, the great and good friend and ally of the
United States.

"On the intimation of the wish of the French republic that à new
Minister should be sent from the United States, I resolved to manifest
my sense of the readiness with which _my_ request was fulfilled, [that
of recalling Genet,] by immediately fulfilling the request of your
government, [that of recalling Morris].

"It was some time before a character could be obtained, worthy of the
high office of expressing the attachment of the United States to
the happiness of our allies, _and drawing closer the bonds of our
friendship_. I have now made choice of James Monroe, one of our
distinguished citizens, to reside near the French republic, in quality
of Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America. He is
instructed to bear to you our _sincere solicitude for your welfare, and
to cultivate with teal the cordiality so happily subsisting between
us_. From a knowledge of his fidelity, probity, and good conduct, I have
entire confidence that he will render himself acceptable to you,
and give effect to your desire of preserving and _advancing, on all
occasions, the interest and connection of the two nations_. I beseech
you, therefore, to give full credence to whatever he shall say to you
on the part of the United States, and _most of all, when he shall assure
you that your prosperity is an object of our affection_.

"And I pray God to have the French Republic in his holy keeping.

"G. Washington."


Was it by entering into a treaty with England to surrender French
property on board American ships to be seized by the English, while
English property on board American ships was declared by the French
treaty not to be seizable, _that the bonds of friendship between America
and France were to be drawn the closer?_ Was it by declaring naval
stores contraband when coming to France, whilst by the French treaty
they were not contraband when going to England, that the _connection
between France and America was to be advanced?_ Was it by opening the
American ports to the British navy in the present war, from which ports
the same navy had been expelled by the aid solicited from France in the
American war (and that aid gratuitously given) (2) that the gratitude
of America was to be shewn, and the _solicitude_ spoken of in the letter
demonstrated?

     1 The italics are Paine's. Paine's free use of this document
     suggests that he possessed the confidence of the French
     Directory.--_Editor._

     2  It is notable that Paine adheres to his old contention in
     his controversy with Deane. See vol. i., ch. aa of this work;
     and vol. i., ch. 9 of my "Life of Paine."--_Editor._.

As the letter was addressed to the Committee of Public Safety, Mr.
Washington did not expect it would get abroad in the world, or be seen
by any other eye than that of Robespierre, or be heard by any other ear
than that of the Committee; that it would pass as a whisper across the
Atlantic, from one dark chamber to the other, and there terminate. It
was calculated to remove from the mind of the Committee all suspicion
upon Jay's mission to England, and, in this point of view, it was suited
to the circumstances of the movement then passing; but as the event
of that mission has proved the letter to be hypocritical, it serves no
other purpose of the present moment than to shew that the writer is
not to be credited. Two circumstances serve to make the reading of the
letter necessary in the Convention. The one was, that they who succeeded
on the fall of Robespierre, found it most proper to act with publicity;
the other, to extinguish the suspicions which the strange conduct of
Morris had occasioned in France.

When the British treaty, and the ratification of it by Mr. Washington,
was known in France, all further declarations from him of his good
disposition as an ally and friend, passed for so many cyphers; but still
it appeared necessary to him to keep up the farce of declarations. It
is stipulated in the British treaty, that commissioners are to report
at the end of two years, on the case of _neutral ships making neutral
property_. In the mean time, neutral ships do _not_ make neutral
property, according to the British treaty, and they _do_ according to
the French treaty. The preservation, therefore, of the French treaty
became of great importance to England, as by that means she can employ
American ships as carriers, whilst the same advantage is denied to
France. Whether the French treaty could exist as a matter of right after
this clandestine perversion of it, could not but give some apprehensions
to the partizans of the British treaty, and it became necessary to them
to make up, by fine words, what was wanting in good actions.

An opportunity offered to that purpose. The Convention, on the public
reception of Mr. Monroe, ordered the American flag and the French flags
to be displayed unitedly in the hall of the Convention. Mr. Monroe made
a present of an American flag for the purpose. The Convention returned
this compliment by sending a French flag to America, to be presented by
their Minister, Mr. Adet, to the American government. This resolution
passed long before Jay's treaty was known or suspected: it passed in
the days of confidence; but the flag was not presented by Mr. Adet till
several months after the treaty had been ratified. Mr. Washington made
this the occasion of saying some fine things to the French Minister; and
the better to get himself into tune to do this, he began by saying the
finest things of himself.

"Born, sir (said he) in a land of liberty; _having_ early learned its
value; _having_ engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it; _having_,
in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent
establishment in my own country; _my_ anxious recollections, my
sympathetic feelings, and _my_ best wishes are irresistibly excited,
whenever, in any country, I see an oppressed people unfurl the banner of
freedom."

Mr. Washington, having expended so many fine phrases upon himself, was
obliged to invent a new one for the French, and he calls them "wonderful
people!" The coalesced powers acknowledged as much.

It is laughable to hear Mr. Washington talk of his _sympathetic
feelings_, who has always been remarked, even among his friends, for
not having any. He has, however, given no proofs of any to me. As to the
pompous encomiums he so liberally pays to himself, on the score of the
American revolution, the reality of them may be questioned; and since
he has forced them so much into notice, it is fair to examine his
pretensions.

A stranger might be led to suppose, from the egotism with which Mr.
Washington speaks, that himself, and himself only, had generated,
conducted, compleated, and established the revolution: In fine, that it
was all his own doing.

In the first place, as to the political part, he had no share in it;
and, therefore, the whole of _that_ is out of the question with respect
to him. There remains, then, only the military part; and it would have
been prudent in Mr. Washington not to have awakened enquiry upon that
subject. Fame then was cheap; he enjoyed it cheaply; and nobody was
disposed to take away the laurels that, whether they were _acquired_ or
not, had been _given_.

Mr. Washington's merit consisted in constancy. But constancy was the
common virtue of the revolution. Who was there that was inconstant? I
know but of one military defection, that of Arnold; and I know of no
political defection, among those who made themselves eminent when the
revolution was formed by the declaration of independence. Even Silas
Deane, though he attempted to defraud, did not betray.(1)

     1 This generous judgment by Deane's old adversary has become
     questionable under recent investigations.--_Editor._.

But when we speak of military character, something more is to be
understood than constancy; and something more _ought_ to be understood
than the Fabian system of _doing nothing_. The _nothing_ part can be
done by any body. Old Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper of head quarters,
(who threatened to make the sun and the wind shine through Rivington of
New York,) 'could have done it as well as Mr. Washington. Deborah would
have been as good as Barak.

Mr. Washington had the nominal rank of Commander in Chief, but he was
not so in fact. He had, in reality, only a separate command. He had no
controul over, or direction of, the army to the northward under Gates,
that captured Burgoyne; nor of that to the south under [Nathaniel]
Greene, that recovered the southern States.(2) The nominal rank,
however, of Commander in Chief, served to throw upon him the lustre
of those actions, and to make him appear as the soul and centre of all
military operations in America.

     1 The Tory publisher of New York City, whose press was
     destroyed in 1775 by a mob of Connecticut soldiers.--
     _Editor._

     2 See Mr. Winterbotham's valuable History of America, lately
     published.--Author. [The "History of the Establishment of
     Independence" is contained in the first of Mr.
     Winterbotham's four volumes (London, 1795).--_Editor._.]

He commenced his command June, 1775, during the time the Massachusetts
army lay before Boston, and after the affair of Bunker-hill. The
commencement of his command was the commencement of inactivity. Nothing
was afterwards done, or attempted to be done, during the nine months
he remained before Boston. If we may judge from the resistance made at
Concord, and afterwards at Bunker-hill, there was a spirit of enterprise
at that time, which the presence of Mr. Washington chilled into cold
defence. By the advantage of a good exterior he attracts respect, which
his habitual silence tends to preserve; but he has not the talent of
inspiring ardour in an army. The enemy removed from Boston in March
1776, to wait for reinforcements from Europe, and to take a more
advantageous position at New York.

The inactivity of the campaign of 1775, on the part of General
Washington, when the enemy had a less force than in any other future
period of the war, and the injudicious choice of positions taken by
him in the campaign of 1776, when the enemy had its greatest force,
necessarily produced the losses and misfortunes that marked that gloomy
campaign. The positions taken were either islands or necks of land.
In the former, the enemy, by the aid of their ships, could bring their
whole force against apart of General Washington's, as in the affair
of Long Island; and in the latter, he might be shut up as in the bottom
of a bag. This had nearly been the case at New York, and it was so in
part; it was actually the case at Fort Washington; and it would have
been the case at Fort Lee, if General Greene had not moved precipitately
off, leaving every thing behind, and by gaining Hackinsack bridge, got
out of the bag of Bergen Neck. How far Mr. Washington, as General, is
blameable for these matters, I am not undertaking to determine; but they
are evidently defects in military geography. The successful skirmishes
at the close of that campaign, (matters that would scarcely be noticed
in a better state of things,) make the brilliant exploits of General
Washington's seven campaigns. No wonder we see so much pusillanimity in
the President, when we see so little enterprise in the General!

The campaign of 1777 became famous, not by anything on the part of
General Washington, but by the capture of General Burgoyne, and the
army under his command, by the Northern army at Saratoga, under General
Gates. So totally distinct and unconnected were the two armies of
Washington and Gates, and so independent was the latter of the authority
of the nominal Commander in Chief, that the two Generals did not so much
as correspond, and it was only by a letter of General (since Governor)
Clinton, that General Washington was informed of that event. The British
took possession of Philadelphia this year, which they evacuated
the next, just time enough to save their heavy baggage and fleet of
transports from capture by the French Admiral d'Estaing, who arrived at
the mouth of the Delaware soon after.

The capture of Burgoyne gave an eclat in Europe to the American arms,
and facilitated the alliance with France. The eclat, however, was
not kept up by any thing on the part of General Washington. The same
unfortunate languor that marked his entrance into the field, continued
always. Discontent began to prevail strongly against him, and a party
was formed in Congress, whilst sitting at York-town, in Pennsylvania,
for removing him from the command of the army. The hope, however,
of better times, the news of the alliance with France, and the
unwillingness of shewing discontent, dissipated the matter.

Nothing was done in the campaigns of 1778, 1779, 1780, in the part
where General Washington commanded, except the taking of Stony Point by
General Wayne. The Southern States in the mean time were over-run by the
enemy. They were afterwards recovered by General Greene, who had in a
very great measure created the army that accomplished that recovery.
In all this General Washington had no share. The Fabian system of war,
followed by him, began now to unfold itself with all its evils; but
what is Fabian war without Fabian means to support it? The finances of
Congress depending wholly on emissions of paper money, were exhausted.
Its credit was gone. The continental treasury was not able to pay the
expense of a brigade of waggons to transport the necessary stores to the
army, and yet the sole object, the establishment of the revolution,
was a thing of remote distance. The time I am now speaking of is in the
latter end of the year 1780.

In this situation of things it was found not only expedient, but
absolutely necessary, for Congress to state the whole case to its ally.
I knew more of this matter, (before it came into Congress or was known
to General Washington) of its progress, and its issue, than I chuse
to state in this letter. Colonel John Laurens was sent to France as an
Envoy Extraordinary on this occasion, and by a private agreement between
him and me I accompanied him. We sailed from Boston in the Alliance
frigate, February 11th, 1781. France had already done much in accepting
and paying bills drawn by Congress. She was now called upon to do more.
The event of Colonel Laurens's mission, with the aid of the venerable
Minister, Franklin, was, that France gave in money, as a present, six
millions of livres, and ten millions more as a loan, and agreed to send
a fleet of not less than thirty sail of the line, at her own expense,
as an aid to America. Colonel Laurens and myself returned from Brest the
1st of June following, taking with us two millions and a half of livres
(upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling) of the money given,
and convoying two ships with stores.

We arrived at Boston the 25th of August following. De Grasse arrived
with the French fleet in the Chesapeak at the same time, and was
afterwards joined by that of Barras, making 31 sail of the line.
The money was transported in waggons from Boston to the Bank at
Philadelphia, of which Mr. Thomas Willing, who has since put himself at
the head of the list of petitioners in favour of the British treaty, was
then President. And it was by the aid of this money, and this fleet, and
of Rochambeau's army, that Cornwallis was taken; the laurels of which
have been unjustly given to Mr. Washington. His merit in that affair was
no more than that of any other American officer.

I have had, and still have, as much pride in the American revolution as
any man, or as Mr. Washington has a right to have; but that pride has
never made me forgetful whence the great aid came that compleated
the business. Foreign aid (that of France) was calculated upon at the
commencement of the revolution. It is one of the subjects treated of
in the pamphlet _Common Sense_, but as a matter that could not be hoped
for, unless independence was declared.1 The aid, however, was greater
than could have been expected.

It is as well the ingratitude as the pusillanimity of Mr. Washington,
and the Washington faction, that has brought upon America the loss
of character she now suffers in the world, and the numerous evils her
commerce has undergone, and to which it is yet exposed. The British
Ministry soon found out what sort of men they had to deal with, and they
dealt with them accordingly; and if further explanation was wanting, it
has been fully given since, in the snivelling address of the New York
Chamber of Commerce to the President, and in that of sundry merchants of
Philadelphia, which was not much better.

     1  See vol. i. of this work, p. ixx. Paine was sharply taken
     to task on this point by "Cato."   Ib.% pp. 145-147.--
     _Editor._.

When the revolution of America was finally established by the
termination of the war, the world gave her credit for great character;
and she had nothing to do but to stand firm upon that ground. The
British ministry had their hands too full of trouble to have provoked
a rupture with her, had she shown a proper resolution to defend her
rights. But encouraged as they were by the submissive character of the
American administration, they proceeded from insult to insult, till none
more were left to be offered. The proposals made by Sweden and Denmark
to the American administration were disregarded. I know not if so much
as an answer has been returned to them. The minister penitentiary,
(as some of the British prints called him,) Mr. Jay, was sent on a
pilgrimage to London, to make up all by penance and petition. In the
mean time the lengthy and drowsy writer of the pieces signed _Camillas_
held himself in reserve to vindicate every thing; and to sound in
America the tocsin of terror upon the inexhaustible resources of
England. Her resources, says he, are greater than those of all the other
powers. This man is so intoxicated with fear and finance, that he knows
not the difference between _plus_ and _minus_--between a hundred pounds
in hand, and a hundred pounds worse than nothing.

The commerce of America, so far as it had been established by all the
treaties that had been formed prior to that by Jay, was free, and the
principles upon which it was established were good. That ground ought
never to have been departed from. It was the justifiable ground
of right, and no temporary difficulties ought to have induced an
abandonment of it. The case is now otherwise. The ground, the scene, the
pretensions, the everything, are changed. The commerce of America is, by
Jay's treaty, put under foreign dominion. The sea is not free for her.
Her right to navigate it is reduced to the right of escaping; that is,
until some ship of England or France stops her vessels, and carries them
into port. Every article of American produce, whether from the sea or
the sand, fish, flesh, vegetable, or manufacture, is, by Jay's treaty,
made either contraband or seizable. Nothing is exempt. In all other
treaties of commerce, the article which enumerates the contraband
articles, such as fire arms, gunpowder, &c, is followed by another
article which enumerates the articles not contraband: but it is not so
in Jay's treaty. There is no exempting article. Its place is supplied by
the article for seizing and carrying into port; and the sweeping phrase
of "provisions and _other articles _" includes every thing. There never
was such a base and servile treaty of surrender since treaties began to
exist.

This is the ground upon which America now stands. All her rights
of commerce and navigation are to begin anew, and that with loss of
character to begin with. If there is sense enough left in the heart
to call a blush into the cheek, the Washington administration must
be ashamed to appear.--And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private
friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger)
and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide
whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned
good principles, or whether you ever had any.

Thomas Paine.




XXIII. OBSERVATIONS.(1)

     1 State Archives, Paris, États Unis, vol. 43, fol. 100.
     Undated, but evidently written early in the year 1795, when
     Jay's Treaty was as yet unknown. Paine was then staying in
     the house of the American Minister, Monroe.--' Editor,

The United States of America are negociating with Spain respecting the
free Navigation of the Mississippi, and the territorial limits of this
large river, in conformity with the Treaty of Peace with England dated
30th November, 1782. As the brilliant successes of the French Republic
have forced England to grant us, what was in all justice our due, so the
continuation of the prosperity of the Republic, will force Spain to make
a Treaty with us on the points in controversy.

Since it is certain that all that we shall obtain from Spain will be due
to the victories of France, and as the inhabitants of the western part
of the United States (which part contains or covers more than half
the United States), have decided to claim their rights to the free
navigation of the Mississippi, would it not be a wiser policy for the
Republican Government (who have only to command to obtain) to arrogate
all the merit, by making our demands to Spain, one of the conditions, of
France, to consent to restore peace to the Castilians. They have only
to declare, they will not make Peace, or that they will support with
all their might, the just reclamations of their allies against these
Powers,--against England for the surrender of the frontier posts, and
for the indemnities due through their depredations on our Trade, and
against Spain for our territorial limits, and the free navigation of
the Mississippi. This declaration would certainly not prolong the War a
single day more, nor cost the Republic an obole, whilst it would assure
all the merit of success to France, and besides produce all the good
effects mentioned above.

It may perhaps be observed that the Negociation is already finished
with England, and perhaps in a manner which will not be approved of by
France. That may be, (though the terms of this arrangement may not be
known); but as to Spain, the negociation is still pending, and it is
evident that if France makes the above _Declaration_ as to this Power
(which declaration would be a demonstrative proof of what she would
have done in the other case if circumstances had required it), she would
receive the same credit as if the Declaration had been made relatively
to the two Powers. In fact the Decree or resolution (and perhaps this
last would be preferable) can be worded in terms which would declare
that in case the arrangement with England were not satisfactory, France
will nevertheless, maintain the just demands of America against
that Power. A like Declaration, in case Mr. Jay should do anything
reprehensible, and which might even be approved of in America, would
certainly raise the reputation of the French Republic to the most
eminent degree of splendour, and lower in proportion that of her
enemies.

It is very certain that France cannot better favour the views of the
British party in America, and wound in a most sensible manner the
Republican Government of this country, than by adopting a strict and
oppressive policy with regard to us. Every one knows that the injustices
committed by the privateers and other ships belonging to the French
Republic against our navigation, were causes of exultation and joy
to this party, even when their own properties were subjected to these
depredations, whilst the friends of France and the Revolution were vexed
and most confused about it. It follows then, that a generous policy
would produce quite opposite effects--it would acquire for France the
merit that is her due; it would discourage the hopes of her adversaries,
and furnish the friends of humanity and liberty with the means of acting
against the intrigues of England, and cement the Union, and contribute
towards the true interests of the two republics.

So sublime and generous a manner of acting, which would not cost
anything to France, would cement in a stronger way the ties between
the two republics. The effect of such an event, would confound and
annihilate in an irrevocable manner all the partisans for the British
in America. There are nineteen twentieths of our nation attached through
inclination and gratitude to France, and the small number who seek
uselessly all sorts of pretexts to magnify the small occasions of
complaint which might have subsisted previously will find itself reduced
to silence, or have to join their expressions of gratitude to ours.--The
results of this event cannot be doubted, though not reckoned on: all the
American hearts will be French, and England will be afflicted.

An American.




XXIV. DISSERTATION ON FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. (1)

     1 Printed from the first edition, whose title is as above,
     with the addition: "By Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense;
     Rights of Man; Age of Reason. Paris, Printed at the
     English Press, me de Vaugerard, No. 970. Third year of the
     French Republic." The pamphlet seems to have appeared early
     in July (perhaps the Fourth), 1795, and was meant to
     influence the decision of the National Convention on the
     Constitution then under discussion. This Constitution,
     adopted September 23d, presently swept away by Napoleon,
     contained some features which appeared to Paine reactionary.
     Those to which he most objected are quoted by him in his
     speech in the Convention, which is bound up in the same
     pamphlet, and follows this "Dissertation" in the present
     volume. In the Constitution as adopted Paine's preference
     for a plural Executive was established, and though the
     bicameral organization (the Council of Five Hundred and the
     Council of Ancients) was not such as he desired, his chief
     objection was based on his principle of manhood suffrage.
     But in regard to this see Paine's "Dissertations on
     Government," written nine years before (vol. ii., ch. vi. of
     this work), and especially p. 138 seq. of that volume, where
     he indicates the method of restraining the despotism of
     numbers.--_Editor._,

There is no subject more interesting to every man than the subject of
government. His security, be he rich or poor, and in a great measure
his prosperity, are connected therewith; it is therefore his interest
as well as his duty to make himself acquainted with its principles, and
what the practice ought to be.

Every art and science, however imperfectly known at first, has been
studied, improved, and brought to what we call perfection by the
progressive labours of succeeding generations; but the science of
government has stood still. No improvement has been made in the
principle and scarcely any in the practice till the American revolution
began. In all the countries of Europe (except in France) the same forms
and systems that were erected in the remote ages of ignorance still
continue, and their antiquity is put in the place of principle; it is
forbidden to investigate their origin, or by what right they exist.
If it be asked how has this happened, the answer is easy: they are
established on a principle that is false, and they employ their power to
prevent detection.

Notwithstanding the mystery with which the science of government has
been enveloped, for the purpose of enslaving, plundering, and imposing
upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy
to be understood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins
its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point,
or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by
the assistance of which the progress is facilitated. The same method
ought to be observed with respect to the science of government.

Instead then of embarrassing the subject in the outset with the numerous
subdivisions under which different forms of government have been
classed, such as aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, &c.
the better method will be to begin with what may be called primary
divisions, or those under which all the several subdivisions will be
comprehended.

The primary divisions are but two:

First, government by election and representation.

Secondly, government by hereditary succession.

All the several forms and systems of government, however numerous
or diversified, class themselves under one or other of those primary
divisions; for either they are on the system of representation, or on
that of hereditary succession. As to that equivocal thing called mixed
government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present
government of England, it does not make an exception to the general
rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative
or hereditary.

Beginning then our enquiries at this point, we have first to examine
into the nature of those two primary divisions.

If they are equally right in principle, it is mere matter of opinion
which we prefer. If the one be demonstratively better than the other,
that difference directs our choice; but if one of them should be so
absolutely false as not to have a right to existence, the matter settles
itself at once; because a negative proved on one thing, where two only
are offered, and one must be accepted, amounts to an affirmative on the
other.

The revolutions that are now spreading themselves in the world have
their origin in this state of the case, and the present war is a
conflict between the representative system founded on the rights of the
people, and the hereditary system founded in usurpation. As to what are
called Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, they do not, either as things
or as terms, sufficiently describe the hereditary system; they are but
secondary things or signs of the hereditary system, and which fall of
themselves if that system has not a right to exist. Were there no
such terms as Monarchy, Royalty, and Aristocracy, or were other terms
substituted in their place, the hereditary system, if it continued,
would not be altered thereby. It would be the same system under any
other titulary name as it is now.

The character therefore of the revolutions of the present day
distinguishes itself most definitively by grounding itself on the system
of representative government, in opposition to the hereditary. No other
distinction reaches the whole of the principle.

Having thus opened the case generally, I proceed, in the first place, to
examine the hereditary system, because it has the priority in point of
time. The representative system is the invention of the modern world;
and, that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it
before hand, which is, _that there is not a problem in Euclid more
mathematically true, than that hereditary government has not a right to
exist. When therefore we take from any man the exercise of hereditary
power, we take away that which he never had the right to possess, and
which no law or custom could, or ever can, give him a title to_.

The arguments that have hitherto been employed against the hereditary
system have been chiefly founded upon the absurdity of it, and its
incompetency to the purpose of good government. Nothing can present to
our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity, than
that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does,
into the hands of a lad necessarily destitute of experience, and often
little better than a fool. It is an insult to every man of years, of
character, and of talents, in a country. The moment we begin to reason
upon the hereditary system, it falls into derision; let but a single
idea begin, and a thousand will soon follow. Insignificance, imbecility,
childhood, dotage, want of moral character; in fine, every defect
serious or laughable unite to hold up the hereditary system as a figure
of ridicule. Leaving, however, the ridiculousness of the thing to the
reflections of the reader, I proceed to the more important part of the
question, namely, whether such a system has a right to exist.

To be satisfied of the right of a thing to exist, we must be satisfied
that it had a right to begin. If it had not a right to begin, it has not
a right to continue. By what right then did the hereditary system begin?
Let a man but ask himself this question, and he will find that he cannot
satisfy himself with an answer.

The right which any man or any family had to set itself up at first to
govern a nation, and to establish itself hereditarily, was no other than
the right which Robespierre had to do the same thing in France. If he
had none, they had none. If they had any, he had as much; for it is
impossible to discover superiority of right in any family, by virtue of
which hereditary government could begin. The Capets, the Guelphs,
the Robespierres, the Marats, are all on the same standing as to the
question of right. It belongs exclusively to none.

It is one step towards liberty, to perceive that hereditary government
could not begin as an exclusive right in any family. The next point
will be, whether, having once begun, it could grow into a right by the
influence of time.

This would be supposing an absurdity; for either it is putting time in
the place of principle, or making it superior to principle; whereas time
has no more connection with, or influence upon principle, than principle
has upon time. The wrong which began a thousand years ago, is as much a
wrong as if it began to-day; and the right which originates to-day, is
as much a right as if it had the sanction of a thousand years. Time with
respect to principles is an eternal now: it has no operation upon them:
it changes nothing of their nature and qualities. But what have we to
do with a thousand years? Our life-time is but a short portion of that
period, and if we find the wrong in existence as soon as we begin to
live, that is the point of time at which it begins to us; and our right
to resist it is the same as if it never existed before.

As hereditary government could not begin as a natural right in any
family, nor derive after its commencement any right from time, we have
only to examine whether there exist in a nation a right to set it up,
and establish it by what is called law, as has been done in England. I
answer NO; and that any law or any constitution made for that purpose is
an act of treason against the right of every minor in the nation, at the
time it is made, and against the rights of all succeeding generations.
I shall speak upon each of those cases. First, of the minor at the time
such law is made. Secondly, of the generations that are to follow.

A nation, in a collective sense, comprehends all the individuals of
whatever age, from just born to just dying. Of these, one part will be
minors, and the other aged. The average of life is not exactly the same
in every climate and country, but in general, the minority in years are
the majority in numbers; that is, the number of persons under twenty-one
years, is greater than the number of persons above that age. This
difference in number is not necessary to the establishment of the
principle I mean to lay down, but it serves to shew the justice of it
more strongly. The principle would be equally as good, if the majority
in years were also the majority in numbers.

The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged. The
difference is altogether in the different age of the two parties, and
nothing in the nature of the rights; the rights are the same rights;
and are to be preserved inviolate for the inheritance of the minors when
they shall come of age. During the minority of minors their rights are
under the sacred guardianship of the aged. The minor cannot surrender
them; the guardian cannot dispossess him; consequently, the aged part
of a nation, who are the law-makers for the time being, and who, in the
march of life are but a few years ahead of those who are yet minors, and
to whom they must shortly give place, have not and cannot have the right
to make a law to set up and establish hereditary government, or, to
speak more distinctly, _an hereditary succession of governors_; because
it is an attempt to deprive every minor in the nation, at the time such
a law is made, of his inheritance of rights when he shall come of age,
and to subjugate him to a system of government to which, during his
minority, he could neither consent nor object.

If a person who is a minor at the time such a law is proposed, had
happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of
twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected
against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of
it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If,
therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights
after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he
been of age at the time, it is undeniably a law to take away and annul
the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the
time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot
exist.

I come now to speak of government by hereditary succession, as it
applies to succeeding generations; and to shew that in this case, as in
the case of minors, there does not exist in a nation a right to set it
up.

A nation, though continually existing, is continually in a state of
renewal and succession. It is never stationary.

Every day produces new births, carries minors forward to maturity, and
old persons from the stage. In this ever running flood of generations
there is no part superior in authority to another. Could we conceive an
idea of superiority in any, at what point of time, or in what century of
the world, are we to fix it? To what cause are we to ascribe it? By
what evidence are we to prove it? By what criterion are we to know it? A
single reflection will teach us that our ancestors, like ourselves, were
but tenants for life in the great freehold of rights. The fee-absolute
was not in them, it is not in us, it belongs to the whole family of
man, thro* all ages. If we think otherwise than this, we think either as
slaves or as tyrants. As slaves, if we think that any former generation
had a right to bind us; as tyrants, if we think that we have authority
to bind the generations that are to follow.

It may not be inapplicable to the subject, to endeavour to define what
is to be understood by a generation, in the sense the word is here used.

As a natural term its meaning is sufficiently clear. The father, the
son, the grandson, are so many distinct generations. But when we speak
of a generation as describing the persons in whom legal authority
resides, as distinct from another generation of the same description who
are to succeed them, it comprehends all those who are above the age of
twenty-one years, at the time that we count from; and a generation of
this kind will continue in authority between fourteen and twenty-one
years, that is, until the number of minors, who shall have arrived at
age, shall be greater than the number of persons remaining of the former
stock.

For example: if France, at this or any other moment, contains
twenty-four millions of souls, twelve millions will be males, and twelve
females. Of the twelve millions of males, six millions will be of the
age of twenty-one years, and six will be under, and the authority
to govern will reside in the first six. But every day will make some
alteration, and in twenty-one years every one of those minors who
survives will have arrived at age, and the greater part of the former
stock will be gone: the majority of persons then living, in whom the
legal authority resides, will be composed of those who, twenty-one years
before, had no legal existence. Those will be fathers and grandfathers
in their turn, and, in the next twenty-one years, (or less) another race
of minors, arrived at age, will succeed them, and so on.

As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to
another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any
to establish government by hereditary succession, because it would be
supposing itself possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely,
that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter
governed and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is, and must
be, (as a matter of right,) as free to act for itself in all cases, as
the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of
governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all
tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a
property in the generations that are to follow.

In the first part of the Rights of Man I have spoken of government by
hereditary succession; and I will here close the subject with an extract
from that work, which states it under the two following heads. (1)

     1 The quotation, here omitted, will be found in vol. ii. of
     this work, beginning with p. 364, and continuing, with a few
     omissions, to the 15th line of p. 366. This "Dissertation"
     was originally written for circulation in Holland, where
     Paine's "Rights of Man" was not well known.--_Editor._


*****


The history of the English parliament furnishes an example of this kind;
and which merits to be recorded, as being the greatest instance of
legislative ignorance and want of principle that is to be found in any
country. The case is as follows:

The English parliament of 1688, imported a man and his wife from
Holland, _William and Mary_, and made them king and queen of England.
(2) Having done this, the said parliament made a law to convey the
government of the country to the heirs of William and Mary, in the
following words: "We, the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, do,
in the name of the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit
_ourselves, our heirs, and posterities_, to William and Mary, _their
heirs and posterities_, for ever." And in a subsequent law, as quoted by
Edmund Burke, the said parliament, in the name of the people of England
then living, _binds the said people, their heirs and posterities, to
William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, to the end of time_.

     2 "The Bill of Rights (temp. William III.) shows that the
     Lords and Commons met not in Parliament but in convention,
     that they declared against James II., and in favour of
     William III.  The latter was accepted as sovereign, and, when
     monarch. Acta of Parliament were passed confirming what had
     been done."--Joseph Fisher in Notes and Queries (London),
     May 2,1874. This does not affect Paine's argument, as a
     Convention could have no more right to bind the future than
     a Parliament.--_Editor._.

It is not sufficient that we laugh at the ignorance of such law-makers;
it is necessary that we reprobate their want of principle. The
constituent assembly of France, 1789, fell into the same vice as the
parliament of England had done, and assumed to establish an hereditary
succession in the family of the Capets, as an act of the constitution
of that year. That every nation, _for the time being_, has a right to
govern itself as it pleases, must always be admitted; but government by
hereditary succession is government for another race of people, and
not for itself; and as those on whom it is to operate are not yet in
existence, or are minors, so neither is the right in existence to set it
up for them, and to assume such a right is treason against the right of
posterity.

I here close the arguments on the first head, that of government by
hereditary succession; and proceed to the second, that of government
by election and representation; or, as it may be concisely expressed,
_representative government_, in contra-distinction to _hereditary
government_.

Reasoning by exclusion, if _hereditary government_ has not a right to
exist, and that it has not is proveable, _representative government_ is
admitted of course.

In contemplating government by election and representation, we amuse
not ourselves in enquiring when or how, or by what right, it began. Its
origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence
of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his
person is the title deed.(1)

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of
Rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice
of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from
the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor
have to exclude the rich; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on
either side, it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that
would exclude another? That other has a right to exclude him.

That which is now called aristocracy implies an inequality of rights;
but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality?
Will the rich exclude themselves? No. Will the poor exclude themselves?
No. By what right then can any be excluded? It would be a question, if
any man or class of men have a right to exclude themselves; but, be this
as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will
not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to
assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right
to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting for
representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred
kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon
the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property
of rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and
merits to have it taken from him.

     1 "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for
     among old parchments or musty records. They are written as
     with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the
     hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured
     by mortal power."--Alexander Hamilton, 1775. (Cf. Rights of
     Man, Toi. ii., p. 304): "Portions of antiquity by proving
     everything establish nothing. It is authority against
     authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of
     the rights of man at the creation."--_Editor._.

Inequality of rights is created by a combination in one part of the
community to exclude another part from its rights. Whenever it be made
an article of a constitution, or a law, that the right of voting, or
of electing and being elected, shall appertain exclusively to persons
possessing a certain quantity of property, be it little or much, it is a
combination of the persons possessing that quantity to exclude those who
do not possess the same quantity. It is investing themselves with powers
as a self-created part of society, to the exclusion of the rest.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality
of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves; and
in this view of the case, pardoning the vanity of the thing, aristocracy
is a subject of laughter. This self-soothing vanity is encouraged by
another idea not less selfish, which is, that the opposers conceive they
are playing a safe game, in which there is a chance to gain and none
to lose; that at any rate the doctrine of equality includes _them_,
and that if they cannot get more rights than those whom they oppose and
would exclude, they shall not have less. This opinion has already been
fatal to thousands, who, not contented with _equal rights_, have sought
more till they lost all, and experienced in themselves the degrading
_inequality_ they endeavoured to fix upon others.

In any view of the case it is dangerous and impolitic, sometimes
ridiculous, and always unjust, to make property the criterion of the
right of voting. If the sum or value of the property upon which the
right is to take place be considerable, it will exclude a majority of
the people, and unite them in a common interest against the government
and against those who support it; and as the power is always with
the majority, they can overturn such a government and its supporters
whenever they please.

If, in order to avoid this danger, a small quantity of property be
fixed, as the criterion of the right, it exhibits liberty in disgrace,
by putting it in competition with accident and insignificance. When a
brood-mare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that, by being
worth the sum in question, shall convey to its owner the right of
voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of
such a right exist? Is it in the man, or in the mule? When we consider
how many ways property may be acquired without merit, and lost without a
crime, we ought to spurn the idea of making it a criterion of rights.

But the offensive part of the case is, that this exclusion from the
right of voting implies a stigma on the moral char* acter of the persons
excluded; and this is what no part of the community has a right to
pronounce upon another part. No external circumstance can justify it:
wealth is no proof of moral character; nor poverty of the want of it.
On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty;
and poverty the negative evidence of innocence. If therefore property,
whether little or much, be made a criterion, the means by which that
property has been acquired ought to be made a criterion also.

The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is
consistent with justice, would be to inflict it as a punishment for a
certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from
others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by
which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce
a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of
another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives
is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men
is as criminal as the proposal to take away property. When we speak
of right, we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties: rights
become duties by reciprocity. The right which I enjoy becomes my duty
to guarantee it to another, and he to me; and those who violate the duty
justly incur a forfeiture of the right.

In a political view of the case, the strength and permanent security
of government is in proportion to the number of people interested in
supporting it. The true policy therefore is to interest the whole by
an equality of rights, for the danger arises from exclusions. It is
possible to exclude men from the right of voting, but it is impossible
to exclude them from the right of rebelling against that exclusion; and
when all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made
perfect.

While men could be persuaded they had no rights, or that rights
appertained only to a certain class of men, or that government was a
thing existing in right of itself, it was not difficult to govern
them authoritatively. The ignorance in which they were held, and the
superstition in which they were instructed, furnished the means of doing
it. But when the ignorance is gone, and the superstition with it; when
they perceive the imposition that has been acted upon them; when they
reflect that the cultivator and the manufacturer are the primary
means of all the wealth that exists in the world, beyond what nature
spontaneously produces; when they begin to feel their consequence by
their usefulness, and their right as members of society, it is then no
longer possible to govern them as before. The fraud once detected
cannot be re-acted. To attempt it is to provoke derision, or invite
destruction.

That property will ever be unequal is certain. Industry, superiority
of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate
opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever
produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill sounding
names of avarice and oppression; and besides this, there are some men
who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery
or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their
wants or their independence; whilst in others there is an avidity to
obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of
their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required
with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it
criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a
criterion for exclusive rights.

In institutions that are purely pecuniary, such as that of a bank or a
commercial company, the rights of the members composing that company are
wholly created by the property they invest therein; and no other rights
are represented in the government of that company, than what arise out
of that property; neither has that government cognizance of _any thing
but property_.

But the case is totally different with respect to the institution of
civil government, organized on the system of representation. Such a
government has cognizance of every thing, and of _every man_ as a member
of the national society, whether he has property or not; and, therefore,
the principle requires that _every man_, and _every kind of right_, be
represented, of which the right to acquire and to hold property is but
one, and that not of the most essential kind. The protection of a man's
person is more sacred than the protection of property; and besides
this, the faculty of performing any kind of work or services by which
he acquires a livelihood, or maintaining his family, is of the nature of
property. It is property to him; he has acquired it; and it is as much
the object of his protection as exterior property, possessed without
that faculty, can be the object of protection in another person.

I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much
or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as
can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to
violence; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. When
rights are secure, property is secure in consequence. But when property
is made a pretence for unequal or exclusive rights, it weakens the right
to hold the property, and provokes indignation and tumult; for it is
unnatural to believe that property can be secure under the guarantee of
a society injured in its rights by the influence of that property.

Next to the injustice and ill-policy of making property a pretence
for exclusive rights, is the unaccountable absurdity of giving to mere
_sound_ the idea of property, and annexing to it certain rights; for
what else is a _title_ but sound? Nature is often giving to the world
some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal
consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, &c. They were truly great
or noble.

But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd
as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all
counterfeits.

This wax-work order has assumed the name of aristocracy; and the
disgrace of it would be lessened if it could be considered only as
childish imbecility. We pardon foppery because of its insignificance»
and on the same ground we might pardon the foppery of Titles. But the
origin of aristocracy was worse than foppery. It was robbery. The
first aristocrats in all countries were brigands. Those of later times,
sycophants.

It is very well known that in England, (and the same will be found
in other countries) the great landed estates now held in descent were
plundered from the quiet inhabitants at the conquest. The possibility
did not exist of acquiring such estates honestly. If it be asked how
they could have been acquired, no answer but that of robbery can
be given. That they were not acquired by trade, by commerce, by
manufactures, by agriculture, or by any reputable employment, is
certain. How then were they acquired? Blush, aristocracy, to hear your
origin, for your progenitors were Thieves. They were the Robespierres
and the Jacobins of that day. When they had committed the robbery, they
endeavoured to lose the disgrace of it by sinking their real names under
fictitious ones, which they called Titles. It is ever the practice of
Felons to act in this manner. They never pass by their real names.(1)

     1 This and the preceding paragraph have been omitted from
     some editions.--Editor.

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of
Rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of
rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavour
to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the
robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure. That part
of the government of England that is called the house of lords, was
originally composed of persons who had committed the robberies of which
I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the
property they had stolen.

But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an
injurious effect on the moral and physical character of man. Like
slavery it debilitates the human faculties; for as the mind bowed down
by slavery loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary
extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting
them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind
employed upon ribbands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of
the objects consumes the man.

It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the
progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by
habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first
principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to
understand them: and it is by keeping that line and that origin always
in view that we never forget them.

An enquiry into the origin of Rights will demonstrate to us that
_rights_ are not _gifts_ from one man to another, nor from one class of
men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver, or by what
principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving? A
declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them.
It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a
detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural
right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal
guarantee of those rights from man to man. As, therefore, it is
impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin
of man, it consequently follows, that rights appertain to man in right
of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The
principle of an _equality of rights_ is clear and simple. Every man can
understand it, and it is by understanding his rights that he learns his
duties; for where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally
see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most
effectual security for his own. But if, in the formation of a
constitution, we depart from the principle of equal rights, or attempt
any modification of it, we plunge into a labyrinth of difficulties from
which there is no way out but by retreating. Where are we to stop? Or
by what principle are we to find out the point to stop at, that shall
discriminate between men of the same country, part of whom shall be
free, and the rest not? If property is to be made the criterion, it is
a total departure from every moral principle of liberty, because it
is attaching rights to mere matter, and making man the agent of that
matter. It is, moreover, holding up property as an apple of discord,
and not only exciting but justifying war against it; for I maintain the
principle, that when property is used as an instrument to take away the
rights of those who may happen not to possess property, it is used to an
unlawful purpose, as fire-arms would be in a similar case.

In a state of nature all men are equal in rights, but they are not equal
in power; the weak cannot protect themselves against the strong. This
being the case, the institution of civil society is for the purpose
of making an equalization of powers that shall be parallel to, and
a guarantee of, the equality of rights. The laws of a country, when
properly constructed, apply to this purpose. Every man takes the arm of
the law for his protection as more effectual than his own; and therefore
every man has an equal right in the formation of the government, and
of the laws by which he is to be governed and judged. In extensive
countries and societies, such as America and France, this right in the
individual can only be exercised by delegation, that is, by election and
representation; and hence it is that the institution of representative
government arises.

Hitherto, I have confined myself to matters of principle only. First,
that hereditary government has not a right to exist; that it cannot be
established on any principle of right; and that it is a violation of all
principle. Secondly, that government by election and representation has
its origin in the natural and eternal rights of man; for whether a man
be his own lawgiver, as he would be in a state of nature; or whether he
exercises his portion of legislative sovereignty in his own person, as
might be the case in small democracies where all could assemble for the
formation of the laws by which they were to be governed; or whether he
exercises it in the choice of persons to represent him in a national
assembly of representatives, the origin of the right is the same in
all cases. The first, as is before observed, is defective in power; the
second, is practicable only in democracies of small extent; the third,
is the greatest scale upon which human government can be instituted.

Next to matters of _principle_ are matters of _opinion_, and it is
necessary to distinguish between the two. Whether the rights of men
shall be equal is not a matter of opinion but of right, and consequently
of principle; for men do not hold their rights as grants from each
other, but each one in right of himself. Society is the guardian but not
the giver. And as in extensive societies, such as America and France,
the right of the individual in matters of government cannot be exercised
but by election and representation, it consequently follows that the
only system of government consistent with principle, where simple
democracy is impracticable, is the representative system. But as to the
organical part, or the manner in which the several parts of government
shall be arranged and composed, it is altogether _matter of opinion_,
It is necessary that all the parts be conformable with the _principle of
equal rights_; and so long as this principle be religiously adhered to,
no very material error can take place, neither can any error continue
long in that part which falls within the province of opinion.

In all matters of opinion, the social compact, or the principle by which
society is held together, requires that the majority of opinions becomes
the rule for the whole, and that the minority yields practical obedience
thereto. This is perfectly conformable to the principle of equal rights:
for, in the first place, every man has a _right to give an opinion_ but
no man has a right that his opinion should _govern the rest_. In the
second place, it is not supposed to be known beforehand on which side
of any question, whether for or against, any man's opinion will fall.
He may happen to be in a majority upon some questions, and in a minority
upon others; and by the same rule that he expects obedience in the one
case, he must yield it in the other. All the disorders that have arisen
in France, during the progress of the revolution, have had their origin,
not in the _principle of equal rights_, but in the violation of that
principle. The principle of equal rights has been repeatedly violated,
and that not by the majority but by the minority, and _that minority
has been composed of men possessing property as well as of men without
property; property, therefore, even upon the experience already had,
is no more a criterion of character than it is of rights_. It will
sometimes happen that the minority are right, and the majority are
wrong, but as soon as experience proves this to be the case, the
minority will increase to a majority, and the error will reform itself
by the tranquil operation of freedom of opinion and equality of rights.
Nothing, therefore, can justify an insurrection, neither can it ever be
necessary where rights are equal and opinions free.

Taking then the principle of equal rights as the foundation of the
revolution, and consequently of the constitution, the organical part,
or the manner in which the several parts of the government shall be
arranged in the constitution, will, as is already said, fall within the
province of opinion.

Various methods will present themselves upon a question of this kind,
and tho' experience is yet wanting to determine which is the best,
it has, I think, sufficiently decided which is the worst. That is
the worst, which in its deliberations and decisions is subject to
the precipitancy and passion of an individual; and when the whole
legislature is crowded into one body it is an individual in mass. In all
cases of deliberation it is necessary to have a corps of reserve, and it
would be better to divide the representation by lot into two parts, and
let them revise and correct each other, than that the whole should sit
together, and debate at once.

Representative government is not necessarily confined to any one
particular form. The principle is the same in all the forms under which
it can be arranged. The equal rights of the people is the root from
which the whole springs, and the branches may be arranged as present
opinion or future experience shall best direct. As to that _hospital of
incurables_ (as Chesterfield calls it), the British house of peers,
it is an excrescence growing out of corruption; and there is no more
affinity or resemblance between any of the branches of a legislative
body originating from the right of the people, and the aforesaid
house of peers, than between a regular member of the human body and an
ulcerated wen.

As to that part of government that is called the _executive_, it is
necessary in the first place to fix a precise meaning to the word.

There are but two divisions into which power can be arranged. First,
that of willing or decreeing the laws; secondly, that of executing or
putting them in practice. The former corresponds to the intellectual
faculties of the human mind, which reasons and determines what shall be
done; the second, to the mechanical powers of the human body, that puts
that determination into practice.(1) If the former decides, and the
latter does not perform, it is a state of imbecility; and if the latter
acts without the predetermination of the former, it is a state
of lunacy. The executive department therefore is official, and is
subordinate to the legislative, as the body is to the mind, in a
state of health; for it is impossible to conceive the idea of two
sovereignties, a sovereignty to _will_, and a sovereignty to _act_.
The executive is not invested with the power of deliberating whether it
shall act or not; it has no discretionary authority in the case; for it
can _act no other thing_ than what the laws decree, and it is _obliged_
to act conformably thereto; and in this view of the case, the executive
is made up of all the official departments that execute the laws, of
which that which is called the judiciary is the chief.

     1 Paine may have had in mind the five senses, with reference
     to the proposed five members of the Directory.--_Editor._.

But mankind have conceived an idea that _some kind of authority_ is
necessary to _superintend_ the execution of the laws and to see
that they are faithfully performed; and it is by confounding this
superintending authority with the official execution that we get
embarrassed about the term _executive power_. All the parts in the
governments of the United States of America that are called THE
EXECUTIVE, are no other than authorities to superintend the execution of
the laws; and they are so far independent of the legislative, that they
know the legislative only thro' the laws, and cannot be controuled or
directed by it through any other medium.

In what manner this superintending authority shall be appointed, or
composed, is a matter that falls within the province of opinion. Some
may prefer one method and some another; and in all cases, where opinion
only and not principle is concerned, the majority of opinions forms the
rule for all. There are however some things deducible from reason, and
evidenced by experience, that serve to guide our decision upon the case.
The one is, never to invest any individual with extraordinary power; for
besides his being tempted to misuse it, it will excite contention and
commotion in the nation for the office. Secondly, never to invest power
long in the hands of any number of individuals. The inconveniences that
may be supposed to accompany frequent changes are less to be feared than
the danger that arises from long continuance.

I shall conclude this discourse with offering some observations on the
means of _preserving liberty_; for it is not only necessary that we
establish it, but that we preserve it.

It is, in the first place, necessary that we distinguish between the
means made use of to overthrow despotism, in order to prepare the way
for the establishment of liberty, and the means to be used after the
despotism is overthrown.

The means made use of in the first case are justified by necessity.
Those means are, in general, insurrections; for whilst the established
government of despotism continues in any country it is scarcely possible
that any other means can be used. It is also certain that in the
commencement of a revolution, the revolutionary party permit to
themselves a _discretionary exercise of power_ regulated more by
circumstances than by principle, which, were the practice to continue,
liberty would never be established, or if established would soon be
overthrown. It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is
to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth
or any principle so irresistibly obvious, that all men believed it
at once. Time and reason must co-operate with each other to the final
establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be
first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction
operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct,
not to destroy.

Had a constitution been established two years ago, (as ought to have
been done,) the violences that have since desolated France and injured
the character of the revolution, would, in my opinion, have been
prevented.(1) The nation would then have had a bond of union, and every
individual would have known the line of conduct he was to follow. But,
instead of this, a revolutionary government, a thing without either
principle or authority, was substituted in its place; virtue and crime
depended upon accident; and that which was patriotism one day, became
treason the next. All these things have followed from the want of a
constitution; for it is the nature and intention of a constitution to
_prevent governing by party_, by establishing a common principle that
shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to
all parties, _thus far shalt thou go and no further_. But in the absence
of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle
governing party, party governs principle.

     1 The Constitution adopted August 10, 1793, was by the
     determination of "The Mountain," suspended during the war
     against France. The revolutionary government was thus made
     chronic--_Editor._

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to
stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He
that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine.

Paris, July, 1795.




XXV. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1795.


SPEECH IN THE FRENCH NATIONAL CONVENTION, JULY 7, 1795.

On the motion of Lanthenas, "That permission be granted to Thomas
Paine, to deliver his sentiments on the declaration of rights and the
constitution," Thomas Paine ascended the Tribune; and no opposition
being made to the motion, one of the Secretaries, who stood by Mr.
Paine, read his speech, of which the following is a literal translation:

Citizens:

The effects of a malignant fever, with which I was afflicted during a
rigorous confinement in the Luxembourg, have thus long prevented me from
attending at my post in the bosom of the Convention, and the magnitude
of the subject under discussion, and no other consideration on earth,
could induce me now to repair to my station.

A recurrence to the vicissitudes I have experienced, and the critical
situations in which I have been placed in consequence of the French
Revolution, will throw upon what I now propose to submit to the
Convention the most unequivocal proofs of my integrity, and the
rectitude of those principles which have uniformly influenced my
conduct.

In England I was proscribed for having vindicated the French Revolution,
and I have suffered a rigorous imprisonment in France for having pursued
a similar mode of conduct. During the reign of terrorism, I was a close
prisoner for eight long months, and remained so above three months after
the era of the 10th Thermidor.(1) I ought, however, to state, that I
was not persecuted by the _people_ either of England or France. The
proceedings in both countries were the effects of the despotism existing
in their respective governments. But, even if my persecution had
originated in the people at large, my principles and conduct would still
have remained the same. Principles which are influenced and subject to
the controul of tyranny, have not their foundation in the heart.

     1 By the French republican calendar this was nearly the
     time. Paine's imprisonment lasted from December 28, 1793, to
     November 4, 1794. He was by a unanimous vote recalled to the
     Convention, Dec 7, 1794, but his first appearance there was
     on July 7, 1795.--_Editor._,

A few days ago, I transmitted to you by the ordinary mode of
distribution, a short Treatise, entitled "Dissertation on the First
Principles of Government." This little work I did intend to have
dedicated to the people of Holland, who, about the time I began to write
it, were determined to accomplish a Revolution in their Government,
rather than to the people of France, who had long before effected that
glorious object. But there are, in the Constitution which is about to
be ratified by the Convention certain articles, and in the report which
preceded it certain points, so repugnant to reason, and incompatible
with the true principles of liberty, as to render this Treatise, drawn
up for another purpose, applicable to the present occasion, and under
this impression I presumed to submit it to your consideration.

If there be faults in the Constitution, it were better to expunge them
now, than to abide the event of their mischievous tendency; for certain
it is, that the plan of the Constitution which has been presented to you
is not consistent with the grand object of the Revolution, nor congenial
to the sentiments of the individuals who accomplished it.

To deprive half the people in a nation of their rights as citizens,
is an easy matter in theory or on paper: but it is a most dangerous
experiment, and rarely practicable in the execution.

I shall now proceed to the observations I have to offer on this
important subject; and I pledge myself that they shall be neither
numerous nor diffusive.

In my apprehension, a constitution embraces two distinct parts or
objects, the _Principle_ and the _Practice_; and it is not only an
essential but an indispensable provision that the practice should
emanate from, and accord with, the principle. Now I maintain, that the
reverse of this proposition is the case in the plan of the Constitution
under discussion. The first article, for instance, of the _political
state_ of citizens, (v. Title ii. of the Constitution,) says:

"Every man born and resident in France, who, being twenty-one years of
age, has inscribed his name on the Civic Register of his Canton, and who
has lived afterwards one year on the territory of the Republic, and who
pays any direct contribution whatever, real or personal, is a French
citizen." (1)

     1 The article as ultimately adopted substituted "person" for
     "man," and for "has inscribed his name" (a slight
     educational test) inserted "whose name is inscribed."--
     _Editor._

I might here ask, if those only who come under the above description are
to be considered as citizens, what designation do you mean to give the
rest of the people? I allude to that portion of the people on whom the
principal part of the labour falls, and on whom the weight of indirect
taxation will in the event chiefly press. In the structure of the social
fabric, this class of people are infinitely superior to that privileged
order whose only qualification is their wealth or territorial
possessions. For what is trade without merchants? What is land without
cultivation? And what is the produce of the land without manufactures?
But to return to the subject.

In the first place, this article is incompatible with the three first
articles of the Declaration of Rights, which precede the Constitutional
Act.

The first article of the Declaration of Rights says:

"The end of society is the public good; and the institution of
government is to secure to every individual the enjoyment of his
rights."

But the article of the Constitution to which I have just adverted
proposes as the object of society, not the public good, or in other
words, the good of _all_, but a partial good; or the good only of a
_few_; and the Constitution provides solely for the rights of this few,
to the exclusion of the many.

The second article of the Declaration of Rights says:

"The Rights of Man in society are Liberty, Equality, Security of his
person and property."

But the article alluded to in the Constitution has a direct tendency to
establish the reverse of this position, inasmuch as the persons excluded
by this _inequality_ can neither be said to possess liberty, nor
security against oppression. They are consigned totally to the caprice
and tyranny of the rest.

The third article of the Declaration of Rights says:

"Liberty consists in such acts of volition as are not injurious to
others."

But the article of the Constitution, on which I have observed, breaks
down this barrier. It enables the liberty of one part of society to
destroy the freedom of the other.

Having thus pointed out the inconsistency of this article to the
Declaration of Rights, I shall proceed to comment on that of the same
article which makes a direct contribution a necessary qualification to
the right of citizenship.

A modern refinement on the object of public revenue has divided the
taxes, or contributions, into two classes, the _direct_ and the_
indirect_, without being able to define precisely the distinction or
difference between them, because the effect of both is the same.

Those are designated indirect taxes which fall upon the consumers of
certain articles, on which the tax is imposed, because, the tax being
included in the price, the consumer pays it without taking notice of it.

The same observation is applicable to the territorial tax. The land
proprietors, in order to reimburse themselves, will rack-rent their
tenants: the farmer, of course, will transfer the obligation to the
miller, by enhancing the price of grain; the miller to the baker, by
increasing the price of flour; and the baker to the consumer, by raising
the price of bread. The territorial tax, therefore, though called
_direct_, is, in its consequences, _indirect_.

To this tax the land proprietor contributes only in proportion to the
quantity of bread and other provisions that are consumed in his own
family. The deficit is furnished by the great mass of the community,
which comprehends every individual of the nation.

From the logical distinction between the direct and in-direct taxation,
some emolument may result, I allow, to auditors of public accounts, &c.,
but to the people at large I deny that such a distinction (which by the
by is without a difference) can be productive of any practical
benefit. It ought not, therefore, to be admitted as a principle in the
constitution.

Besides this objection, the provision in question does not affect to
define, secure, or establish the right of citizenship. It consigns to
the caprice or discretion of the legislature the power of pronouncing
who shall, or shall not, exercise the functions of a citizen; and
this may be done effectually, either by the imposition of a _direct or
indirect_ tax, according to the selfish views of the legislators, or by
the mode of collecting the taxes so imposed.

Neither a tenant who occupies an extensive farm, nor a merchant or
manufacturer who may have embarked a large capital in their respective
pursuits, can ever, according to this system, attain the preemption
of a citizen. On the other hand, any upstart, who has, by succession
or management, got possession of a few acres of land or a miserable
tenement, may exultingly exercise the functions of a citizen, although
perhaps neither possesses a hundredth part of the worth or property of a
simple mechanic, nor contributes in any proportion to the exigencies of
the State.

The contempt in which the old government held mercantile pursuits, and
the obloquy that attached on merchants and manufacturers, contributed
not a little to its embarrassments, and its eventual subversion; and,
strange to tell, though the mischiefs arising from this mode of conduct
are so obvious, yet an article is proposed for your adoption which has a
manifest tendency to restore a defect inherent in the monarchy.


I shall now proceed to the second article of the same Title, with which
I shall conclude my remarks.

The second article says, "Every French soldier, who shall have served
one or more campaigns in the cause of liberty, is deemed a citizen
of the republic, without any respect or reference to other
qualifications."(1)

It would seem, that in this Article the Committee were desirous of
extricating themselves from a dilemma into which they had been plunged
by the preceding article. When men depart from an established principle
they are compelled to resort to trick and subterfuge, always shifting
their means to preserve the unity of their objects; and as it rarely
happens that the first expedient makes amends for the prostitution of
principle, they must call in aid a second, of a more flagrant nature,
to supply the deficiency of the former. In this manner legislators go
on accumulating error upon error, and artifice upon artifice, until
the mass becomes so bulky and incongruous, and their embarrassment so
desperate, that they are compelled, as their last expedient, to resort
to the very principle they had violated. The Committee were precisely
in this predicament when they framed this article; and to me, I confess,
their conduct appears specious rather than efficacious.(2)

     1 This article eventually stood: "All Frenchmen who shall
     have made one or more campaigns for the establishment of the
     Republic, are citizens, without condition as to taxes."--
     _Editor._

     2 The head of the Committee (eleven) was the Abbé Sieves,
     whose political treachery was well known to Paine before it
     became known to the world by his services to Napoleon in
     overthrowing the Republic.--_Editor._

It was not for himself alone, but for his family, that the French
citizen, at the dawn of the revolution, (for then indeed every man
was considered a citizen) marched soldier-like to the frontiers, and
repelled a foreign invasion. He had it not in his contemplation, that he
should enjoy liberty for the residue of his earthly career, and by his
own act preclude his offspring from that inestimable blessing. No! He
wished to leave it as an inheritance to his children, and that they
might hand it down to their latest posterity. If a Frenchman, who united
in his person the character of a Soldier and a Citizen, was now to
return from the army to his peaceful habitation, he must address his
small family in this manner: "Sorry I am, that I cannot leave to you
a small portion of what I have acquired by exposing my person to
the ferocity of our enemies and defeating their machinations. I have
established the republic, and, painful the reflection, all the laurels
which I have won in the field are blasted, and all the privileges to
which my exertions have entitled me extend not beyond the period of
my own existence!" Thus the measure that has been adopted by way of
subterfuge falls short of what the framers of it speculated upon; for
in conciliating the affections of the _Soldier_, they have subjected
the _Father_ to the most pungent sensations, by obliging him to adopt a
generation of Slaves.

Citizens, a great deal has been urged respecting insurrections. I am
confident that no man has a greater abhorrence of them than myself, and
I am sorry that any insinuations should have been thrown out upon me
as a promoter of violence of any kind. The whole tenor of my life and
conversation gives the lie to those calumnies, and proves me to be a
friend to order, truth and justice.

I hope you will attribute this effusion of my sentiments to my anxiety
for the honor and success of the revolution. I have no interest distinct
from that which has a tendency to meliorate the situation of mankind.
The revolution, as far as it respects myself, has been productive of
more loss and persecution than it is possible for me to describe, or for
you to indemnify. But with respect to the subject under consideration, I
could not refrain from declaring my sentiments.

In my opinion, if you subvert the basis of the revolution, if you
dispense with principles, and substitute expedients, you will extinguish
that enthusiasm and energy which have hitherto been the life and soul of
the revolution; and you will substitute in its place nothing but a
cold indifference and self-interest, which will again degenerate into
intrigue, cunning, and effeminacy.

But to discard all considerations of a personal and subordinate nature,
it is essential to the well-being of the republic that the practical or
organic part of the constitution should correspond with its principles;
and as this does not appear to be the case in the plan that has been
presented to you, it is absolutely necessary that it should be submitted
to the revision of a committee, who should be instructed to compare it
with the Declaration of Rights, in order to ascertain the difference
between the two, and to make such alterations as shall render them
perfectly consistent and compatible with each other.




XXVI. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF FINANCE.(1)

     "On the verge, nay even in the gulph of bankruptcy."

     1 This pamphlet, as Paine predicts at its close (no doubt on
     good grounds), was translated into all languages of Europe,
     and probably hastened the gold suspension of the Bank of
     England (1797), which it predicted. The British Government
     entrusted its reply to Ralph Broome and George Chalmers, who
     wrote pamphlets. There is in the French Archives an order
     for 1000 copies, April 27, 1796, nineteen days after Paine's
     pamphlet appeared. "Mr. Cobbett has made this little
     pamphlet a text-book for most of his elaborate treatises on
     our finances.... On the authority of a late Register of Mr.
     Cobbett's I learn that the profits arising from the sale of
     this pamphlet were devoted [by Paine] to the relief of the
     prisoners confined in Newgate for debt."--"Life of Paine,"
     by Richard Carlile, 1819.--_Editor._.


Debates in Parliament.

Nothing, they say, is more certain than death, and nothing more
uncertain than the time of dying; yet we can always fix a period beyond
which man cannot live, and within some moment of which he will die. We
are enabled to do this, not by any spirit of prophecy, or foresight into
the event, but by observation of what has happened in all cases of human
or animal existence. If then any other subject, such, for instance, as
a system of finance, exhibits in its progress a series of symptoms
indicating decay, its final dissolution is certain, and the period of it
can be calculated from the symptoms it exhibits.

Those who have hitherto written on the English system of finance, (the
funding system,) have been uniformly impressed with the idea that its
downfall would happen _some time or other_. They took, however, no data
for their opinion, but expressed it predictively,--or merely as opinion,
from a conviction that the perpetual duration of such a system was a
natural impossibility. It is in this manner that Dr. Price has spoken of
it; and Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, has spoken in the same manner;
that is, merely as opinion without data. "The progress," says Smith,
"of the enormous debts, which at present oppress, and will in the long
run _most probably ruin_, all the great nations of Europe [he should
have said _governments_] has been pretty uniform." But this general
manner of speaking, though it might make some impression, carried with
it no conviction.

It is not my intention to predict any thing; but I will show from data
already known, from symptoms and facts which the English funding system
has already exhibited publicly, that it will not continue to the end of
Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live the usual age of a man. How much
sooner it may fall, I leave to others to predict.

Let financiers diversify systems of credit as they will, it _is_
nevertheless true, that every system of credit is a system of paper
money. Two experiments have already been had upon paper money; the one
in America, the other in France. In both those cases the whole capital
was emitted, and that whole capital, which in America was called
continental money, and in France assignats, appeared in circulation; the
consequence of which was, that the quantity became so enormous, and so
disproportioned to the quantity of population, and to the quantity' of
objects upon which it could be employed, that the market, if I may so
express it, was glutted with it, and the value of it fell. Between five
and six years determined the fate of those experiments. The same fate
would have happened to gold and silver, could gold and silver have been
issued in the same abundant manner that paper had been, and confined
within the country as paper money always is, by having no circulation
out of it; or, to speak on a larger scale, the same thing would happen
in the world, could the world be glutted with gold and silver, as
America and France have been with paper.

The English system differs from that of America and France in this one
particular, that its capital is kept out of sight; that is, it does
not appear in circulation. Were the whole capital of the national debt,
which at the time I write this is almost one hundred million pounds
sterling, to be emitted in assignats or bills, and that whole quantity
put into circulation, as was done in America and in France, those
English assignats, or bills, would soon sink in value as those of
America and France have done; and that in a greater degree, because
the quantity of them would be more disproportioned to the quantity
of population in England, than was the case in either of the other two
countries. A nominal pound sterling in such bills would not be worth one
penny.

But though the English system, by thus keeping the capital out of sight,
is preserved from hasty destruction, as in the case of America and
France, it nevertheless approaches the same fate, and will arrive at it
with the same certainty, though by a slower progress. The difference
is altogether in the degree of speed by which the two systems approach
their fate, which, to speak in round numbers, is as twenty is to one;
that is, the English system, that of funding the capital instead of
issuing it, contained within itself a capacity of enduring twenty times
longer than the systems adopted by America and France; and at the end of
that time it would arrive at the same common grave, the Potter's Field
of paper money.

The datum, I take for this proportion of twenty to one, is the
difference between a capital and the interest at five per cent. Twenty
times the interest is equal to the capital. The accumulation of paper
money in England is in proportion to the accumulation of the interest
upon every new loan; and therefore the progress to the dissolution is
twenty times slower than if the capital were to be emitted and put into
circulation immediately. Every twenty years in the English system is
equal to one year in the French and American systems.

Having thus stated the duration of the two systems, that of funding upon
interest, and that of emitting the whole capital without funding, to be
as twenty to one, I come to examine the symptoms of decay, approaching
to dissolution, that the English system has already exhibited, and to
compare them with similar systems in the French and American systems.

The English funding system began one hundred years ago; in which time
there have been six wars, including the war that ended in 1697.

1. The war that ended, as I have just said, in 1697.

2. The war that began in 1702.

3. The war that began in 1739.

4. The war that began in 1756.

5. The American war, that began in 1775.

6. The present war, that began in 1793.


The national debt, at the conclusion of the war which ended in 1697, was
twenty-one millions and an half. (See Smith's Wealth of Nations,
chapter on Public Debts.) We now see it approaching fast to four hundred
millions. If between these two extremes of twenty-one millions and four
hundred millions, embracing the several expenses of all the including
wars, there exist some common ratio that will ascertain arithmetically
the amount of the debts at the end of each war, as certainly as the fact
is known to be, that ratio will in like manner determine what the amount
of the debt will be in all future wars, and will ascertain the period
within which the funding system will expire in a bankruptcy of the
government; for the ratio I allude to, is the ratio which the nature of
the thing has established for itself.

Hitherto no idea has been entertained that any such ratio existed, or
could exist, that would determine a problem of this kind; that is, that
would ascertain, without having any knowledge of the fact, what the
expense of any former war had been, or what the expense of any future
war would be; but it is nevertheless true that such a ratio does exist,
as I shall show, and also the mode of applying it.

The ratio I allude to is not in arithmetical progression like the
numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; nor yet in geometrical progression, like
the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; but it is in the series of
one half upon each preceding number; like the numbers 8, 12, 18, 27, 40,
60, 90, 135.

Any person can perceive that the second number, 12, is produced by the
preceding number, 8, and half 8; and that the third number, 18, is in
like manner produced by the preceding number, 12, and half 12; and so
on for the rest. They can also see how rapidly the sums increase as
the ratio proceeds. The difference between the two first numbers is but
four; but the difference between the two last is forty-five; and from
thence they may see with what immense rapidity the national debt has
increased, and will continue to increase, till it exceeds the ordinary
powers of calculation, and loses itself in ciphers.

I come now to apply the ratio as a rule to determine in all cases.

I began with the war that ended in 1697, which was the war in which the
funding system began. The expense of that war was twenty-one millions
and an half. In order to ascertain the expense of the next war, I add
to twenty-one millions and an half, the half thereof (ten millions and
three quarters) which makes thirty-two millions and a quarter for the
expense of that war. This thirty-two millions and a quarter, added to
the former debt of twenty-one millions and an half, carries the national
debt to fifty-three millions and three quarters. Smith, in his
chapter on Public Debts, says, that the national debt was at this time
fifty-three millions.

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the next war, that of 1739, by
adding, as in the former case, one half to the expense of the preceding
war. The expense of the preceding war was thirty-two millions and a
quarter; for the sake of even numbers, say, thirty-two millions; the
half of which (16) makes forty-eight millions for the expense of that
war.

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the war of 1756, by adding,
according to the ratio, one half to the expense of the preceding war.
The expense of the preceding was taken at 48 millions, the half of which
(24) makes 72 millions for the expense of that war. Smith, (chapter on
Public Debts,) says, the expense of the war of 1756, was 72 millions and
a quarter.

I proceed to ascertain the expense of the American war, of 1775, by
adding, as in the former cases, one half to the expense of the preceding
war. The expense of the preceding war was 72 millions, the half of which
(36) makes 108 millions for the expense of that war. In the last
edition of Smith, (chapter on Public Debts,) he says, the expense of the
American war was _more than an hundred millions_.

I come now to ascertain the expense of the present war, supposing it to
continue as long as former wars have done, and the funding system not
to break up before that period. The expense of the preceding war was 108
millions, the half of which (54) makes 162 millions for the expense of
the present war. It gives symptoms of going beyond this sum, supposing
the funding system not to break up; for the loans of the last year and
of the present year are twenty-two millions each, which exceeds the
ratio compared with the loans of the preceding war. It will not be from
the inability of procuring loans that the system will break up. On
the contrary, it is the facility with which loans can be procured that
hastens that event. The loans are altogether paper transactions; and
it is the excess of them that brings on, with accelerating speed, that
progressive depreciation of funded paper money that will dissolve the
funding system.

I proceed to ascertain the expense of future wars, and I do this merely
to show the impossibility of the continuance of the funding system, and
the certainty of its dissolution.

The expense of the next war after the present war, according to the
ratio that has ascertained the preceding cases, will be 243 millions.

Expense of the second war 364

---------------- third war 546

---------------- fourth war 819

-------- fifth war 1228

                                                        3200 millions;

which, at only four per cent. will require taxes to the nominal amount
of one hundred and twenty-eight millions to pay the annual interest,
besides the interest of the present debt, and the expenses of
government, which are not included in this account. Is there a man so
mad, so stupid, as to sup-pose this system can continue?

When I first conceived the idea of seeking for some common ratio that
should apply as a rule of measurement to all the cases of the funding
system, so far as to ascertain the several stages of its approach to
dissolution, I had no expectation that any ratio could be found that
would apply with so much exactness as this does. I was led to the idea
merely by observing that the funding system was a thing in continual
progression, and that whatever was in a state of progression might be
supposed to admit of, at least, some general ratio of measurement,
that would apply without any very great variation. But who could have
supposed that falling systems, or falling opinions, admitted of a ratio
apparently as true as the descent of falling bodies? I have not made the
ratio any more than Newton made the ratio of gravitation. I have only
discovered it, and explained the mode of applying it.

To shew at one view the rapid progression of the funding system to
destruction, and to expose the folly of those who blindly believe in
its continuance, and who artfully endeavour to impose that belief upon
others, I exhibit in the annexed table, the expense of each of the six
wars since the funding system began, as ascertained by ratio, and the
expense of the six wars yet to come, ascertained by the same ratio.

[Illustration: Table318]

     * The actual expense of the war of 1739 did not come up to
     the sum ascertained by the ratio.   But as that which is the
     natural disposition of a thing, as it is the natural
     disposition of a stream of water to descend, will, if
     impeded in its course, overcome by a new effort what it had
     lost by that impediment, so it was with respect to this war
     and the next (1756) taken collectively; for the expense of
     the war of 1756 restored the equilibrium of the ratio, as
     fully as if it had not been impeded. A circumstance that
     serves to prove the truth of the ratio more folly than if
     the interruption had not taken place. The war of 1739 ***
     languid; the efforts were below the value of money et that
     time; for the ratio is the measure of the depreciation of
     money in consequence of the funding system; or what comes
     to the same end, it is the measure of the increase of paper.
     Every additional quantity of it, whether in bank notes or
     otherwise, diminishes the real, though not the nominal value
     of the former quantity.--_Author_


Those who are acquainted with the power with which even a small ratio,
acting in progression, multiplies in a long series, will see nothing to
wonder at in this table. Those who are not acquainted with that subject,
and not knowing what else to say, may be inclined to deny it. But it is
not their opinion one way, nor mine the other, that can influence the
event. The table exhibits the natural march of the funding system to its
irredeemable dissolution. Supposing the present government of England to
continue, and to go on as it has gone on since the funding system began,
I would not give twenty shillings for one hundred pounds in the funds to
be paid twenty years hence. I do not speak this predictively; I produce
the data upon which that belief is founded; and which data it is every
body's interest to know, who have any thing to do with the funds, or
who are going to bequeath property to their descendants to be paid at a
future day.

Perhaps it may be asked, that as governments or ministers proceeded by
no ratio in making loans or incurring debts, and nobody intended any
ratio, or thought of any, how does it happen that there is one? I
answer, that the ratio is founded in necessity; and I now go to explain
what that necessity is.

It will always happen, that the price of labour, or of the produce
of labour, be that produce what it may, will be in proportion to the
quantity of money in a country, admitting things to take their natural
course. Before the invention of the funding system, there was no other
money than gold and silver; and as nature gives out those metals with
a sparing hand, and in regular annual quantities from the mines, the
several prices of things were proportioned to the quantity of money at
that time, and so nearly stationary as to vary but little in any fifty
or sixty years of that period.

When the funding system began, a substitute for gold and silver began
also. That substitute was paper; and the quantity increased as the
quantity of interest increased upon accumulated loans. This appearance
of a new and additional species of money in the nation soon began to
break the relative value which money and the things it will purchase
bore to each other before. Every thing rose in price; but the rise at
first was little and slow, like the difference in units between two
first numbers, 8 and 12, compared with the two last numbers 90 and 135,
in the table. It was however sufficient to make itself considerably felt
in a large transaction. When therefore government, by engaging in a new
war, required a new loan, it was obliged to make a higher loan than the
former loan, to balance the increased price to which things had risen;
and as that new loan increased the quantity of paper in proportion
to the new quantity of interest, it carried the price of things still
higher than before. The next loan was again higher, to balance that
further increased price; and all this in the same manner, though not
in the same degree, that every new emission of continental money in
America, or of assignats in France, was greater than the preceding
emission, to make head against the advance of prices, till the combat
could be maintained no longer. Herein is founded the necessity of which
I have just spoken. That necessity proceeds with accelerating velocity,
and the ratio I have laid down is the measure of that acceleration; or,
to speak the technical language of the subject, it is the measure of the
increasing depreciation of funded paper money, which it is impossible to
prevent while the quantity of that money and of bank notes continues to
multiply. What else but this can account for the difference between one
war costing 21 millions, and another war costing 160 millions?

The difference cannot be accounted for on the score of extraordinary
efforts or extraordinary achievements. The war that cost twenty-one
millions was the war of the con-federates, historically called the grand
alliance, consisting of England, Austria, and Holland in the time of
William III. against Louis XIV. and in which the confederates were
victorious. The present is a war of a much greater confederacy--a
confederacy of England, Austria, Prussia, the German Empire, Spain,
Holland, Naples, and Sardinia, eight powers, against the French Republic
singly, and the Republic has beaten the whole confederacy.--But to
return to my subject.

It is said in England, that the value of paper keeps equal with the
value of gold and silver. But the case is not rightly stated; for the
fact is, that the paper has _pulled down_ the value of gold and silver
to a level with itself. Gold and silver will not purchase so much of any
purchasable article at this day as if no paper had appeared, nor so much
as it will in any country in Europe where there is no paper. How long
this hanging together of money and paper will continue, makes a new
case; because it daily exposes the system to sudden death, independent
of the natural death it would otherwise suffer.

I consider the funding system as being now advanced into the last twenty
years of its existence. The single circumstance, were there no other,
that a war should now cost nominally one hundred and sixty millions,
which when the system began cost but twenty-one millions, or that the
loan for one year only (including the loan to the Emperor) should now be
nominally greater than the whole expense of that war, shows the state of
depreciation to which the funding system has arrived. Its depreciation
is in the proportion of eight for one, compared with the value of its
money when the system began; which is the state the French assignats
stood a year ago (March 1795) compared with gold and silver. It is
therefore that I say, that the English funding system has entered on the
last twenty years of its existence, comparing each twenty years of
the English system with every single year of the American and French
systems, as before stated.

Again, supposing the present war to close as former wars have done, and
without producing either revolution or reform in England, another war at
least must be looked for in the space of the twenty years I allude to;
for it has never yet happened that twenty years have passed off without
a war, and that more especially since the English government has dabbled
in German politics, and shown a disposition to insult the world, and the
world of commerce, with her navy. The next war will carry the national
debt to very nearly seven hundred millions, the interest of which, at
four per cent, will be twenty-eight millions besides the taxes for
the (then) expenses of government, which will increase in the same
proportion, and which will carry the taxes to at least forty millions;
and if another war only begins, it will quickly carry them to above
fifty; for it is in the last twenty years of the funding system, as in
the last year of the American and French systems without funding, that
all the great shocks begin to operate.

I have just mentioned that, paper in England has _pulled down_ the value
of gold and silver to a level with itself; and that _this pulling dawn_
of gold and silver money has created the appearance of paper money
keeping up. The same thing, and the same mistake, took place in
America and in France, and continued for a considerable time after the
commencement of their system of paper; and the actual depreciation of
money was hidden under that mistake.

It was said in America, at that time, that everything was becoming
_dear_; but gold and silver could then buy those dear articles no
cheaper than paper could; and therefore it was not called depreciation.
The idea of _dearness_ established itself for the idea of depreciation.
The same was the case in France. Though every thing rose in price soon
after assignats appeared, yet those dear articles could be purchased no
cheaper with gold and silver, than with paper, and it was only said that
things were _dear_. The same is still the language in England. They
call it _deariness_. But they will soon find that it is an actual
depreciation, and that this depreciation is the effect of the funding
system; which, by crowding such a continually increasing mass of paper
into circulation, carries down the value of gold and silver with it. But
gold and silver, will, in the long run, revolt against depreciation, and
separate from the value of paper; for the progress of all such systems
appears to be, that the paper will take the command in the beginning,
and gold and silver in the end.

But this succession in the command of gold and silver over paper, makes
a crisis far more eventful to the funding system than to any other
system upon which paper can be issued; for, strictly speaking, it is not
a crisis of danger but a symptom of death. It is a death-stroke to the
funding system. It is a revolution in the whole of its affairs.

If paper be issued without being funded upon interest, emissions of it
can be continued after the value of it separates from gold and silver,
as we have seen in the two cases of America and France. But the funding
system rests altogether upon the value of paper being equal to gold and
silver; which will be as long as the paper can continue carrying down
the value of gold and silver to the same level to which itself descends,
and no longer. But even in this state, that of descending equally
together, the minister, whoever he may be, will find himself beset with
accumulating difficulties; because the loans and taxes voted for the
service of each ensuing year will wither in his hands before the year
expires, or before they can be applied. This will force him to have
recourse to emissions of what are called exchequer and navy bills,
which, by still increasing the mass of paper in circulation, will drive
on the depreciation still more rapidly.

It ought to be known that taxes in England are not paid in gold
and silver, but in paper (bank notes). Every person who pays any
considerable quantity of taxes, such as maltsters, brewers, distillers,
(I appeal for the truth of it, to any of the collectors of excise in
England, or to Mr. White-bread,)(1) knows this to be the case. There is
not gold and silver enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, as
I shall show; and consequently there is not money enough in the bank to
pay the notes. The interest of the national funded debt is paid at the
bank in the same kind of paper in which the taxes are collected. When
people find, as they will find, a reservedness among each other in
giving gold and silver for bank notes, or the least preference for the
former over the latter, they will go for payment to the bank, where they
have a right to go. They will do this as a measure of prudence, each one
for himself, and the truth or delusion of the funding system will then
be proved.

     1 An eminent Member of Parliament.--_Editor._.

I have said in the foregoing paragraph that there is not gold and silver
enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, and consequently that
there cannot be enough in the bank to pay the notes. As I do not choose
to rest anything upon assertion, I appeal for the truth of this to the
publications of Mr. Eden (now called Lord Auckland) and George Chalmers,
Secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantation, of which Jenkinson (now
Lord Hawkesbury) is president.(1) (These sort of folks change their
names so often that it is as difficult to know them as it is to know
a thief.) Chalmers gives the quantity of gold and silver coin from the
returns of coinage at the Mint; and after deducting for the light gold
recoined, says that the amount of gold and silver coined is about twenty
millions. He had better not have proved this, especially if he had
reflected that _public credit is suspicion asleep_. The quantity is much
too little.

     1 Concerning Chalmers and Hawkesbury see vol. ii., p. 533.
     Also, preface to my "Life of Paine",  xvi., and other
     passages.---_Editor._.

Of this twenty millions (which is not a fourth part of the quantity of
gold and silver there is in France, as is shown in Mr. Neckar's Treatise
on the Administration of the Finances) three millions at least must be
supposed to be in Ireland, some in Scotland, and in the West Indies,
Newfoundland, &c. The quantity therefore in England cannot be more than
sixteen millions, which is four millions less than the amount of the
taxes. But admitting that there are sixteen millions, not more than
a fourth part thereof (four millions) can be in London, when it is
considered that every city, town, village, and farm-house in the nation
must have a part of it, and that all the great manufactories, which most
require cash, are out of London. Of this four millions in London, every
banker, merchant, tradesman, in short every individual, must have some.
He must be a poor shopkeeper indeed, who has not a few guineas in his
till. The quantity of cash therefore in the bank can never, on the
evidence of circumstances, be so much as two millions; most probably
not more than one million; and on this slender twig, always liable to be
broken, hangs the whole funding system of four hundred millions, besides
many millions in bank notes. The sum in the bank is not sufficient to
pay one-fourth of only one year's interest of the national debt, were
the creditors to demand payment in cash, or demand cash for the bank
notes in which the interest is paid, a circumstance always liable to
happen.

One of the amusements that has kept up the farce of the funding system
is, that the interest is regularly paid. But as the interest is always
paid in bank notes, and as bank notes can always be coined for the
purpose, this mode of payment proves nothing. The point of proof is, can
the bank give cash for the bank notes with which the interest is paid?
If it cannot, and it is evident it cannot, some millions of bank notes
must go without payment, and those holders of bank notes who apply last
will be worst off. When the present quantity of cash in the bank is paid
away, it is next to impossible to see how any new quantity is to arrive.
None will arrive from taxes, for the taxes will all be paid in bank
notes; and should the government refuse bank notes in payment of taxes,
the credit of bank notes will be gone at once. No cash will arise from
the business of discounting merchants' bills; for every merchant will
pay off those bills in bank notes, and not in cash. There is therefore
no means left for the bank to obtain a new supply of cash, after the
present quantity is paid away. But besides the impossibility of paying
the interest of the funded debt in cash, there are many thousand
persons, in London and in the country, who are holders of bank notes
that came into their hands in the fair way of trade, and who are not
stockholders in the funds; and as such persons have had no hand in
increasing the demand upon the bank, as those have had who for their own
private interest, like Boyd and others, are contracting or pretending to
contract for new loans, they will conceive they have a just right that
their bank notes should be paid first. Boyd has been very sly in France,
in changing his paper into cash. He will be just as sly in doing the
same thing in London, for he has learned to calculate; and then it is
probable he will set off for America.

A stoppage of payment at the bank is not a new thing. Smith in his
Wealth of Nations, book ii. chap. 2, says, that in the year 1696,
exchequer bills fell forty, fifty, and sixty per cent; bank notes twenty
per cent; and the bank stopped payment. That which happened in 1696 may
happen again in 1796. The period in which it happened was the last year
of the war of King William. It necessarily put a stop to the further
emissions of exchequer and navy bills, and to the raising of new loans;
and the peace which took place the next year was probably hurried on by
this circumstance, and saved the bank from bankruptcy. Smith in speaking
from the circumstances of the bank, upon another occasion, says (book
ii. chap. 2.) "This great company had been reduced to the necessity
of paying in sixpences." When a bank adopts the expedient of paying in
sixpences, it is a confession of insolvency.

It is worthy of observation, that every case of failure in finances,
since the system of paper began, has produced a revolution in
governments, either total or partial. A failure in the finances of
France produced the French revolution. A failure in the finance of
the assignats broke up the revolutionary government, and produced
the present French Constitution. A failure in the finances of the Old
Congress of America, and the embarrassments it brought upon commerce,
broke up the system of the old confederation, and produced the federal
Constitution. If, then, we admit of reasoning by comparison of causes
and events, the failure of the English finances will produce some change
in the government of that country.

As to Mr. Pitt's project of paying off the national debt by applying
a million a-year for that purpose, while he continues adding more than
twenty millions a-year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg
to run after a hare. The longer he runs the farther he is off.

When I said that the funding system had entered the last twenty years
of its existence, I certainly did not mean that it would continue twenty
years, and then expire as a lease would do. I meant to describe that
age of decrepitude in which death is every day to be expected, and life
cannot continue long. But the death of credit, or that state that is
called bankruptcy, is not always marked by those progressive stages
of visible decline that marked the decline of natural life. In the
progression of natural life age cannot counterfeit youth, nor conceal
the departure of juvenile abilities. But it is otherwise with respect
to the death of credit; for though all the approaches to bankruptcy
may actually exist in circumstances, they admit of being concealed by
appearances. Nothing is more common than to see the bankrupt of to-day a
man in credit but the day before; yet no sooner is the real state of
his affairs known, than every body can see he had been insolvent long
before. In London, the greatest theatre of bankruptcy in Europe, this
part of the subject will be well and feelingly understood.

Mr. Pitt continually talks of credit, and the national resources. These
are two of the feigned appearances by which the approaches to bankruptcy
are concealed. That which he calls credit may exist, as I have just
shown, in a state of insolvency, and is always what I have before
described it to be, _suspicion asleep_.

As to national resources, Mr. Pitt, like all English financiers that
preceded him since the funding system began, has uniformly mistaken the
nature of a resource; that is, they have mistaken it consistently with
the delusion of the funding system; but time is explaining the delusion.
That which he calls, and which they call, a resource, is not a resource,
but is the _anticipation_ of a resource. They have anticipated what
_would have been_ a resource in another generation, had not the use of
it been so anticipated. The funding system is a system of anticipation.
Those who established it an hundred years ago anticipated the resources
of those who were to live an hundred years after; for the people of the
present day have to pay the interest of the debts contracted at that
time, and all debts contracted since. But it is the last feather that
breaks the horse's back. Had the system begun an hundred years before,
the amount of taxes at this time to pay the annual interest at four per
cent. (could we suppose such a system of insanity could have continued)
would be two hundred and twenty millions annually: for the capital of
the debt would be 5486 millions, according to the ratio that ascertains
the expense of the wars for the hundred years that are past. But long
before it could have reached this period, the value of bank notes,
from the immense quantity of them, (for it is in paper only that such
a nominal revenue could be collected,) would have been as low or lower
than continental paper has been in America, or assignats in France; and
as to the idea of exchanging them for gold and silver, it is too absurd
to be contradicted.

Do we not see that nature, in all her operations, disowns the visionary
basis upon which the funding system is built? She acts always by
renewed successions, and never by accumulating additions perpetually
progressing. Animals and vegetables, men and trees, have existed since
the world began: but that existence has been carried on by succession
of generations, and not by continuing the same men and the same trees in
existence that existed first; and to make room for the new she removes
the old. Every natural idiot can see this; it is the stock-jobbing idiot
only that mistakes. He has conceived that art can do what nature cannot.
He is teaching her a new system--that there is no occasion for man to
die--that the scheme of creation can be carried on upon the plan of
the funding system--that it can proceed by continual additions of new
beings, like new loans, and all live together in eternal youth. Go,
count the graves, thou idiot, and learn the folly of thy arithmetic!

But besides these things, there is something visibly farcical in the
whole operation of loaning. It is scarcely more than four years ago
that such a rot of bankruptcy spread itself over London, that the whole
commercial fabric tottered; trade and credit were at a stand; and
such was the state of things that, to prevent or suspend a general
bankruptcy, the government lent the merchants six millions in
_government_ paper, and now the merchants lend the government twenty-two
millions in _their_ paper; and two parties, Boyd and Morgan, men but
little known, contend who shall be the lenders. What a farce is this!
It reduces the operation of loaning to accommodation paper, in which
the competitors contend, not who shall lend, but who shall sign, because
there is something to be got for signing.

Every English stock-jobber and minister boasts of the credit of England.
Its credit, say they, is greater than that of any country in Europe.
There is a good reason for this: for there is not another country in
Europe that could be made the dupe of such a delusion. The English
funding system will remain a monument of wonder, not so much on account
of the extent to which it has been carried, as of the folly of believing
in it.

Those who had formerly predicted that the funding system would break
up when the debt should amount to one hundred or one hundred and fifty
millions, erred only in not distinguishing between insolvency and actual
bankruptcy; for the insolvency commenced as soon as the government
became unable to pay the interest in cash, or to give cash for the bank
notes in which the interest was paid, whether that inability was known
or not, or whether it was suspected or not. Insolvency always takes
place before bankruptcy; for bankruptcy is nothing more than the
publication of that insolvency. In the affairs of an individual, it
often happens that insolvency exists several years before bankruptcy,
and that the insolvency is concealed and carried on till the individual
is not able to pay one shilling in the pound. A government can ward off
bankruptcy longer than an individual: but insolvency will inevitably
produce bankruptcy, whether in an individual or in a government. If then
the quantity of bank notes payable on demand, which the bank has issued,
are greater than the bank can pay off, the bank is insolvent: and when
that insolvency is declared, it is bankruptcy.(*)

     *  Among the delusions that have been imposed upon the
     nation by ministers to give a false colouring to its
     affairs, and by none more than by Mr. Pitt, is a motley,
     amphibious-charactered thing called the _balance of trade_.
     This balance of trade, as it is called, is taken from the
     custom-house books, in which entries are made of all cargoes
     exported, and also of all cargoes imported, in each year;
     and when the value of the exports, according to the price
     set upon them by the exporter or by the custom-house, is
     greater than the value of the imports, estimated in the same
     manner, they say the balance of trade is much in their
     favour.

     The custom-house books prove regularly enough that so many
     cargoes have been exported, and so many imported; but this
     is all that they prove, or were intended to prove. They have
     nothing to do with the balance of profit or loss; and it is
     ignorance to appeal to them upon that account: for the case
     is, that the greater the loss is in any one year, the higher
     will this thing called the balance of trade appear to be
     according to the custom-house books. For example, nearly the
     whole of the Mediterranean convoy has been taken by the
     French this year; consequently those cargoes will not
     appear as imports on the custom-house books, and therefore
     the balance of trade, by which they mean the profits of it,
     will appear to be so much the greater as the loss amounts to;
     and, on the other hand, had the loss not happened, the
     profits would have appeared to have been so much the less.
     All the losses happening at sea to returning cargoes, by
     accidents, by the elements, or by capture, make the balance
     appear the higher on the side of the exports; and were they
     all lost at sea, it would appear to be all profit on the
     custom-house books. Also every cargo of exports that is lost
     that occasions another to be sent, adds in like manner to
     the side of the exports, and appears as profit. This year
     the balance of trade will appear high, because the losses
     have been great by capture and by storms. The ignorance of
     the British Parliament in listening to this hackneyed
     imposition of ministers about the balance of trade is
     astonishing. It shows how little they know of national
     affairs--and Mr. Grey may as well talk Greek to them, as to
     make motions about the state of the nation. They understand
     only fox-hunting and the game laws,--_Author_.

I come now to show the several ways by which bank notes get into
circulation: I shall afterwards offer an estimate on the total quantity
or amount of bank notes existing at this moment.

The bank acts in three capacities. As a bank of discount; as a bank of
deposit; and as a banker for the government.

First, as a bank of discount. The bank discounts merchants' bills of
exchange for two months. When a merchant has a bill that will become due
at the end of two months, and wants payment before that time, the bank
advances that payment to him, deducting therefrom at the rate of five
per cent, per annum. The bill of exchange remains at the bank as a
pledge or pawn, and at the end of two months it must be redeemed. This
transaction is done altogether in paper; for the profits of the bank,
as a bank of discount, arise entirely from its making use of paper as
money. The bank gives bank notes to the merchant in discounting the bill
of exchange, and the redeemer of the bill pays bank notes to the bank in
redeeming it. It very seldom happens that any real money passes between
them.

If the profits of a bank be, for example, two hundred thousand pounds a
year (a great sum to be made merely by exchanging one sort of paper
for another, and which shows also that the merchants of that place are
pressed for money for payments, instead of having money to spare to lend
to government,) it proves that the bank discounts to the amount of four
millions annually, or 666,666L. every two months; and as there never
remain in the bank more than two months' pledges, of the value of
666,666L., at any one time, the amount of bank notes in circulation at
any one time should not be more than to that amount. This is sufficient
to show that the present immense quantity of bank notes, which are
distributed through every city, town, village, and farm-house in
England, cannot be accounted for on the score of discounting.

Secondly, as a bank of deposit. To deposit money at the bank means to
lodge it there for the sake of convenience, and to be drawn out at any
moment the depositor pleases, or to be paid away to his order. When
the business of discounting is great, that of depositing is necessarily
small. No man deposits and applies for discounts at the same time;
for it would be like paying interest for lending money, instead of for
borrowing it. The deposits that are now made at the bank are almost
entirely in bank notes, and consequently they add nothing to the ability
of the bank to pay off the bank notes that may be presented for payment;
and besides this, the deposits are no more the property of the bank than
the cash or bank notes in a merchant's counting-house are the property
of his book-keeper. No great increase therefore of bank notes, beyond
what the discounting business admits, can be accounted for on the score
of deposits.

Thirdly, the bank acts as banker for the government. This is the
connection that threatens to ruin every public bank. It is through this
connection that the credit of a bank is forced far beyond what it ought
to be, and still further beyond its ability to pay. It is through this
connection, that such an immense redundant quantity of bank notes, have
gotten into circulation; and which, instead of being issued because
there was property in the bank, have been issued because there was none.

When the treasury is empty, which happens in almost every year of every
war, its coffers at the bank are empty also. It is in this condition of
emptiness that the minister has recourse to emissions of what are called
exchequer and navy bills, which continually generates a new increase of
bank notes, and which are sported upon the public, without there being
property in the bank to pay them. These exchequer and navy bills (being,
as I have said, emitted because the treasury and its coffers at the bank
are empty, and cannot pay the demands that come in) are no other than
an acknowledgment that the bearer is entitled to receive so much money.
They may be compared to the settlement of an account, in which the
debtor acknowledges the balance he owes, and for which he gives a note
of hand; or to a note of hand given to raise money upon it.

Sometimes the bank discounts those bills as it would discount merchants'
bills of exchange; sometimes it purchases them of the holders at the
current price; and sometimes it agrees with the ministers to pay an
interest upon them to the holders, and keep them in circulation. In
every one of these cases an additional quantity of bank notes gets into
circulation, and are sported, as I have said, upon the public, without
there being property in the bank, as banker for the government, to pay
them; and besides this, the bank has now no money of its own; for the
money that was originally subscribed to begin the credit of the bank
with, at its first establishment, has been lent to government and wasted
long ago.

"The bank" (says Smith, book ii. chap. 2.) "acts not only as an ordinary
bank, but as a great engine of State; it receives and pays a greater
part of the annuities which are due to the creditors of the _public_."
(It is worth observing, that the _public_, or the _nation_, is always
put for the government, in speaking of debts.) "It circulates" (says
Smith) "exchequer bills, and it advances to government the annual amount
of the land and malt taxes, which are frequently not paid till several
years afterwards." (This advancement is also done in bank notes,
for which there is not property in the bank.) "In those different
operations" (says Smith) "_its duty to the public_ may sometimes have
obliged it, without any fault of its directors, _to overstock the
circulation with paper money_."--bank notes. How its _duty_ to _the
public_ can induce it _to overstock that public_ with promissory bank
notes which it _cannot pay_, and thereby expose the individuals of that
public to ruin, is too paradoxical to be explained; for it is on
the credit which individuals _give to the bank_, by receiving and
circulating its notes, and not upon its _own_ credit or its _own_
property, for it has none, that the bank sports. If, however, it be the
duty of the bank to expose the public to this hazard, it is at least
equally the duty of the individuals of that public to get their money
and take care of themselves; and leave it to placemen, pensioners,
government contractors, Reeves' association, and the members of both
houses of Parliament, who have voted away the money at the nod of
the minister, to continue the credit if they can, and for which their
estates individually and collectively ought to answer, as far as they
will go.

There has always existed, and still exists, a mysterious, suspicious
connection, between the minister and the directors of the bank, and
which explains itself no otherways than by a continual increase in bank
notes. Without, therefore, entering into any further details of the
various contrivances by which bank notes are issued, and thrown upon the
public, I proceed, as I before mentioned, to offer an estimate on the
total quantity of bank notes in circulation.

However disposed governments may be to wring money by taxes from the
people, there is a limit to the practice established by the nature of
things. That limit is the proportion between the quantity of money in a
nation, be that quantity what it may, and the greatest quantity of taxes
that can be raised upon it. People have other uses for money besides
paying taxes; and it is only a proportional part of the money they can
spare for taxes, as it is only a proportional part they can spare
for house-rent, for clothing, or for any other particular use. These
proportions find out and establish themselves; and that with such
exactness, that if any one part exceeds its proportion, all the other
parts feel it.

Before the invention of paper money (bank notes,) there was no other
money in the nation than gold and silver, and the greatest quantity of
money that was ever raised in taxes during that period never exceeded a
fourth part of the quantity of money in the nation. It was high taxing
when it came to this point. The taxes in the time of William III. never
reached to four millions before the invention of paper, and the quantity
of money in the nation at that time was estimated to be about sixteen
millions. The same proportions established themselves in France. There
was no paper money in France before the present revolution, and the
taxes were collected in gold and silver money. The highest quantity of
taxes never exceeded twenty-two millions sterling; and the quantity of
gold and silver money in the nation at the same time, as stated by M.
Neckar, from returns of coinage at the Mint, in his Treatise on the
Administration of the Finances, was about ninety millions sterling. To
go beyond this limit of a fourth part, in England, they were obliged to
introduce paper money; and the attempt to go beyond it in France, where
paper could not be introduced, broke up the government. This proportion,
therefore, of a fourth part, is the limit which the thing establishes
for itself, be the quantity of money in a nation more or less.

The amount of taxes in England at this time is full twenty millions;
and therefore the quantity of gold and silver, and of bank notes, taken
together, amounts to eighty millions. The quantity of gold and silver,
as stated by Lord Hawkes-bury's Secretary, George Chalmers, as I have
before shown, is twenty millions; and, therefore, the total amount
of bank notes in circulation, all made payable on demand, is sixty
millions. This enormous sum will astonish the most stupid stock-jobber,
and overpower the credulity of the most thoughtless Englishman: but were
it only a third part of that sum, the bank cannot pay half a crown in
the pound.

There is something curious in the movements of this modern complicated
machine, the funding system; and it is only now that it is beginning
to unfold the full extent of its movements. In the first part of its
movements it gives great powers into the hands of government, and in the
last part it takes them completely away.

The funding system set out with raising revenues under the name of
loans, by means of which government became both prodigal and powerful.
The loaners assumed the name of creditors, and though it was soon
discovered that loaning was government-jobbing, those pretended loaners,
or the persons who purchased into the funds afterwards, conceived
themselves not only to be creditors, but to be the _only_ creditors.

But such has been the operation of this complicated machine, the funding
system, that it has produced, unperceived, a second generation of
creditors, more numerous and far more formidable and withal more
real than the first generation; for every holder of a bank note is a
creditor, and a real creditor, and the debt due to him is made payable
on demand. The debt therefore which the government owes to individuals
is composed of two parts; the one about four hundred millions bearing
interest, the other about sixty millions payable on demand. The one is
called the funded debt, the other is the debt due in bank notes.

The second debt (that contained in the bank notes) has, in a great
measure, been incurred to pay the interest of the first debt; so that in
fact little or no real interest has been paid by government. The whole
has been delusion and fraud. Government first contracted a debt, in the
form of loans, with one class of people, and then run clandestinely into
debt with another class, by means of bank notes, to pay the interest.
Government acted of itself in contracting the first debt, and made a
machine of the bank to contract the second. It is this second debt that
changes the seat of power and the order of things; for it puts it in
the power of even a small part of the holders of bank notes (had they no
other motives than disgust at Pitt and Grenville's sedition bills,) to
control any measure of government they found to be injurious to their
interest; and that not by popular meetings, or popular societies, but
by the simple and easy opera-tion of withholding their credit from that
government; that is, by individually demanding payment at the bank
for every bank note that comes into their hands. Why should Pitt and
Grenville expect that the very men whom they insult and injure,
should, at the same time, continue to support the measures of Pitt and
Grenville, by giving credit to their promissory notes of payment? No new
emissions of bank notes could go on while payment was demanding on the
old, and the cash in the bank wasting daily away; nor any new advances
be made to government, or to the emperor, to carry on the war; nor any
new emission be made on exchequer bills.

"_The bank_" says Smith, (book ii. chap. 2) "_is a great engine of
state_." And in the same paragraph he says, "_The stability of the bank
is equal to that of the British government_;" which is the same as to
say that the stability of the government is equal to that of the bank,
and no more. If then the bank cannot pay, the _arch-treasurer_ of the
holy Roman empire (S. R. I. A.*) is a bankrupt. When Folly invented
titles, she did not attend to their application; forever since the
government of England has been in the hands of _arch-treasurers_, it has
been running into bankruptcy; and as to the arch-treasurer _apparent_,
he has been a bankrupt long ago. What a miserable prospect has England
before its eyes!

     * Put of the inscription on an English guinea.--_Author_.

Before the war of 1755 there were no bank notes lower than twenty
pounds. During that war, bank notes of fifteen pounds and of ten pounds
were coined; and now, since the commencement of the present war, they
are coined as low as five pounds. These five-pound notes will circulate
chiefly among little shop-keepers, butchers, bakers, market-people,
renters of small houses, lodgers, &c. All the high departments of
commerce and the affluent stations of life were already _overstocked_,
as Smith expresses it, with the bank notes. No place remained open
wherein to crowd an additional quantity of bank notes but among the
class of people I have just mentioned, and the means of doing this
could be best effected by coining five-pound notes. This conduct has the
appearance of that of an unprincipled insolvent, who, when on the verge
of bankruptcy to the amount of many thousands, will borrow as low as
five pounds of the servants in his house, and break the next day.

But whatever momentary relief or aid the minister and his bank might
expect from this low contrivance of five-pound notes, it will increase
the inability of the bank to pay the higher notes, and hasten the
destruction of all; for even the small taxes that used to be paid in
money will now be paid in those notes, and the bank will soon find
itself with scarcely any other money than what the hair-powder
guinea-tax brings in.

The bank notes make the most serious part of the business of finance:
what is called the national funded debt is but a trifle when put in
comparison with it; yet the case of the bank notes has never been
touched upon. But it certainly ought to be known upon what authority,
whether that of the minister or of the directors, and upon what
foundation, such immense quantities are issued. I have stated the amount
of them at sixty millions; I have produced data for that estimation; and
besides this, the apparent quantity of them, far beyond that of gold and
silver in the nation, corroborates the statement. But were there but a
third part of sixty millions, the bank cannot pay half a crown in the
pound; for no new supply of money, as before said, can arrive at the
bank, as all the taxes will be paid in paper.

When the funding system began, it was not doubted that the loans that
had been borrowed would be repaid. Government not only propagated that
belief, but it began paying them off. In time this profession came to be
abandoned: and it is not difficult to see that bank notes will march
the same way; for the amount of them is only another debt under another
name; and the probability is that Mr. Pitt will at last propose
funding them. In that case bank notes will not be so valuable as French
assignats. The assignats have a solid property in reserve, in the
national domains; bank notes have none; and, besides this, the English
revenue must then sink down to what the amount of it was before the
funding system began--between three and four millions; one of which
the _arch-treasurer_ would require for himself, and the arch-treasurer
_apparent_ would require three-quarters of a million more to pay his
debts. "_In France_," says Sterne, "_they order these things better_."

I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all
nations; for this work will be published in all languages. In doing
this, I have done an act of justice to those numerous citizens of
neutral nations who have been imposed upon by that fraudulent system,
and who have property at stake upon the event.

As an individual citizen of America, and as far as an individual can
go, I have revenged (if I may use the expression without any immoral
meaning) the piratical depredations committed on the American commerce
by the English government. I have retaliated for France on the subject
of finance: and I conclude with retorting on Mr. Pitt the expression he
used against France, and say, that the English system of finance "is on
the verge, nay even in the

GULPH OF BANKRUPTCY."

Thomas Paine.

PARIS, 19th Germinal. 4th year of the Republic, April 8, 1796.




XXVII. FORGETFULNESS.(1)

     1 This undated composition, of much biographical interest,
     was shown by Paine to Henry Redhead Yorke, who visited him
     in Paris (1802), and was allowed to copy the only portions
     now preserved. In the last of Yorke's Letters from France
     (Lond., 1814), thirty-three pages are given to Paine. Under
     the name "Little Corner of the World," Lady Smyth wrote
     cheering letters to Paine in his prison, and he replied to
     his then unknown correspondent under the name of "The Castle
     in die Air." After his release he discovered in his
     correspondent a lady who had appealed to him for assistance,
     no doubt for her husband. With Sir Robert (an English banker
     in Paris) and Lady Smyth, Paine formed a fast friendship
     which continued through life. Sir Robert was born in 1744,
     and married (1776) a Miss Blake of Hanover Square, London.
     He died in 1802 of illness brought on by his imprisonment
     under Napoleon. Several of Paine's poems were addressed to
     Lady Smyth.--_Editor._


FROM "THE CASTLE IN THE AIR," TO THE "LITTLE CORNER OF THE WORLD."

Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear her-self
flattered, is flattered by every one. But the absent and silent goddess,
Forgetfulness, has no votaries, and is never thought of: yet we owe her
much. She is the goddess of ease, though not of pleasure.

When the mind is like a room hung with black, and every corner of it
crowded with the most horrid images imagination can create, this kind
speechless goddess of a maid, Forgetfulness, is following us night
and day with her opium wand, and gently touching first one, and then
another, benumbs them into rest, and at last glides them away with the
silence of a departing shadow. It is thus the tortured mind is restored
to the calm condition of ease, and fitted for happiness.

How dismal must the picture of life appear to the mind in that dreadful
moment when it resolves on darkness, and to die! One can scarcely
believe such a choice was possible. Yet how many of the young and
beautiful, timid in every thing else, and formed for delight, have shut
their eyes upon the world, and made the waters their sepulchral bed! Ah,
would they in that crisis, when life and death are before them, and
each within their reach, would they but think, or try to think, that
Forgetfulness will come to their relief, and lull them into ease, they
could stay their hand, and lay hold of life. But there is a necromancy
in wretchedness that entombs the mind, and increases the misery, by
shutting out every ray of light and hope. It makes the wretched
falsely believe they will be wretched ever. It is the most fatal of all
dangerous delusions; and it is only when this necromantic night-mare of
the mind begins to vanish, by being resisted, that it is discovered to
be but a tyrannic spectre. All grief, like all things else, will yield
to the obliterating power of time. While despair is preying on the mind,
time and its effects are preying on despair; and certain it is, the
dismal vision will fade away, and Forgetfulness, with her sister Ease,
will change the scene. Then let not the wretched be rash, but wait,
painful as the struggle may be, the arrival of Forgetfulness; for it
will certainly arrive.

I have twice been present at the scene of attempted suicide. The one
a love-distracted girl in England, the other of a patriotic friend in
France; and as the circumstances of each are strongly pictured in my
memory, I will relate them to you. They will in some measure corroborate
what I have said of Forgetfulness.

About the year 1766, I was in Lincolnshire, in England, and on a visit
at the house of a widow lady, Mrs. E____, at a small village in the fens
of that county. It was in summer; and one evening after supper, Mrs.
E____ and myself went to take a turn in the garden. It was about eleven
o'clock, and to avoid the night air of the fens, we were walking in a
bower, shaded over with hazel bushes. On a sudden, she screamed out,
and cried "Lord, look, look!" I cast my eyes through the openings of the
hazel bushes in the direction she was looking, and saw a white shapeless
figure, without head or arms, moving along one of the walks at some
distance from us. I quitted Mrs. E______, and went after it. When I got
into the walk where the figure was, and was following it, it took up
another walk. There was a holly bush in the corner of the two walks,
which, it being night, I did not observe; and as I continued to step
forward, the holly bush came in a straight line between me and the
figure, and I lost sight of it; and as I passed along one walk, and the
figure the other, the holly bush still continued to intercept the view,
so as to give the appearance that the figure had vanished. When I came
to the corner of the two walks, I caught sight of it again, and coming
up with it, I reached out my hand to touch it; and in the act of doing
this, the idea struck me, will my hand pass through the air, or shall I
feel any thing? Less than a moment would decide this, and my hand rested
on the shoulder of a human figure. I spoke, but do not recollect what I
said. It answered in a low voice, "Pray let me alone." I then knew who
it was. It was a young lady who was on a visit to Mrs. E------, and who,
when we sat down to supper, said she found herself extremely ill, and
would go to bed. I called to Mrs. E------, who came, and I said to her,
"It is Miss N------." Mrs. E------ said, "My God, I hope you are not
going to do yourself any hurt;" for Mrs. E------ suspected something.
She replied with pathetic melancholy, "Life has not one pleasure for
me." We got her into the house, and Mrs. E------ took her to sleep with
her.

The case was, the man to whom she expected to be married had forsaken
her, and when she heard he was to be married to another the shock
appeared to her to be too great to be borne. She had retired, as I have
said, to her room, and when she supposed all the family were gone to
bed, (which would have been the case if Mrs. E------ and I had not
walked into the garden,) she undressed herself, and tied her apron over
her head; which, descending below her waist, gave her the shapeless
figure I have spoken of. With this and a white under petticoat and
slippers, for she had taken out her buckles and put them at the servant
maid's door, I suppose as a keepsake, and aided by the obscurity of
almost midnight, she came down stairs, and was going to drown her-self
in a pond at the bottom of the garden, towards which she was going when
Mrs. E------screamed out. We found afterwards that she had heard the
scream, and that was the cause of her changing her walk.

By gentle usage, and leading her into subjects that might, without
doing violence to her feelings, and without letting her see the direct
intention of it, steal her as it were from the horror she was in, (and
I felt a compassionate, earnest disposition to do it, for she was a good
girl,) she recovered her former cheerfulness, and was afterwards a happy
wife, and the mother of a family.

The other case, and the conclusion in my next: In Paris, in 1793, had
lodgings in the Rue Fauxbourg, St. Denis, No. 63.(1) They were the most
agreeable, for situation, of any I ever had in Paris, except that they
were too remote from the Convention, of which I was then a member. But
this was recompensed by their being also remote from the alarms and
confusion into which the interior of Paris was then often thrown. The
news of those things used to arrive to us, as if we were in a state of
tranquility in the country. The house, which was enclosed by a wall and
gateway from the street, was a good deal like an old mansion farm house,
and the court yard was like a farm-yard, stocked with fowls, ducks,
turkies, and geese; which, for amusement, we used to feed out of the
parlour window on the ground floor. There were some hutches for rabbits,
and a sty with two pigs. Beyond, was a garden of more than an acre
of ground, well laid out, and stocked with excellent fruit trees. The
orange, apricot, and green-gage plum, were the best I ever tasted;
and it is the only place where I saw the wild cucumber. The place had
formerly been occupied by some curious person.(2)

     1 This ancient mansion is still standing (1895).--_Editor._

     2 Madame de Pompadour, among others.--_Editor._»

My apartments consisted of three rooms; the first for wood, water, etc.,
with an old fashioned closet chest, high enough to hang up clothes in;
the next was the bed room; and beyond it the sitting room, which looked
into the garden through a glass door; and on the outside there was a
small landing place railed in, and a flight of narrow stairs almost
hidden by the vines that grew over it, by which I could descend into
the garden, without going down stairs through the house. I am trying
by description to make you see the place in your mind, because it will
assist the story I have to tell; and which I think you can do, because
you once called upon me there on account of Sir [Robert Smyth], who was
then, as I was soon afterwards, in arrestation. But it was winter when
you came, and it is a summer scene I am describing.

*****

I went into my chambers to write and sign a certificate for them, which
I intended to take to the guard house to obtain their release. Just as I
had finished it a man came into my room dressed in the Parisian uniform
of a captain, and spoke to me in good English, and with a good address.
He told me that two young men, Englishmen, were arrested and detained
in the guard house, and that the section, (meaning those who represented
and acted for the section,) had sent him to ask me if I knew them,
in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled
between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about
the "Rights of Man," which he had read in English; and at parting
offered me in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you
think the man was that offered me his services? It was no other than the
public executioner Samson, who guillotined the king, and all who were
guillotined in Paris; and who lived in the same section, and in the same
street with me.

*****

As to myself, I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden
after dark, and cursing with hearty good will the authors of that
terrible system that had turned the character of the Revolution I had
been proud to defend.

I went but little to the Convention, and then only to make my
appearance; because I found it impossible to join in their tremendous
decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them. My having voted and
spoken extensively, more so than any other member, against the execution
of the king, had already fixed a mark upon me: neither dared any of my
associates in the Convention to translate and speak in French for me
anything I might have dared to have written.


*****

Pen and ink were then of no use to me: no good could be done by writing,
and no printer dared to print; and whatever I might have written for
my private amusement, as anecdotes of the times, would have been
continually exposed to be examined, and tortured into any meaning that
the rage of party might fix upon it; and as to softer subjects, my heart
was in distress at the fate of my friends, and my harp hung upon the
weeping willows.(1)

As it was summer we spent most of our time in the garden, and passed it
away in those childish amusements that serve to keep reflection from the
mind, such as marbles, scotch-hops, battledores, etc., at which we were
all pretty expert.

In this retired manner we remained about six or seven weeks, and our
landlord went every evening into the city to bring us the news of the
day and the evening journal.

I have now, my "Little Corner of the World," led you on, step by step,
to the scene that makes the sequel to this narrative, and I will put
that scene before your eyes. You shall see it in description as I saw it
in fact.

     1 This allusion is to the Girondins.--_Editor._,

     2 Yorke omits the description "from motives of personal
     delicacy." The case was that of young Johnson, a wealthy
     devotee of Paine in London, who had followed him to Paris
     and lived in the same house with him. Hearing that Marat had
     resolved on Paine's death, Johnson wrote a will bequeathing
     his property to Paine, then stabbed himself, but recovered.
     Paine was examined about this incident at Marat's trial.
     (Moniteur, April 24, 1793.) See my "Life of Paine," vol.
     ii., p. 48 seq.--_Editor._.

*****

He recovered, and being anxious to get out of France, a passage was
obtained for him and Mr. Choppin: they received it late in the evening,
and set off the next morning for Basle before four, from which place I
had a letter from them, highly pleased with their escape from France,
into which they had entered with an enthusiasm of patriotic devotion.
Ah, France! thou hast ruined the character of a Revolution virtuously
begun, and destroyed those who produced it. I might almost say like
Job's servant, "and I only am escaped."

Two days after they were gone I heard a rapping at the gate, and looking
out of the window of the bed room I saw the landlord going with the
candle to the gate, which he opened, and a guard with musquets and fixed
bayonets entered. I went to bed again, and made up my mind for prison,
for I was then the only lodger. It was a guard to take up [Johnson and
Choppin], but, I thank God, they were out of their reach.

The guard came about a month after in the night, and took away the
landlord Georgeit; and the scene in the house finished with the
arrestation of myself. This was soon after you called on me, and sorry
I was it was not in my power to render to [Sir Robert Smyth] the service
that you asked.

I have now fulfilled my engagement, and I hope your expectation, in
relating the case of [Johnson], landed back on the shore of life, by
the mistake of the pilot who was conducting him out; and preserved
afterwards from prison, perhaps a worse fate, without knowing it
himself.

You say a story cannot be too melancholy for you. This is interesting
and affecting, but not melancholy. It may raise in your mind a
sympathetic sentiment in reading it; and though it may start a tear of
pity, you will not have a tear of sorrow to drop on the page.

*****

Here, my contemplative correspondent, let us stop and look back upon the
scene. The matters here related being all facts, are strongly pictured
in my mind, and in this sense Forgetfulness does not apply. But facts
and feelings are distinct things, and it is against feelings that the
opium wand of Forgetfulness draws us into ease. Look back on any scene
or subject that once gave you distress, for all of us have felt some,
and you will find, that though the remembrance of the fact is not
extinct in your memory, the feeling is extinct in your mind. You can
remember when you had felt distress, but you cannot feel that distress
again, and perhaps will wonder you felt it then. It is like a shadow
that loses itself by light.

It is often difficult to know what is a misfortune: that which we feel
as a great one today, may be the means of turning aside our steps into
some new path that leads to happiness yet unknown. In tracing the scenes
of my own life, I can discover that the condition I now enjoy, which is
sweet to me, and will be more so when I get to America, except by the
loss of your society, has been produced, in the first instance, in my
being disappointed in former projects. Under that impenetrable veil,
futurity, we know not what is concealed, and the day to arrive is hidden
from us. Turning then our thoughts to those cases of despair that lead
to suicide, when, "the mind," as you say, "neither sees nor hears, and
holds counsel only with itself; when the very idea of consolation would
add to the torture, and self-destruction is its only aim," what, it may
be asked, is the best advice, what the best relief? I answer, seek it
not in reason, for the mind is at war with reason, and to reason against
feelings is as vain as to reason against fire: it serves only to torture
the torture, by adding reproach to horror. All reasoning with ourselves
in such cases acts upon us like the reason of another person, which,
however kindly done, serves but to insult the misery we suffer. If
reason could remove the pain, reason would have prevented it. If she
could not do the one, how is she to perform the other? In all such cases
we must look upon Reason as dispossessed of her empire, by a revolt
of the mind. She retires herself to a distance to weep, and the ebony
sceptre of Despair rules alone. All that Reason can do is to suggest,
to hint a thought, to signify a wish, to cast now and then a kind
of bewailing look, to hold up, when she can catch the eye, the
miniature-shaded portrait of Hope; and though dethroned, and can dictate
no more, to wait upon us in the humble station of a handmaid.




XXVIII. AGRARIAN JUSTICE.

Editor's introduction:

This pamphlet appeared first in Paris, 1797, with the title: "Thomas
Payne à La Législature et au Directoire. Ou la Justice Agraire opposée à
la Loi Agraire, et aux privilèges agraires. Prix 15 sols. À Paris, chez
la citoyenne Ragouleau, près le Théâtre de la République, No. 229. Et
chez les Marchands de Nouveautés." A prefatory note says (translated):
"The sudden departure of Thomas Paine has pre-vented his supervising the
translation of this work, to which he attached great value. He entrusted
it to a friend. It is for the reader to decide whether the scheme here
set forth is worthy of the publicity given it." (Paine had gone to Havre
early in May with the Monroes, intending to accompany them to America,
but, rightly suspecting plans for his capture by an English cruiser,
returned to Paris.) In the same year the pamphlet was printed in
English, by W. Adlard in Paris, and in London for "T. Williams, No.
8 Little Turnstile, Holborn." Paine's preface to the London edition
contained some sentences which the publishers, as will be seen,
suppressed under asterisks, and two sentences were omitted from the
pamphlet which I have supplied from the French. The English title adds a
brief resume of Paine's scheme to the caption--"Agrarian Justice opposed
to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly." The work was written in the
winter of 1795-6, when Paine was still an invalid in Monroe's house,
though not published until 1797.

The prefatory Letter to the Legislature and the Directory, now for the
first time printed in English, is of much historical interest, and shows
the title of the pamphlet related to the rise of Socialism in France.
The leader of that move-ment, François Noel Babeuf, a frantic and
pathetic figure of the time, had just been executed. He had named
himself "Gracchus," and called his journal "Tribune du Peuple," in
homage to the Roman Tribune, Caius Gracchus, the original socialist and
agrarian, whose fate (suicide of himself and his servant) Babeuf and his
disciple Darthé invoked in prison, whence they were carried bleeding to
the guillotine. This, however, was on account of the conspiracy they had
formed, with the remains of the Robespierrian party and some disguised
royalists, to overthrow the government. The socialistic propaganda of
Babeuf, however, prevailed over all other elements of the conspiracy:
the reactionary features of the Constitution, especially the property
qualification of suffrage of whose effects Paine had warned the
Convention in the speech printed in this volume, (chapter xxv.) and the
poverty which survived a revolution that promised its abolition, had
excited wide discontent. The "Babouvists" numbered as many as 17,000 in
Paris. Babeuf and Lepelletier were appointed by the secret council of
this fraternity (which took the name of "Equals") a "Directory of Public
Safety." May 11, 1796, was fixed for seizing on the government, and
Babeuf had prepared his Proclamation of the socialistic millennium. But
the plot was discovered, May 10th, the leaders arrested, and, after
a year's delay, two of them executed,--the best-hearted men in the
movement, Babeuf and Darthé. Paine too had been moved by the cry for
"Bread, and the Constitution of '93 "; and it is a notable coincidence
that in that winter of 1795-6, while the socialists were secretly
plotting to seize the kingdom of heaven by violence, Paine was devising
his plan of relief by taxing inheritances of land, anticipating by a
hundred years the English budget of Sir William Harcourt. Babeuf having
failed in his socialist, and Pichegru in his royalist, plot, their blows
were yet fatal: there still remained in the hearts of millions a Babeuf
or a Pichegru awaiting the chieftain strong enough to combine them,
as Napoleon presently did, making all the nation "Égaux" as parts of a
mighty military engine, and satisfying the royalist triflers with the
pomp and glory of war.



AUTHOR'S INSCRIPTION.

To the Legislature and the Executive Directory of the French Republic.

The plan contained in this work is not adapted for any particular
country alone: the principle on which it is based is general. But as the
rights of man are a new study in this world, and one needing protection
from priestly imposture, and the insolence of oppressions too long
established, I have thought it right to place this little work under
your safeguard. When we reflect on the long and dense night in which
France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and
their priests, we must feel less surprise than grief at the bewilderment
caused by the first burst of light that dispels the darkness. The eye
accustomed to darkness can hardly bear at first the broad daylight. It
is by usage the eye learns to see, and it is the same in passing from
any situation to its opposite.

As we have not at one instant renounced all our errors, we cannot at one
stroke acquire knowledge of all our rights. France has had the honour of
adding to the word _Liberty_ that of _Equality_; and this word signifies
essentially a principal that admits of no gradation in the things to
which it applies. But equality is often misunderstood, often misapplied,
and often violated.

_Liberty_ and _Property_ are words expressing all those of our
possessions which are not of an intellectual nature. There are two kinds
of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from
the Creator of the universe,--such as the earth, air, water. Secondly,
artificial or acquired property,--the invention of men. In the latter
equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be
necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which
can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would
hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural
property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in
the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of
property, or its equivalent.

The right of voting for persons charged with the execution of the laws
that govern society is inherent in the word Liberty, and constitutes
the equality of personal rights. But even if that right (of voting) were
inherent in property, which I deny, the right of suffrage would still
belong to all equally, because, as I have said, all individuals have
legitimate birthrights in a certain species of property.

I have always considered the present Constitution of the French Republic
the _best organized system_ the human mind has yet produced. But I hope
my former colleagues will not be offended if I warn them of an error
which has slipped into its principle. Equality of the right of suffrage
is not maintained. This right is in it connected with a condition on
which it ought not to depend; that is, with a proportion of a certain
tax called "direct." The dignity of suffrage is thus lowered; and, in
placing it in the scale with an inferior thing, the enthusiasm that
right is capable of inspiring is diminished. It is impossible to find
any equivalent counterpoise for the right of suffrage, because it is
alone worthy to be its own basis, and cannot thrive as a graft, or an
appendage.

Since the Constitution was established we have seen two conspiracies
stranded,--that of Babeuf, and that of some obscure personages who
decorate themselves with the despicable name of "royalists." The defect
in principle of the Constitution was the origin of Babeuf's conspiracy.
He availed himself of the resentment caused by this flaw, and instead
of seeking a remedy by legitimate and constitutional means, or proposing
some measure useful to society, the conspirators did their best to renew
disorder and confusion, and constituted themselves personally into a
Directory, which is formally destructive of election and representation.
They were, in fine, extravagant enough to suppose that society, occupied
with its domestic affairs, would blindly yield to them a directorship
usurped by violence.

The conspiracy of Babeuf was followed in a few months by that of the
royalists, who foolishly flattered themselves with the notion of
doing great things by feeble or foul means. They counted on all the
discontented, from whatever cause, and tried to rouse, in their turn,
the class of people who had been following the others. But these new
chiefs acted as if they thought society had nothing more at heart
than to maintain courtiers, pensioners, and all their train, under the
contemptible title of royalty. My little essay will disabuse them, by
showing that society is aiming at a very different end,--maintaining
itself.

We all know or should know, that the time during which a revolution is
proceeding is not the time when its resulting advantages can be
enjoyed. But had Babeuf and his accomplices taken into consideration the
condition of France under this constitution, and compared it with what
it was under the tragical revolutionary government, and during the
execrable reign of Terror, the rapidity of the alteration must have
appeared to them very striking and astonishing. Famine has been replaced
by abundance, and by the well-founded hope of a near and increasing
prosperity.

As for the defect in the Constitution, I am fully convinced that it will
be rectified constitutionally, and that this step is indispensable; for
so long as it continues it will inspire the hopes and furnish the means
of conspirators; and for the rest, it is regrettable that a Constitution
so wisely organized should err so much in its principle. This fault
exposes it to other dangers which will make themselves felt. Intriguing
candidates will go about among those who have not the means to pay the
direct tax and pay it for them, on condition of receiving their votes.
Let us maintain inviolably equality in the sacred right of suffrage:
public security can never have a basis more solid. Salut et Fraternité.

Your former colleague,

Thomas Paine.



AUTHOR'S ENGLISH PREFACE.

The following little Piece was written in the winter of 1795 and 96;
and, as I had not determined whether to publish it during the present
war, or to wait till the commencement of a peace, it has lain by me,
without alteration or addition, from the time it was written.

What has determined me to publish it now is, a sermon preached by
Watson, _Bishop of Llandaff_. Some of my Readers will recollect, that
this Bishop wrote a Book entitled _An Apology for the Bible_ in answer
to my _Second Part of the Age of Reason_. I procured a copy of his Book,
and he may depend upon hearing from me on that subject.

At the end of the Bishop's Book is a List of the Works he has written.
Among which is the sermon alluded to; it is entitled: "The Wisdom and
Goodness of God, in having made both Rich and Poor; with an Appendix,
containing Reflections on the Present State of England and France."

The error contained in this sermon determined me to publish my Agrarian
Justice. It is wrong to say God made _rich and poor_; he made only _male
and female_; and he gave them the earth for their inheritance. '...

Instead of preaching to encourage one part of mankind in insolence... it
would be better that Priests employed their time to render the general
condition of man less miserable than it is. Practical religion consists
in doing good: and the only way of serving God is, that of endeavouring
to make his creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its
object is nonsense and hypocracy.

     1 The omissions are noted in the English edition of 1797.--
     _Editor._.

To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy
at the same time the evil which it has produced, ought to be considered
as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.

Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called
civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness
of man, is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side,
the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other, he is
shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which it has erected. The
most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found
in the countries that are called civilized.

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to
have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is
at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that
state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want
present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty,
therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It
exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is
without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science, and
manufactures.

The life of an Indian is a continual holiday, compared with the poor of
Europe; and, on the other hand it appears to be abject when compared
to the rich. Civilization, therefore, or that which is so called, has
operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the
other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural
state.

It is always possible to go from the natural to the civilized state, but
it is never possible to go from the civilized to the natural state. The
reason is, that man in a natural state, subsisting by hunting, requires
ten times the quantity of land to range over to procure himself
sustenance, than would support him in a civilized state, where the
earth is cultivated. When, therefore, a country becomes populous by the
additional aids of cultivation, art, and science, there is a necessity
of preserving things in that state; because without it there cannot be
sustenance for more, perhaps, than a tenth part of its inhabitants. The
thing, therefore, now to be done is to remedy the evils and preserve the
benefits that have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that
which is called the civilized state.

In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of
civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the
condition of every person born into the world, after a state of
civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born
before that period. But the fact is, that the condition of millions, in
every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before
civilization began, or had been born among the Indians of North America
at the present day. I will shew how this fact has happened.

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural
uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, _the common
property of the human race_. In that state every man would have been
born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the
rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions,
vegetable and animal.

But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of
supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it
is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to
separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon
which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from
that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is
the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is
individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated land,
owes to the community a _ground-rent_ (for I know of no better term
to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this
ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue.

It is deducible, as well from the nature of the thing as from all the
histories transmitted to us, that the idea of landed property commenced
with cultivation, and that there was no such thing as landed property
before that time. It could not exist in the first state of man, that
of hunters. It did not exist in the second state, that of shepherds:
neither Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, nor Job, so far as the history of the
Bible may be credited in probable things, were owners of land. Their
property consisted, as is always enumerated, in flocks and herds, and
they travelled with them from place to place. The frequent contentions
at that time, about the use of a well in the dry country of Arabia,
where those people lived, also shew that there was no landed property.
It was not admitted that land could be claimed as property.

There could be no such thing as landed property originally. Man did not
make the earth, and, though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had
no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither
did the creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the
first title-deeds should issue. Whence then, arose the idea of landed
property? I answer as before, that when cultivation began the idea of
landed property began with it, from the impossibility of separating the
improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that
improvement was made. The value of the improvement so far exceeded the
value of the natural earth, at that time, as to absorb it; till, in the
end, the common right of all became confounded into the cultivated right
of the individual. But there are, nevertheless, distinct species of
rights, and will continue to be so long as the earth endures.

It is only by tracing things to their origin that we can gain rightful
ideas of them, and it is by gaining such ideas that we discover the
boundary that divides right from wrong, and teaches every man to know
his own. I have entitled this tract Agrarian Justice, to distinguish it
from Agrarian Law. Nothing could be more unjust than Agrarian Law in a
country improved by cultivation; for though every man, as an inhabitant
of the earth, is a joint proprietor of it in its natural state, it
does not follow that he is a joint proprietor of cultivated earth. The
additional value made by cultivation, after the system was admitted,
became the property of those who did it, or who inherited it from them,
or who purchased it. It had originally no owner. Whilst, therefore, I
advocate the right, and interest myself in the hard case of all
those who have been thrown out of their natural inheritance by the
introduction of the system of landed property, I equally defend the
right of the possessor to the part which is his.

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever
made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value.
But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest
evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation
of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought
to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby
created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right,
and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right
which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards
till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of
government. Let us then do honour to revolutions by justice, and give
currency to their principles by blessings.

Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now
proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

To create a National Fund, out of which there shall be paid to every
person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen
pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or
her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed
property:

And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person
now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall
arrive at that age.



MEANS BY WHICH THE FUND IS TO BE CREATED.

I have already established the principle, namely, that the earth, in its
natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the
_common property of the human race_; that in that state, every person
would have been born to property; and that the system of landed
property, by its inseparable connection with cultivation, and with what
is called civilized life, has absorbed the property of all those whom
it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to have been done, an
indemnification for that loss.

The fault, however, is not in the present possessors. No complaint is
intended, or ought to be alleged against them, unless they adopt the
crime by opposing justice. The fault is in the system, and it has stolen
imperceptibly upon the world, aided afterwards by the agrarian law of
the sword. But the fault can be made to reform itself by successive
generations; and without diminishing or deranging the property of any of
the present possessors, the operation of the fund can yet commence, and
be in full activity, the first year of its establishment, or soon after,
as I shall shew.

It is proposed that the payments, as already stated, be made to every
person, rich or poor. It is best to make it so, to prevent invidious
distinctions. It is also right it should be so, because it is in lieu of
the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over
and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who
did. Such persons as do not choose to receive it can throw it into the
common fund.

Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse
condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than
he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that
civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for
that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion
equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.

Various methods may be proposed for this purpose, but that which appears
to be the best (not only because it will operate without deranging any
present possessors, or without interfering with the collection of taxes
or emprunts necessary for the purposes of government and the revolution,
but because it will be the least troublesome and the most effectual, and
also because the subtraction will be made at a time that best admits it)
is at the moment that.. property is passing by the death of one person
to the possession of another. In this case, the bequeather gives
nothing: the receiver pays nothing. The only matter to him is, that
the monopoly of natural inheritance, to which there never was a right,
begins to cease in his person. A generous man would not wish it to
continue, and a just man will rejoice to see it abolished.

My state of health prevents my making sufficient inquiries with respect
to the doctrine of probabilities, whereon to found calculations with
such degrees of certainty as they are capable of. What, therefore, I
offer on this head is more the result of observation and reflection
than of received information; but I believe it will be found to agree
sufficiently with fact.

In the first place, taking twenty-one years as the epoch of maturity,
all the property of a nation, real and personal, is always in the
possession of persons above that age. It is then necessary to know, as a
datum of calculation, the average of years which persons above that age
will live. I take this average to be about thirty years, for though
many persons will live forty, fifty, or sixty years after the age of
twenty-one years, others will die much sooner, and some in every year of
that time.

Taking, then, thirty years as the average of time, it will give, without
any material variation one way or other, the average of time in which
the whole property or capital of a nation, or a sum equal thereto, will
have passed through one entire revolution in descent, that is, will have
gone by deaths to new possessors; for though, in many instances, some
parts of this capital will remain forty, fifty, or sixty years in the
possession of one person, other parts will have revolved two or three
times before those thirty years expire, which will bring it to that
average; for were one half the capital of a nation to revolve twice in
thirty years, it would produce the same fund as if the whole revolved
once.

Taking, then, thirty years as the average of time in which the whole
capital of a nation, or a sum equal thereto, will revolve once, the
thirtieth part thereof will be the sum that will revolve every year,
that is, will go by deaths to new possessors; and this last sum being
thus known, and the ratio per cent, to be subtracted from it determined,
it will give the annual amount or income of the proposed fund, to be
applied as already mentioned.

In looking over the discourse of the English minister, Pitt, in his
opening of what is called in England the budget, (the scheme of finance
for the year 1796,) I find an estimate of the national capital of that
country. As this estimate of a national capital is prepared ready to my
hand, I take it as a datum to act upon. When a calculation is made upon
the known capital of any nation, combined with its population, it will
serve as a scale for any other nation, in proportion as its capital and
population be more or less. I am the more disposed to take this estimate
of Mr. Pitt, for the purpose of showing to that minister, upon his own
calculation, how much better money may be employed than in wasting it,
as he has done, on the wild project of setting up Bourbon kings. What,
in the name of heaven, are Bourbon kings to the people of England? It is
better that the people have bread.

Mr. Pitt states the national capital of England, real and personal,
to be one thousand three hundred millions sterling, which is about
one-fourth part of the national capital of France, including Belgia. The
event of the last harvest in each country proves that the soil of France
is more productive than that of England, and that it can better support
twenty-four or twenty-five millions of inhabitants than that of England
can seven or seven and a half millions.

The thirtieth part of this capital of 1,300,000,000L. is 43,333,333L.
which is the part that will revolve every year by deaths in that country
to new possessors; and the sum that will annually revolve in France
in the proportion of four to one, will be about one hundred and
seventy-three millions sterling. From this sum of 43,333,333L. annually
revolving, is to be subtracted the value of the natural inheritance
absorbed in it, which, perhaps, in fair justice, cannot be taken at
less, and ought not to be taken for more, than a tenth part.

It will always happen, that of the property thus revolving by deaths
every year a part will descend in a direct line to sons and daughters,
and the other part collaterally, and the proportion will be found to be
about three to one; that is, about thirty millions of the above sum will
descend to direct heirs, and the remaining sum of 13,333,333L. to more
distant relations, and in part to strangers.

Considering, then, that man is always related to society, that
relationship will become comparatively greater in proportion as the next
of kin is more distant, it is therefore consistent with civilization to
say that where there are no direct heirs society shall be heir to a part
over and above the tenth part due to society. If this additional part be
from five to ten or twelve per cent., in proportion as the next of kin
be nearer or more remote, so as to average with the escheats that may
fall, which ought always to go to society and not to the government
(an addition of ten per cent, more), the produce from the annual sum of
43,333,333L. will be:

[Illustration: table361]

Having thus arrived at the annual amount of the proposed fund, I come,
in the next place, to speak of the population proportioned to this fund,
and to compare it with the uses to which the fund is to be applied.

The population (I mean that of England) does not exceed seven millions
and a half, and the number of persons above the age of fifty will in
that case be about four hundred thousand. There would not, however, be
more than that number that would accept the proposed ten pounds sterling
per annum, though they would be entitled to it. I have no idea it would
be accepted by many persons who had a yearly income of two or three
hundred pounds sterling. But as we often see instances of rich people
falling into sudden poverty, even at the age of sixty, they would always
have the right of drawing all the arrears due to them. Four millions,
therefore, of the above annual sum of 5,666,6667L. will be required for
four hundred thousand aged persons, at ten pounds sterling each.

I come now to speak of the persons annually arriving at twenty-one years
of age. If all the persons who died were above the age of twenty-one
years, the number of persons annually arriving at that age, must be
equal to the annual number of deaths, to keep the population stationary.
But the greater part die under the age of twenty-one, and therefore the
number of persons annually arriving at twenty-one will be less than half
the number of deaths. The whole number of deaths upon a population of
seven millions and an half will be about 220,000 annually. The number
arriving at twenty-one years of age will be about 100,000. The whole
number of these will not receive the proposed fifteen pounds, for the
reasons already mentioned, though, as in the former case, they would be
entitled to it. Admitting then that a tenth part declined receiving it,
the amount would stand thus:

[Illustration: table362]

There are, in every country, a number of blind and lame persons, totally
incapable of earning a livelihood. But as it will always happen that the
greater number of blind persons will be among those who are above
the age of fifty years, they will be provided for in that class. The
remaining sum of 316,666L. will provide for the lame and blind under
that age, at the same rate of 10L. annually for each person.

Having now gone through all the necessary calculations, and stated the
particulars of the plan, I shall conclude with some observations.

It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am
pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is
unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is
necessary that a revolution should be made in it.(1) The contrast of
affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye,
is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little
about riches, as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are
capable of good. I care not how affluent some may be, provided that
none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy
affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, whilst so
much misery is mingled in the scene. The sight of the misery, and the
unpleasant sensations it suggests, which, though they may be suffocated
cannot be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of
affluence than the proposed 10 per cent, upon property is worth. He that
would not give the one to get rid of the other has no charity, even for
himself.

     1 This and the preceding sentence axe omitted in all
     previous English and American editions.--_Editor._.

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by
individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do,
when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may
satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he
has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing
civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pullies,
that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

The plan here proposed will reach the whole. It will immediately relieve
and take out of view three classes of wretchedness--the blind, the lame,
and the aged poor; and it will furnish the rising generation with means
to prevent their becoming poor; and it will do this without deranging
or interfering with any national measures. To shew that this will be the
case, it is sufficient to observe that the operation and effect of
the plan will, in all cases, be the same as if every individual were
_voluntarily_ to make his will and dispose of his property in the manner
here proposed.

But it is justice, and not charity, that is the principle of the plan.
In all great cases it is necessary to have a principle more universally
active than charity; and, with respect to justice, it ought not to be
left to the choice of detached individuals whether they will do justice
or not. Considering then, the plan on the ground of justice, it ought to
be the act of the whole, growing spontaneously out of the principles of
the revolution, and the reputation of it ought to be national and not
individual.

A plan upon this principle would benefit the revolution by the energy
that springs from the consciousness of justice. It would multiply also
the national resources; for property, like vegetation, increases
by offsets. When a young couple begin the world, the difference is
exceedingly great whether they begin with nothing or with fifteen pounds
apiece. With this aid they could buy a cow, and implements to cultivate
a few acres of land; and instead of becoming burdens upon society, which
is always the case where children are produced faster than they can be
fed, would be put in the way of becoming useful and profitable citizens.
The national domains also would sell the better if pecuniary aids were
provided to cultivate them in small lots.

It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of
civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity
or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched
only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of
economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor?
This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age
of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged
face of society, chequered with the extremes of affluence and want,
proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it,
and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor in all
countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible
for them to get cut of that state of themselves. It ought also to be
observed that this mass increases in all countries that are called
civilized. More persons fall annually into it than get out of it.

Though in a plan of which justice and humanity are the
foundation-principles, interest ought not to be admitted into the
calculation, yet it is always of advantage to the establishment of any
plan to shew that it is beneficial as a matter of interest. The success
of any proposed plan submitted to public consideration must finally
depend on the numbers interested in supporting it, united with the
justice of its principles.

The plan here proposed will benefit all, without injuring any. It will
consolidate the interest of the Republic with that of the individual.
To the numerous class dispossessed of their natural inheritance by the
system of landed property it will be an act of national justice. To
persons dying possessed of moderate fortunes it will operate as a
tontine to their children, more beneficial than the sum of money paid
into the fund: and it will give to the accumulation of riches a degree
of security that none of the old governments of Europe, now tottering on
their foundations, can give.

I do not suppose that more than one family in ten, in any of the
countries of Europe, has, when the head of the family dies, a clear
property left of five hundred pounds sterling. To all such the plan is
advantageous. That property would pay fifty pounds into the fund, and if
there were only two children under age they would receive fifteen pounds
each, (thirty pounds,) on coming of age, and be entitled to ten pounds
a-year after fifty. It is from the overgrown acquisition of property
that the fund will support itself; and I know that the possessors of
such property in England, though they would eventually be benefited by
the protection of nine-tenths of it, will exclaim against the plan. But
without entering into any inquiry how they came by that property, let
them recollect that they have been the advocates of this war, and that
Mr. Pitt has already laid on more new taxes to be raised annually upon
the people of England, and that for supporting the despotism of Austria
and the Bourbons against the liberties of France, than would pay
annually all the sums proposed in this plan.

I have made the calculations stated in this plan, upon what is called
personal, as well as upon landed property. The reason for making it upon
land is already explained; and the reason for taking personal property
into the calculation is equally well founded though on a different
principle. Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in
common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of society;
and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property
without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a
continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot
be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all
cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained.
All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's
own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes
on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part
of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is
best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that
the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect
of paying too little for the labour that produced it; the consequence
of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer
abounds in affluence. It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly
the price of labour to the profits it produces; and it will also be
said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive
an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be
much bet-ter for it in the interim. Make, then, society the treasurer to
guard it for him in a common fund; for it is no reason, that because he
might not make a good use of it for himself, another should take it.

The state of civilization that has prevailed throughout Europe, is as
unjust in its principle, as it is horrid in its effects; and it is the
consciousness of this, and the apprehension that such a state cannot
continue when once investigation begins in any country, that makes
the possessors of property dread every idea of a revolution. It is the
hazard and not the principle of revolutions that retards their progress.
This being the case, it is necessary as well for the protection of
property, as for the sake of justice and humanity, to form a system
that, whilst it preserves one part of society from wretchedness, shall
secure the other from depredation.

The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that formerly surrounded
affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor
of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendour,
instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when,
instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult upon
wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call
the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and
it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate
security.

To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and
this can only be done by making property productive of a national
blessing, extending to every individual. When the riches of one man
above another shall increase the national fund in the same proportion;
when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the
prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the
better it shall be for the general mass; it is then that antipathies
will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national
interest and protection.

I have no property in France to become subject to the plan I propose.
What I have which is not much, is in the United States of America. But
I will pay one hundred pounds sterling towards this fund in rance, the
instant it shall be established; and I will pay the same sum in England
whenever a similar establishment shall take place in that country.

A revolution in the state of civilization is the necessary companion of
revolutions in the system of government. If a revolution in any country
be from bad to good, or from good to bad, the state of what is called
civilization in that country, must be made conformable thereto, to give
that revolution effect. Despotic government supports itself by abject
civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness
in the mass of the people, are the chief enterions. Such governments
consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual
faculty is not his privilege; _that he has nothing to do with the laws
but to obey them _; (*) and they politically depend more upon breaking
the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by
desperation.

     * Expression of Horsley, an English bishop, in the English
     parliament.--Author.

It is a revolution in the state of civilization that will give
perfection to the revolution of France. Already the conviction that
government by representation is the true system of government is
spreading itself fast in the world. The reasonableness of it can be seen
by all. The justness of it makes itself felt even by its opposers. But
when a system of civilization, growing out of that system of government,
shall be so organized that not a man or woman born in the Republic but
shall inherit some means of beginning the world, and see before them
the certainty of escaping the miseries that under other governments
accompany old age, the revolution of France will have an advocate and an
ally in the heart of all nations.

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot;
it will succeed where diplomatic management would fail: it is neither
the Rhine, the Channel, nor the Ocean that can arrest its progress: it
will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.


MEANS FOR CARRYING THE PROPOSED PLAN INTO EXECUTION,

AND TO RENDER IT AT THE SAME TIME CONDUCIVE TO THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

I. Each canton shall elect in its primary assemblies, three persons,
as commissioners for that canton, who shall take cognizance, and keep
a register of all matters happening in that canton, conformable to the
charter that shall be established by law for carrying this plan into
execution.

II. The law shall fix the manner in which the property of deceased
persons shall be ascertained.

III. When the amount of the property of any deceased person shall be
ascertained, the principal heir to that property, or the eldest of the
co-heirs, if of lawful age, or if under age the person authorized by the
will of the deceased to represent him or them, shall give bond to the
commissioners of the canton to pay the said tenth part thereof in four
equal quarterly payments, within the space of one year or sooner, at the
choice of the payers. One half of the whole property shall remain as a
security until the bond be paid off.

IV. The bond shall be registered in the office of the commissioners of
the canton, and the original bonds shall be deposited in the national
bank at Paris. The bank shall publish every quarter of a year the amount
of the bonds in its possession, and also the bonds that shall have been
paid off, or what parts thereof, since the last quarterly publication.

V. The national bank shall issue bank notes upon the security of the
bonds in its possession. The notes so issued, shall be applied to pay
the pensions of aged persons, and the compensations to persons arriving
at twenty-one years of age. It is both reasonable and generous to
suppose, that persons not under immediate necessity, will suspend their
right of drawing on the fund, until it acquire, as it will do, a greater
degree of ability. In this case, it is proposed, that an honorary
register be kept, in each canton, of the names of the persons thus
suspending that right, at least during the present war.

VI. As the inheritors of property must always take up their bonds in
four quarterly payments, or sooner if they choose, there will always
be _numéraire_ [cash] arriving at the bank after the expiration of the
first quarter, to exchange for the bank notes that shall be brought in.

VII. The bank notes being thus put in circulation, upon the best of all
possible security, that of actual property, to more than four times
the amount of the bonds upon which the notes are issued, and with
_numéraire_ continually arriving at the bank to exchange or pay them off
whenever they shall be presented for that purpose, they will acquire
a permanent value in all parts of the Republic. They can therefore be
received in payment of taxes, or emprunts equal to numéraire, because
the government can always receive numéraire for them at the bank.

VIII. It will be necessary that the payments of the ten per cent, be
made in numeraire for the first year from the establishment of the plan.
But after the expiration of the first year, the inheritors of property
may pay ten per cent either in bank notes issued upon the fund, or in
numeraire, If the payments be in numeraire, it will lie as a deposit at
the bank, to be exchanged for a quantity of notes equal to that amount;
and if in notes issued upon the fund, it will cause a demand upon the
fund, equal thereto; and thus the operation of the plan will create
means to carry itself into execution.

Thomas Paine.




XXIX. THE EIGHTEENTH FRUCTIDOR.


To the People of France and the French Armies (1)

     1 This pamphlet was written between the defeat of Pichegru's
     attempt, September 4, 1794, and November 12, of the same
     year, the date of the Bien-informé in which the publication
     is noticed. General Pichegra (Charles), (1761-1804) having
     joined a royalist conspiracy against the Republic, was
     banished to Cayenne (1797), whence he escaped to England;
     having returned to Paris (1804) he was imprisoned in the
     Temple, and there found strangled by a silk handkerchief,
     whether by his own or another's act remaining doubtful.
     --Editor.

When an extraordinary measure, not warranted by established
constitutional rules, and justifiable only on the supreme law of
absolute necessity, bursts suddenly upon us, we must, in order to form
a true judgment thereon, carry our researches back to the times that
preceded and occasioned it. Taking up then the subject with respect to
the event of the Eighteenth of Fructidor on this ground, I go to examine
the state of things prior to that period. I begin with the establishment
of the constitution of the year 3 of the French Republic.

A better _organized_ constitution has never yet been devised by human
wisdom. It is, in its organization, free from all the vices and defects
to which other forms of government are more or less subject. I will
speak first of the legislative body, because the Legislature is, in the
natural order of things, the first power; the Executive is the first
magistrate.

By arranging the legislative body into two divisions, as is done in the
French Constitution, the one, (the Council of Five Hundred,) whose part
it is to conceive and propose laws; the other, a Council of Ancients, to
review, approve, or reject the laws proposed; all the security is given
that can arise from coolness of reflection acting upon, or correcting
the precipitancy or enthusiasm of conception and imagination. It is
seldom that our first thought, even upon any subject, is sufficiently
just.(1)

     1 For Paine's ideas on the right division of representatives
     into two chambers, which differ essentially from any
     bicameral system ever adopted, see vol. ii., p. 444 of this
     work; also, in the present volume, Chapter XXXIV.--
     _Editor._.

The policy of renewing the Legislature by a third part each year, though
not entirely new, either in theory or in practice, is nevertheless one
of the modern improvements in the science of government. It prevents,
on the one hand, that convulsion and precipitate change of measures
into which a nation might be surprised by the going out of the whole
Legislature at the same time, and the instantaneous election of a new
one; on the other hand, it excludes that common interest from taking
place that might tempt a whole Legislature, whose term of duration
expired at once, to usurp the right of continuance. I go now to speak of
the Executive.

It is a principle uncontrovertible by reason, that each of the parts
by which government is composed, should be so constructed as to be in
perpetual maturity. We should laugh at the idea of a Council of Five
Hundred, or a Council of Ancients, or a Parliament, or any national
assembly, who should be all children in leading strings and in the
cradle, or be all sick, insane, deaf, dumb, lame or blind, at the same
time, or be all upon crutches, tottering with age or infirmities. Any
form of government that was so constructed as to admit the possibility
of such cases happening to a whole Legislature would justly be the
ridicule of the world; and on a parity of reasoning, it is equally as
ridiculous that the same cases should happen in that part of government
which is called the Executive; yet this is the contemptible condition to
which an Executive is always subject, and which is often happening,
when it is placed in an hereditary individual called a king. When
that individual is in either of the cases before mentioned, the whole
Executive is in the same case; for himself is the whole. He is then (as
an Executive) the ridiculous picture of what a Legislature would be if
all its members were in the same case. The one is a whole made up of
parts, the other a whole without parts; and anything happening to the
one, (as a part or sec-tion of the government,) is parallel to the same
thing happening to the other.

As, therefore, an hereditary executive called a king is a perfect
absurdity in itself, any attachment to it is equally as absurd. It is
neither instinct or reason; and if this attachment is what is called
royalism in France, then is a royalist inferior in character to every
species of the animal world; for what can that being be who acts neither
by instinct nor by reason? Such a being merits rather our derision
than our pity; and it is only when it assumes to act its folly that it
becomes capable of provoking republican indignation. In every other
case it is too contemptible to excite anger. For my own part, when I
contemplate the self-evident absurdity of the thing, I can scarcely
permit myself to believe that there exists in the high-minded nation of
France such a mean and silly animal as a royalist.

As it requires but a single glance of thought to see (as is before said)
that all the parts of which government is composed must be at all times
in a state of full maturity, it was not possible that men acting under
the influence of reason, could, in forming a Constitution, admit an
hereditary Executive, any more than an hereditary Legislature. I go
therefore to examine the other cases.

In the first place, (rejecting the hereditary system,) shall the
Executive by election be an _individual or a plurality_.

An individual by election is almost as bad as the hereditary system,
except that there is always a better chance of not having an idiot. But
he will never be any thing more than a chief of a party, and none but
those of that party will have access to him. He will have no person
to consult with of a standing equal with himself, and consequently be
deprived of the advantages arising from equal discussion.

Those whom he admits in consultation will be ministers of his own
appointment, who, if they displease by their advice, must expect to
be dismissed. The authority also is too great, and the business too
complicated, to be intrusted to the ambition or the judgment of an
individual; and besides these cases, the sudden change of measures
that might follow by the going out of an individual Executive, and the
election of a new one, would hold the affairs of a nation in a state of
perpetual uncertainty. We come then to the case of a plural Executive.

It must be sufficiently plural, to give opportunity to discuss all the
various subjects that in the course of national business may come before
it; and yet not so numerous as to endanger the necessary secrecy that
certain cases, such as those of war, require.

Establishing, then, plurality as a principle, the only question is, What
shall be the number of that plurality?

Three are too few either for the variety or the quantity of business.
The Constitution has adopted five; and experience has shewn, from the
commencement of the Constitution to the time of the election of the new
legislative third, that this number of Directors, when well chosen, is
sufficient for all national executive purposes; and therefore a greater
number would be only an unnecessary expence. That the measures of the
Directory during that period were well concerted is proved by their
success; and their being well concerted shews they were well discussed;
and, therefore, that five is a sufficient number with respect to
discussion; and, on the other hand, the secret, whenever there was
one, (as in the case of the expedition to Ireland,) was well kept, and
therefore the number is not too great to endanger the necessary secrecy.

The reason why the two Councils are numerous is not from the necessity
of their being so, on account of business, but because that every
part of the republic shall find and feel itself in the national
representation.

Next to the general principle of government by representation, the
excellence of the French Constitution consists in providing means to
prevent that abuse of power that might arise by letting it remain too
long in the same hands. This wise precaution pervades every part of the
Constitution. Not only the legislature is renewable by a third every
year, but the president of each of the Councils is renewable every
month; and of the Directory, one member each year, and its president
every three months. Those who formed the Constitution cannot be accused
of having contrived for themselves. The Constitution, in this respect,
is as impartially constructed as if those who framed it were to die as
soon as they had finished their work.

The only defect in the Constitution is that of having narrowed the right
of suffrage; and it is in a great measure due to this narrowing the
right, that the last elections have not generally been good. My former
colleagues will, I presume, pardon my saying this to day, when they
recollect my arguments against this defect, at the time the Constitution
was discussed in the Convention.(1)

     1  See Chapters XXIV. and XXV., also the letter prefaced to
     XXVIII., in this volume.--_Editor._,

I will close this part of the subject by remarking on one of the most
vulgar and absurd sayings or dogmas that ever yet imposed itself upon
the world, which is, "_that a Republic is fit only for a small country,
and a Monarchy for a large one_." Ask those who say this their reasons
why it is so, and they can give none.

Let us then examine the case. If the quantity of knowledge in a
government ought to be proportioned to the extent of a country, and
the magnitude and variety of its affairs, it follows, as an undeniable
result, that this absurd dogma is false, and that the reverse of it is
true. As to what is called Monarchy, if it be adaptable to any country
it can only be so to a small one, whose concerns are few, little
complicated, and all within the comprehension of an individual. But when
we come to a country of large extent, vast population, and whose affairs
are great, numerous, and various, it is the representative republican
system only, that can collect into the government the quantity
of knowledge necessary to govern to the best national advantage.
Montesquieu, who was strongly inclined to republican government,
sheltered himself under this absurd dogma; for he had always the
Bastile before his eyes when he was speaking of Republics, and therefore
_pretended_ not to write for France. Condorcet governed himself by
the same caution, but it was caution only, for no sooner had he the
opportunity of speaking fully out than he did it. When I say this of
Condorcet, I know it as a fact. In a paper published in Paris, July,
1791, entitled, "_The Republican, or the Defender of Representative
Government?_" is a piece signed _Thomas Paine_.(1) That piece was
concerted between Condorcet and myself. I wrote the original in
English, and Condorcet translated it. The object of it was to expose the
absurdity and falsehood of the above mentioned dogma.

     1 Chapter II. of this volume. See also my "Life of Paine,"
     vol. i., p. 311.--Editor.

Having thus concisely glanced at the excellencies of the Constitution,
and the superiority of the representative system of government over
every other system, (if any other can be called a system,) I come to
speak of the circumstances that have intervened between the time the
Constitution was established and the event that took place on the 18th
of Fructidor of the present year.

Almost as suddenly as the morning light dissipates darkness, did the
establishment of the Constitution change the face of affairs in France.
Security succeeded to terror, prosperity to distress, plenty to famine,
and confidence increased as the days multiplied, until the coming of the
new third. A series of victories unequalled in the world, followed
each other, almost too rapidly to be counted, and too numerous to be
remembered. The Coalition, every where defeated and confounded, crumbled
away like a ball of dust in the hand of a giant. Every thing, during
that period, was acted on such a mighty scale that reality appeared a
dream, and truth outstript romance. It may figuratively be said, that
the Rhine and the Rubicon (Germany and Italy) replied in triumphs to
each other, and the echoing Alps prolonged the shout. I will not
here dishonour a great description by noticing too much the English
government. It is sufficient to say paradoxically, that in the magnitude
of its littleness it cringed, it intrigued, and sought protection in
corruption.

Though the achievements of these days might give trophies to a nation
and laurels to its heroes, they derive their full radiance of glory
from the principle they inspired and the object they accomplished.
Desolation, chains, and slavery had marked the progress of former wars,
but to conquer for Liberty had never been thought of. To receive
the degrading submission of a distressed and subjugated people, and
insultingly permit them to live, made the chief triumph of former
conquerors; but to receive them with fraternity, to break their chains,
to tell them they are free, and teach them to be so, make a new volume
in the history of man.

Amidst those national honours, and when only two enemies remained, both
of whom had solicited peace, and one of them had signed preliminaries,
the election of the new third commenced. Every thing was made easy to
them. All difficulties had been conquered before they arrived at the
government. They came in the olive days of the revolution, and all they
had to do was not to do mischief.

It was, however, not difficult to foresee, that the elections would not
be generally good. The horrid days of Robespierre were still remembered,
and the gratitude due to those who had put an end to them was forgotten.

Thousands who, by passive approbation during that tremendous scene, had
experienced no suffering, assumed the merit of being the loudest against
it. Their cowardice in not opposing it, became courage when it was over.
They exclaimed against Terrorism as if they had been the heroes that
overthrew it, and rendered themselves ridiculous by fantastically
overacting moderation. The most noisy of this class, that I have met
with, are those who suffered nothing. They became all things, at all
times, to all men; till at last they laughed at principle. It was the
real republicans who suffered most during the time of Robespierre. The
persecution began upon them on the 31st of May, 1793, and ceased only
by the exertions of the remnant that survived.

In such a confused state of things as preceded the late elections the
public mind was put into a condition of being easily deceived; and it
was almost natural that the hypocrite would stand the best chance of
being elected into the new third. Had those who, since their election,
have thrown the public affairs into confusion by counter-revolutionary
measures, declared themselves beforehand, they would have been denounced
instead of being chosen. Deception was necessary to their success.
The Constitution obtained a full establishment; the revolution was
considered as complete; and the war on the eve of termination. In such a
situation, the mass of the people, fatigued by a long revolution, sought
repose; and in their elections they looked out for quiet men. They
unfortunately found hypocrites. Would any of the primary assemblies
have voted for a civil war? Certainly they would not. But the electoral
assemblies of some departments have chosen men whose measures, since
their election, tended to no other end but to provoke it. Either those
electors have deceived their constituents of the primary assemblies, or
they have been themselves deceived in the choice they made of deputies.

That there were some direct but secret conspirators in the new third can
scarcely admit of a doubt; but it is most reasonable to suppose that a
great part were seduced by the vanity of thinking they could do better
than those whom they succeeded. Instead of trusting to experience, they
attempted experiments. This counter-disposition prepared them to fall in
with any measures contrary to former measures, and that without seeing,
and probably without suspecting, the end to which they led.

No sooner were the members of the new third arrived at the seat of
government, than expectation was excited to see how they would act.
Their motions were watched by all parties, and it was impossible for
them to steal a march unobserved. They had it in their power to do great
good, or great mischief. A firm and manly conduct on their part, uniting
with that of the Directory and their colleagues, would have terminated
the war. But the moment before them was not the moment of hesitation. He
that hesitates in such situation is lost.

The first public act of the Council of Five Hundred was the election of
Pichegru to the presidency of that Council. He arrived at it by a very
large majority, and the public voice was in his favour. I among the rest
was one who rejoiced at it. But if the defection of Pichegru was at that
time known to Condé, and consequently to Pitt, it unveils the cause that
retarded all negotiations for peace.(1) They interpreted that election
into a signal of a counter-revolution, and were waiting for it; and they
mistook the respect shown to Pichegru, founded on the supposition of his
integrity, as a symptom of national revolt. Judging of things by their
own foolish ideas of government, they ascribed appearances to causes
between which there was no connection. Every thing on their part has
been a comedy of errors, and the actors have been chased from the stage.

     1 Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (1736-1818),
     organized the French emigrants on the Rhine into an army
     which was incorporated with that of Austria but paid by
     England. He converted Pichegru into a secret partisan of the
     Bourbons. He ultimately returned to France with Louis
     XVIII., who made him colonel of infantry and master of the
     royal household.--_Editor._,

Two or three decades of the new sessions passed away without any
thing very material taking place; but matters soon began to explain
themselves. The first thing that struck the public mind was, that no
more was heard of negotiations for peace, and that public business stood
still. It was not the object of the conspirators that there should be
peace; but as it was necessary to conceal their object, the Constitution
was ransacked to find pretences for delays. In vain did the Directory
explain to them the state of the finances and the wants of the army. The
committee, charged with that business, trifled away its time by a series
of unproductive reports, and continued to sit only to produce more.
Every thing necessary to be done was neglected, and every thing improper
was attempted. Pichegru occupied himself about forming a national guard
for the Councils--the suspicious signal of war,--Camille Jordan about
priests and bells, and the emigrants, with whom he had associated
during the two years he was in England.1 Willot and Delarue attacked the
Directory: their object was to displace some one of the directors, to
get in another of their own. Their motives with respect to the age of
Barras (who is as old as he wishes to be, and has been a little too old
for them) were too obvious not to be seen through.(2)

     1 Paine's pamphlet, addressed to Jordan, deals mainly with
     religions matters, and is reserved for oar fourth volume.--
     _Editor._.

     2 Paul François Jean Nicolas Barras (1755-1899) was
     President of the Directory at this time, 1797.--_Editor._.

In this suspensive state of things, the public mind, filled with
apprehensions, became agitated, and without knowing what it might be,
looked for some extraordinary event. It saw, for it could not avoid
seeing, that things could not remain long in the state they were in,
but it dreaded a convulsion. That spirit of triflingness which it
had indulged too freely when in a state of security, and which it is
probable the new agents had interpreted into indifference about the
success of the Republic, assumed a serious aspect that afforded to
conspiracy no hope of aid; but still it went on. It plunged itself into
new measures with the same ill success, and the further it went the
further the public mind retired. The conspiracy saw nothing around it to
give it encouragement.

The obstinacy, however, with which it persevered in its repeated
attacks upon the Directory, in framing laws in favour of emigrants and
refractory priests, and in every thing inconsistent with the immediate
safety of the Republic, and which served to encourage the enemy to
prolong the war, admitted of no other direct interpretation than that
something was rotten in the Council of Five Hundred. The evidence of
circumstances became every day too visible not to be seen, and too
strong to be explained away. Even as errors, (to say no worse of
them,) they are not entitled to apology; for where knowledge is a duty,
ignorance is a crime.

The more serious republicans, who had better opportunities than the
generality had, of knowing the state of politics, began to take
the alarm, and formed themselves into a Society, by the name of the
Constitutional Club. It is the only Society of which I have been a
member in France; and I went to this because it was become necessary
that the friends of the Republic should rally round the standard of
the constitution. I met there several of the original patriots of the
revolution; I do not mean of the last order of Jacobins, but of the
first of that name. The faction in the Council of Five Hundred,
who, finding no counsel from the public, began to be frightened at
appearances, fortified itself against the dread of this Society, by
passing a law to dissolve it. The constitutionality of the law was at
least doubtful: but the Society, that it might not give the example of
exasperating matters already too much inflamed, suspended its meetings.

A matter, however, of much greater moment soon after presented itself.
It was the march of four regiments, some of whom, in the line of their
route, had to pass within about twelve leagues of Paris, which is the
boundary the Constitution had fixed as the distance of any armed
force from the legislative body. In another state of things, such a
circumstance would not have been noticed. But conspiracy is quick of
suspicion, and the fear which the faction in the Council of Five
Hundred manifested upon this occasion could not have suggested itself
to innocent men; neither would innocent men have expostulated with the
Directory upon the case, in the manner these men did. The question they
urged went to extort from the Directory, and to make known to the enemy,
what the destination of the troops was. The leaders of the faction
conceived that the troops were marching against them; and the conduct
they adopted in consequence of it was sufficient to justify the measure,
even if it had been so. From what other motive than the consciousness of
their own designs could they have fear? The troops, in every instance,
had been the gallant defenders of the Republic, and the openly declared
friends of the Constitution; the Directory had been the same, and if the
faction were not of a different description neither fear nor suspicion
could have had place among them.

All those manouvres in the Council were acted under the most
professional attachment to the Constitution; and this as necessarily
served to enfeeble their projects. It is exceedingly difficult, and next
to impossible, to conduct a conspiracy, and still more so to give it
success, in a popular government. The disguised and feigned pretences
which men in such cases are obliged to act in the face of the public,
suppress the action of the faculties, and give even to natural courage
the features of timidity. They are not half the men they would be where
no disguise is necessary. It is impossible to be a hypocrite and to be
brave at the same instant.

The faction, by the imprudence of its measures, upon the march of
the troops, and upon the declarations of the officers and soldiers to
support the Republic and the Constitution against all open or concealed
attempts to overturn them, had gotten itself involved with the army, and
in effect declared itself a party against it. On the one hand, laws were
proposed to admit emigrants and refractory priests as free citizens; and
on the other hand to exclude the troops from Paris, and to punish the
soldiers who had declared to support the Republic In the mean time all
negociations for peace went backward; and the enemy, still recruiting
its forces, rested to take advantage of circumstances. Excepting the
absence of hostilities, it was a state worse than war.

If all this was not a conspiracy, it had at least the features of one,
and was pregnant with the same mischiefs. The eyes of the faction could
not avoid being open to the dangers to which it obstinately exposed
the Republic; yet still it persisted. During this scene, the journals
devoted to the faction were repeatedly announcing the near approach of
peace with Austria and with England, and often asserting that it was
concluded. This falsehood could be intended for no other purpose than to
keep the eyes of the people shut against the dangers to which they were
exposed.

Taking all circumstances together, it was impossible that such a state
of things could continue long; and at length it was resolved to bring it
to an issue. There is good reason to believe that the affair of the
18th Fructidor (September 4) was intended to have taken place two days
before; but on recollecting that it was the 2d of September, a day
mournful in the annals of the revolution, it was postponed. When the
issue arrived, the faction found to its cost it had no party among the
public. It had sought its own disasters, and was left to suffer the
consequences. Foreign enemies, as well as those of the interior, if
any such there be, ought to see in the event of this day that all
expectation of aid from any part of the public in support of a counter
revolution is delusion. In a state of security the thoughtless, who
trembled at terror, may laugh at principles of Liberty (for they have
laughed) but it is one thing to indulge a foolish laugh, quite another
thing to surrender Liberty.

Considering the event of the 18th Fructidor in a political light, it is
one of those that are justifiable only on the supreme law of absolute
necessity, and it is the necessity abstracted from the event that is to
be deplored. The event itself is matter of joy. Whether the manouvres in
the Council of Five Hundred were the conspiracy of a few, aided l>y the
perverseness of many, or whether it had a deeper root, the dangers were
the same. It was impossible to go on. Every thing was at stake, and
all national business at a stand. The case reduced itself to a simple
alternative--shall the Republic be destroyed by the darksome manouvres
-of a faction, or shall it be preserved by an exceptional act?

During the American Revolution, and that after the State constitutions
were established, particular cases arose that rendered it necessary to
act in a manner that would have been treasonable in a state of peace. At
one time Congress invested General Washington with dictatorial power.
At another time the Government of Pennsylvania suspended itself and
declared martial law. It was the necessity of the times only that
made the apology of those extraordinary measures. But who was it that
produced the necessity of an extraordinary measure in France? A faction,
and that in the face of prosperity and success. Its conduct is without
apology; and it is on the faction only that the exceptional measure has
fallen. The public has suffered no inconvenience. If there are some men
more disposed than others not to act severely, I have a right to place
myself in that class; the whole of my political life invariably proves
it; yet I cannot see, taking all parts of the case together, what else,
or what better, could have been done, than has been done. It was a
great stroke, applied in a great crisis, that crushed in an instant,
and without the loss of a life, all the hopes of the enemy, and restored
tranquillity to the interior.

The event was ushered in by the discharge of two cannon at four in the
morning, and was the only noise that was heard throughout the day. It
naturally excited a movement among the Parisians to enquire the cause.
They soon learned it, and the countenance they carried was easy to be
interpreted. It was that of a people who, for some time past, had
been oppressed with apprehensions of some direful event, and who felt
themselves suddenly relieved, by finding what it was. Every one went
about his business, or followed his curiosity in quietude. It resembled
the cheerful tranquillity of the day when Louis XVI. absconded in 1791,
and like that day it served to open the eyes of the nation.

If we take a review of the various events, as well conspiracies as
commotions, that have succeeded each other in this revolution, we shall
see how the former have wasted consumptively away, and the consequences
of the latter have softened. The 31st May and its consequences were
terrible. That of the 9th and 10th Thermidor, though glorious for the
republic, as it overthrew one of the most horrid and cruel despotisms
that ever raged, was nevertheless marked with many circumstances
of severe and continued retaliation. The commotions of Germinal and
Prairial of the year 3, and of Vendemaire of the year 4, were many
degrees below those that preceded them, and affected but a small part of
the public. This of Pichegru and his associates has been crushed in an
instant, without the stain of blood, and without involving the public in
the least inconvenience.

These events taken in a series, mark the progress of the Republic from
disorder to stability. The contrary of this is the case in all parts
of the British dominions. There, commotions are on an ascending scale;
every one is higher than the former. That of the sailors had nearly
been the overthrow of the government. But the most potent of all is the
invisible commotion in the Bank. It works with the silence of time, and
the certainty of death. Every thing happening in France is curable; but
this is beyond the reach of nature or invention.

Leaving the event of the 18th Fructidor to justify itself by the
necessity that occasioned it, and glorify itself by the happiness of
its consequences, I come to cast a coup-d'oil on the present state of
affairs.

We have seen by the lingering condition of the negociations for peace,
that nothing was to be expected from them, in the situation that things
stood prior to the 18th Fructidor. The armies had done wonders, but
those wonders were rendered unproductive by the wretched manouvres of a
faction. New exertions are now necessary to repair the mischiefs which
that faction has done. The electoral bodies, in some Departments, who
by an injudicious choice, or a corrupt influence, have sent improper
deputies to the Legislature, have some atonement to make to their
country. The evil originated with them, and the least they can do is to
be among the foremost to repair it.

It is, however, in vain to lament an evil that is past. There is neither
manhood nor policy in grief; and it often happens that an error in
politics, like an error in war, admits of being turned to greater
advantage than if it had not occurred. The enemy, encouraged by that
error, presumes too much, and becomes doubly foiled by the re-action.
England, unable to conquer, has stooped to corrupt; and defeated in
the last, as in the first, she is in a worse condition than before.
Continually increasing her crimes, she increases the measure of her
atonement, and multiplies the sacrifices she must make to obtain peace.
Nothing but the most obstinate stupidity could have induced her to let
slip the opportunity when it was within her reach. In addition to the
prospect of new expenses, she is now, to use Mr. Pitt's own figurative
expression against France, _not only on the brink, but in the gulph
of bankruptcy_. There is no longer any mystery in paper money. Call
it assignats, mandats, exchequer bills, or bank notes, it is still the
same. Time has solved the problem, and experience has fixed its fate.(1)

     1 See Chapter XXVI. of this volume.--_Editor._.

The government of that unfortunate country discovers its faithlessness
so much, that peace on any terms with her is scarcely worth obtaining.
Of what use is peace with a government that will employ that peace for
no other purpose than to repair, as far as it is possible, her shattered
finances and broken credit, and then go to war again? Four times within
the last ten years, from the time the American war closed, has the
Anglo-germanic government of England been meditating fresh war. First
with France on account of Holland, in 1787; afterwards with Russia;
then with Spain, on account of Nootka Sound; and a second time against
France, to overthrow her revolution. Sometimes that government employs
Prussia against Austria; at another time Austria against Prussia; and
always one or the other, or both against France. Peace with such a
government is only a treacherous cessation of hostilities.

The frequency of wars on the part of England, within the last century,
more than before, must have had some cause that did not exist prior to
that epoch. It is not difficult to discover what that cause is. It is
the mischievous compound of an Elector of the Germanic body and a King
of England; and which necessarily must, at some day or other, become
an object of attention to France. That one nation has not a right to
interfere in the internal government of another nation, is admitted; and
in this point of view, France has no right to dictate to England what
its form of government shall be. If it choose to have a thing called a
King, or whether that King shall be a man or an ass, is a matter with
which France has no business. But whether an Elector of the Germanic
body shall be King of England, is an _external_ case, with which
France and every other nation, who suffers inconvenience and injury in
consequence of it, has a right to interfere.

It is from this mischievous compound of Elector and King, that
originates a great part of the troubles that vex the continent of
Europe; and with respect to England, it has been the cause of her
immense national debt, the ruin of her finances, and the insolvency of
her bank. All intrigues on the continent, in which England is a party,
or becomes involved, are generated by, and act through, the medium of
this Anglo-germanic compound. It will be necessary to dissolve it. Let
the Elector retire to his Electorate, and the world will have peace.

England herself has given examples of interference in matters of this
kind, and that in cases where injury was only apprehended. She engaged
in a long and expensive war against France (called the succession war)
to prevent a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth being king of Spain;
because, said she, _it will be injurious_ to me; and she has been
fighting and intriguing against what was called the family-compact ever
since. In 1787 she threatened France with war to prevent a connection
between France and Hoi-land; and in all her propositions of peace to-day
she is dictating separations. But if she look at the Anglo-germanic
compact at home, called the Hanover succession, she cannot avoid seeing
that France necessarily must, some day or other, take up that subject,
and make the return of the Elector to his Electorate one of the
conditions of peace. There will be no lasting peace between the two
countries till this be done, and the sooner it be done the better will
it be for both.

I have not been in any company where this matter aas been a topic, that
did not see it in the light it is here stated. Even Barthélémy,(1) when
he first came to the Directory (and Barthélémy was never famous for
patriotism) acknowledged in my hearing, and in company with Derché,
Secretary to the Legation at Lille, the connection of an Elector of
Germany and a King of England to be injurious to France. I do not,
however, mention it from a wish to embarrass the negociation for peace.
The Directory has fixed its _ultimatum_; but if that ultimatum be
rejected, the obligation to adhere to it is discharged, and a new one
may be assumed. So wretchedly has Pitt managed his opportunities» that
every succeeding negociation has ended in terms more against him than
the former. If the Directory had bribed him, he could not serve his
interest better than he does. He serves it as Lord North served that of
America, which finished in the discharge of his master.*

     1 Marquis de Barthélémy (François) (1750-1830) entered the
     Directory in June, 1796, through royalist influence. He
     shared Pichegru's banishment, and subsequently became an
     agent of Louis XVIII.--_Editor._

     * The father of Pitt, when a member of the House of Commons,
     exclaiming one day, during a former war, against the
     enormous and ruinous expense of German connections, as the
     offspring of the Hanover succession, and borrowing a
     metaphor from the story of Prometheus, cried out: "Thus,
     Hie Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of
     Hanover; whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals."--
     Author.

Thus far I had written when the negociation at Lille became suspended,
in consequence of which I delayed the publication, that the ideas
suggested in this letter might not intrude themselves during the
interval. The _ultimatum_ offered by the Directory, as the terms of
peace, was more moderate than the government of England had a right to
expect. That government, though the provoker of the war, and the first
that committed hostilities by sending away the ambassador Chauvelin,(**)
had formerly talked of demanding from France, _indemnification for
the past and security for the future_. France, in her turn, might have
retorted, and demanded the same from England; but she did not. As it was
England that, in consequence of her bankruptcy, solicited peace, France
offered it to her on the simple condition of her restoring the islands
she had taken. The ultimatum has been rejected, and the negociation
broken off. The spirited part of France will say, _tant mieux_, so much
the better.

     ** It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between
     France and England, concluded at Paris, that the sending
     away an ambassador by either party, should be taken as an
     act of hostility by the other party. The declaration of war
     (Feb. M *793) by the Convention, of which I was then a
     member and know well the case, was made in exact conformity
     to this article in the treaty; for it was not a declaration
     of war against England, but a declaration that the French
     Republic is in war with England; the first act of hostility
     having been committed by England. The declaration was made
     immediately on Chauvelin's return to France, and in
     consequence of it. Mr. Pitt should inform himself of things
     better than he does, before he prates so much about them, or
     of the sending away of Malmesbury, who was only on a visit
     of permission.--Author.

How the people of England feel on the breaking up of the negociation,
which was entirely the act of their own Government, is best known to
themselves; but from what I know of the two nations, France ought to
hold herself perfectly indifferent about a peace with the Government of
England. Every day adds new strength to France and new embarrassments
to her enemy. The resources of the one increase, as those of the other
become exhausted. England is now reduced to the same system of paper
money from which France has emerged, and we all know the inevitable fate
of that system. It is not a victory over a few ships, like that on the
coast of Holland, that gives the least support or relief to a paper
system. On the news of this victory arriving in England, the funds did
not rise a farthing. The Government rejoiced, but its creditors were
silent.

It is difficult to find a motive, except in folly and madness, for the
conduct of the English government. Every calculation and prediction of
Mr. Pitt has turned out directly the contrary; yet still he predicts.
He predicted, with all the solemn assurance of a magician, that France
would be bankrupt in a few months. He was right as to the thing, but
wrong as to the place, for the bankruptcy happened in England whilst the
words were yet warm upon his lips. To find out what will happen, it is
only necessary to know what Mr. Pitt predicts. He is a true prophet if
taken in the reverse.

Such is the ruinous condition that England is now in, that great as
the difficulties of war are to the people, the difficulties that would
accompany peace are equally as great to the Government. Whilst the war
continues, Mr. Pitt has a pretence for shutting up the bank. But as that
pretence could last no longer than the war lasted, he dreads the peace
that would expose the absolute bankruptcy of the government, and unveil
to a deceived nation the ruinous effect of his measures. Peace would be
a day of accounts to him, and he shuns it as an insolvent debtor shuns
a meeting of his creditors. War furnishes him with many pretences; peace
would furnish him with none, and he stands alarmed at its consequences.
His conduct in the negociation at Lille can be easily interpreted. It is
not for the sake of the nation that he asks to retain some of the taken
islands; for what are islands to a nation that has already too many for
her own good, or what are they in comparison to the expense of another
campaign in the present depreciating state of the English funds? (And
even then those islands must be restored.)

No, it is not for the sake of the nation that he asks. It is for the
sake of himself. It is as if he said to France, Give me some pretence,
cover me from disgrace when my day of reckoning comes!

Any person acquainted with the English Government knows that every
Minister has some dread of what is called in England the winding up
of accounts at the end of a war; that is, the final settlement of all
expenses incurred by the war; and no Minister had ever so great cause of
dread as Mr. Pitt. A burnt child dreads the fire, and Pitt has had some
experience upon this case. The winding up of accounts at the end of the
American war was so great, that, though he was not the cause of it,
and came into the Ministry with great popularity, he lost it all by
undertaking, what was impossible for him to avoid, the voluminous
business of the winding up. If such was the case in settling the
accounts of his predecessor, how much more has he to apprehend when the
accounts to be settled are his own? All men in bad circumstances
hate the settlement of accounts, and Pitt, as a Minister, is of that
description.

But let us take a view of things on a larger ground than the case of
a Minister. It will then be found, that England, on a comparison of
strength with France, when both nations are disposed to exert their
utmost, has no possible chance of success. The efforts that England made
within the last century were not generated on the ground of _natural
ability_, but of _artificial anticipations_. She ran posterity into
debt, and swallowed up in one generation the resources of several
generations yet to come, till the project can be pursued no longer. It
is otherwise in France. The vastness of her territory and her population
render the burden easy that would make a bankrupt of a country like
England.

It is not the weight of a thing, but the numbers who are to bear that
weight, that makes it feel light or heavy to the shoulders of those who
bear it. A land-tax of half as much in the pound as the land-tax is in
England, will raise nearly four times as much revenue in France as is
raised in England. This is a scale easily understood, by which all the
other sections of productive revenue can be measured. Judge then of the
difference of natural ability.

England is strong in a navy; but that navy costs about eight millions
sterling a-year, and is one of the causes that has hastened her
bankruptcy. The history of navy bills sufficiently proves this. But
strong as England is in this case, the fate of navies must finally be
decided by the natural ability of each country to carry its navy to the
greatest extent; and France is able to support a navy twice as large as
that of England, with less than half the expense per head on the people,
which the present navy of England costs.

We all know that a navy cannot be raised as expeditiously as an army.
But as the average duration of a navy, taking the decay of time, storms,
and all circumstances and accidents together, is less than twenty years,
every navy must be renewed within that time; and France at the end of a
few years, can create and support a navy of double the extent of that of
England; and the conduct of the English government will provoke her to
it.

But of what use are navies otherwise than to make or prevent invasions?
Commercially considered, they are losses. They scarcely give any
protection to the commerce of the countries which have them, compared
with the expense of maintaining them, and they insult the commerce of
the nations that are neutral.

During the American war, the plan of the armed neutrality was formed and
put in execution: but it was inconvenient, expensive, and ineffectual.
This being the case, the problem is, does not commerce contain within
itself, the means of its own protection? It certainly does, if the
neutral nations will employ that means properly.

Instead then of an _armed neutrality_, the plan should be directly the
contrary. It should be an _unarmed neutrality_. In the first place,
the rights of neutral nations are easily defined. They are such as are
exercised by nations in their intercourse with each other in time of
peace, and which ought not, and cannot of right, be interrupted in
consequence of war breaking out between any two or more of them.

Taking this as a principle, the next thing is to give it effect. The
plan of the armed neutrality was to effect it by threatening war; but an
unarmed neutrality can effect it by much easier and more powerful means.

Were the neutral nations to associate, under an honourable injunction of
fidelity to each other, and publicly declare to the world, that if any
belligerent power shall seize or molest any ship or vessel belonging
to the citizens or subjects of any of the powers composing that
Association, that the whole Association will shut its ports against the
flag of the offending nation, and will not permit any goods, wares,
or merchandise, produced or manufactured in the offending nation, or
appertaining thereto, to be imported into any of the ports included in
the Association, until reparation be made to the injured party,--the
reparation to be three times the value of the vessel and cargo,--and
moreover that all remittances on money, goods, and bills of exchange, do
cease to be made to the offending nation, until the said reparation be
made: were the neutral nations only to do this, which it is their
direct interest to do, England, as a nation depending on the commerce of
neutral nations in time of war, dare not molest them, and France would
not. But whilst, from the want of a common system, they individually
permit England to do it, because individually they cannot resist it,
they put France under the necessity of doing the same thing. The supreme
of all laws, in all cases, is that of self-preservation.

As the commerce of neutral nations would thus be protected by the means
that commerce naturally contains within itself, all the naval operations
of France and England would be confined within the circle of acting
against each other: and in that case it needs no spirit of prophecy to
discover that France must finally prevail. The sooner this be done, the
better will it be for both nations, and for all the world.

Thomas Paine.(1)

     1 Paine had already prepared his "Maritime Compact," and
     devised the Rainbow Flag, which was to protect commerce, the
     substance and history of which constitutes his Seventh
     Letter to the People of the United States, Chapter XXXIII.
     of the present volume. He sent the articles of his proposed
     international Association to the Minister of Foreign
     Relations, Talleyrand, who responded with a cordial letter.
     The articles of "Maritime Compact," translated into French
     by Nicolas Bouneville, were, in 1800, sent to all the
     Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Europe, and to the
     ambassadors in Paris.--_Editor._,




XXX. THE RECALL OF MONROE. (1)


     1 Monroe, like Edmund Randolph and Thomas Paine, was
     sacrificed to the new commercial alliance with Great
     Britain. The Cabinet of Washington were entirely hostile to
     France, and in their determination to replace Monroe were
     assisted by Gouverneur Morris, still in Europe, who wrote to
     President Washington calumnies against that Minister. In a
     letter of December 19, 1795, Morris tells Washington that he
     had heard from a trusted informant that Monroe had said to
     several Frenchmen that "he had no doubt but that, if they
     would do what was proper here, he and his friends would turn
     out Washington." On July 2, 1796, the Cabinet ministers,
     Pickering, Wolcott, and Mo-Henry, wrote to the President
     their joint opinion that the interests of the United States
     required Monroe's recall, and slanderously connected him
     with anonymous letters from France written by M.
     Montflorence. The recall, dated August 22, 1796, reached
     Monroe early in November. It alluded to certain "concurring
     circumstances," which induced his removal, and these "hidden
     causes" (in Paine's phrase) Monroe vainly demanded on his
     return to America early in 1797. The Directory, on
     notification of Monroe's recall, resolved not to recognize
     his successor, and the only approach to an American Minister
     in Paris for the remainder of the century was Thomas Paine,
     who was consulted by the Foreign Ministers, De la Croix and
     Talleyrand, and by Napoleon. On the approach of C. C.
     Pinckney, as successor to Monroe, Paine feared that his
     dismissal might entail war, and urged the Minister (De la
     Croix) to regard Pinckney,--nominated in a recess of the
     Senate,--as in "suspension" until confirmed by that body.
     There might be unofficial "pourparlers," with him. This
     letter (State Archives, Paris, États Unis, vol. 46, fol. 425)
     was considered for several days before Pinckney reached
     Paris (December 5, 1796), but the Directory considered that
     it was not a "dignified" course, and Pinckney was ordered to
     leave French territory, under the existing decree against
     foreigners who had no permit to remain.--_Editor._.


Paris, Sept. 27, 1797. Editors of the Bien-in formé.

Citizens: in your 19th number of the complementary 5th, you gave an
analysis of the letters of James Monroe to Timothy Pickering. The
newspapers of Paris and the departments have copied this correspondence
between the ambassador of the United States and the Secretary of State.
I notice, however, that a few of them have omitted some important facts,
whilst indulging in comments of such an extraordinary nature that it is
clear they know neither Monroe's integrity nor the intrigues of Pitt in
this affair.

The recall of Monroe is connected with circumstances so important to the
interests of France and the United States, that we must be careful not
to confound it with the recall of an ordinary individual. The Washington
faction had affected to spread it abroad that James Monroe was the cause
of rupture between the two Republics. This accusation is a perfidious
and calumnious one; since the main point in this affair is not so much
the recall of a worthy, enlightened and republican minister, as
the ingratitude and clandestine manoeuvering of the government of
Washington, who caused the misunderstanding by signing a treaty
injurious to the French Republic.

James Monroe, in his letters, does not deny the right of government to
withdraw its confidence from any one of its delegates, representatives,
or agents. He has hinted, it is true, that caprice and temper are not
in accordance with the spirit of paternal rule, and that whenever a
representative government punishes or rewards, good faith, integrity and
justice should replace _the good pleasure of Kings_.

In the present case, they have done more than recall an agent. Had they
confined themselves to depriving him of his appointment, James Monroe
would have kept silence; but he has been accused of lighting the torch
of discord in both Republics. The refutation of this absurd and infamous
reproach is the chief object of his correspondence. If he did not
immediately complain of these slanders in his letters of the 6th and
8th [July], it is because he wished to use at first a certain degree of
caution, and, if it were possible, to stifle intestine troubles at
their birth. He wished to reopen the way to peaceful negotiations to be
conducted with good faith and justice.

The arguments of the Secretary of State on the rights of the supreme
administration of the United States are peremptory; but the observations
of Monroe on the hidden causes of his recall are touching; they come
from the heart; they are characteristic of an excellent citizen. If he
does more than complain of his unjust recall as a man of feeling would;
if he proudly asks for proofs of a grave accusation, it is after he has
tried in vain every honest and straightforward means. He will not suffer
that a government, sold to the enemies of freedom, should discharge upon
him its shame, its crimes, its ingratitude, and all the odium of its
unjust dealings.

Were Monroe to find himself an object of public hatred, the Republican
party in the United States, that party which is the sincere ally
of France, would be annihilated, and this is the aim of the English
government.

Imagine the triumph of Pitt, if Monroe and the other friends of freedom
in America, should be unjustly attacked in France!

Monroe does not lay his cause before the Senate since the Senate
itself ratified the unconstitutional treaty; he appeals to the house of
Representatives, and at the same time lays his cause before the upright
tribunal of the American nation.




XXXI. PRIVATE LETTER TO PRESIDENT JEFFERSON.


Paris, October 1, 1800.

Dear Sir,--I wrote to you from Havre by the ship Dublin Packet in the
year 1797. It was then my intention to return to America; but there were
so many British frigates cruising in sight of the port, and which after
a few days knew that I was at Havre waiting to go to America, that I did
not think it best to trust myself to their discretion, and the more so,
as I had no confidence in the captain of the Dublin Packet (Clay).(1) I
mentioned to you in that letter, which I believe you received thro'
the hands of Colonel [Aaron] Burr, that I was glad since you were not
President that you had accepted the nomination of Vice President.

The Commissioners Ellsworth & Co.(2) have been here about eight months,
and three more useless mortals never came upon public business. Their
presence appears to me to have been rather an injury than a benefit.
They set themselves up for a faction as soon as they arrived. I was then
in Belgia.(3) Upon my return to Paris I learnt they had made a point of
not returning the visits of Mr. Skipwith and Barlow, because, they said,
they had not the confidence of the executive. Every known republican was
treated in the same manner. I learned from Mr. Miller of Philadelphia,
who had occasion to see them upon business, that they did not intend
to return my visit, if I made one. This, I supposed, it was intended I
should know, that I might not make one. It had the contrary effect. I
went to see Mr. Ellsworth. I told him, I did not come to see him as a
commissioner, nor to congratulate him upon his mission; that I came to
see him because I had formerly known him in Congress. "I mean not,"
said I, "to press you with any questions, or to engage you in
any conversation upon the business you are come upon, but I will
nevertheless candidly say that I know not what expectations the
Government or the people of America may have of your mission, or what
expectations you may have yourselves, but I believe you will find you
can do but little. The treaty with England lies at the threshold of all
your business. The American Government never did two more foolish things
than when it signed that Treaty and recalled Mr. Monroe, who was the
only man could do them any service." Mr. Ellsworth put on the dull
gravity of a Judge, and was silent. I added, "You may perhaps make a
treaty like that you have made with England, which is a surrender of the
rights of the American flag; for the principle that neutral ships make
neutral property must be general or not at all." I then changed the
subject, for I had all the talk to myself upon this topic, and enquired
after Samuel Adams, (I asked nothing about John,) Mr. Jefferson, Mr.
Monroe, and others of my friends; and the melancholy case of the yellow
fever,--of which he gave me as circumstantial an account as if he had
been summing up a case to a Jury. Here my visit ended, and had Mr.
Ellsworth been as cunning as a statesman, or as wise as a Judge, he
would have returned my visit that he might appear insensible of the
intention of mine.

     1 The packet was indeed searched for Paine by a British
     cruiser.--_Editor._

     2 Oliver Ellsworth (Chief Justice), W. V. Murray, and W. R.
     Davie, were sent by President Adams to France to negotiate a
     treaty. In this they failed, but a convention was signed
     September 30, 1800, which terminated the treaty of 1778,
     which had become a source of discord, and prepared the way
     for the negotiations of Livingston and Monroe in 1803.--
     _Editor._

     3 Paine had visited his room-mate in Luxembourg prison,
     Vanhuele, who was now Mayor of Bruges.--_Editor._.

I now come to the affairs of this country and of Europe. You will, I
suppose, have heard before this arrives to you, of the battle of
Marengo in Italy, where the Austrians were defeated--of the armistice
in consequence thereof, and the surrender of Milan, Genoa etc. to
the french--of the successes of the french Army in Germany--and the
extension of the armistice in that quarter--of the preliminaries of
Peace signed at Paris--of the refusal of the Emperor [of Austria] to
ratify these preliminaries--of the breaking of the armistice by the
french Government in consequence of that refusal--of the "gallant"
expedition of the Emperor to put himself at the head of his Army--of his
pompous arrival there--of his having made his will--of prayers being put
in all his churches for the preservation of the life of this Hero--of
General Moreau announcing to him, immediately on his arrival at the
Army, that hostilities would commence the day after the next at sunrise
unless he signed the treaty or gave security that he would sign within
45 days--of his surrendering up three of the principal keys of Germany
(Ulm, Philipsbourg, and Ingolstadt) as security that he would sign them.
This is the state things are now in, at the time of writing this letter;
but it is proper to add that the refusal of the Emperor to sign the
preliminaries was motived upon a note from the King of England to be
admitted to the Congress for negociating Peace, which was consented to
by the french upon the condition of an armistice at Sea, which England,
before knowing of the surrender the Emperor had made, had refused. From
all which it appears to me, judging from circumstances, that the Emperor
is now so compleatly in the hands of the french, that he has no way of
getting out but by a peace. The Congress for the peace is to be held
at Lunéville, a town in France. Since the affair of Rastadt the French
commissioners will not trust themselves within the Emperor's territory.

I now come to domestic Affairs. I know not what the Commissioners have
done, but from a paper I enclose to you, which appears to have
some authority, it is not much. The paper as you will perceive is
considerably prior to this letter. I know that the Commissioners before
this piece appeared intended setting off. It is therefore probable that
what they have done is conformable to what this paper mentions, which
certainly will not atone for the expence their mission has incurred,
neither are they, by all the accounts I hear of them, men fitted for the
business.

But independently of these matters there appears to be a state of
circumstances rising, which if it goes on, will render all partial
treaties unnecessary. In the first place I doubt if any peace will be
made with England; and in the second place, I should not wonder to see a
coalition formed against her, to compel her to abandon her insolence on
the seas. This brings me to speak of the manuscripts I send you.

The piece No. I, without any title, was written in consequence of a
question put to me by Bonaparte. As he supposed I knew England and
English Politics he sent a person to me to ask, that in case of
negociating a Peace with Austria, whether it would be proper to include
England. This was when Count St. Julian was in Paris, on the part of the
Emperor negociating the preliminaries:--which as I have before said the
Emperor refused to sign on the pretence of admitting England.

The piece No. 2, entitled _On the Jacobinism of the English at sea_, was
written when the English made their insolent and impolitic expedition to
Denmark, and is also an auxiliary to the politic of No. I. I shewed it
to a friend [Bonneville] who had it translated into french, and printed
in the form of a Pamphlet, and distributed gratis among the foreign
Ministers, and persons in the Government. It was immediately copied
into several of the french Journals, and into the official Paper, the
Moniteur. It appeared in this paper one day before the last dispatch
arrived from Egypt; which agreed perfectly with what I had said
respecting Egypt. It hit the two cases of Denmark and Egypt in the exact
proper moment.

The Piece No. 3, entitled _Compact Maritime_, is the sequel of No. 2,
digested in form. It is translating at the time I write this letter,
and I am to have a meeting with the Senator Garat upon the subject.
The pieces 2 and 3 go off in manuscript to England, by a confidential
person, where they will be published.(1)

     1 The substance of most of these "pieces" are embodied in
     Paine's Seventh Letter to the People of the United States
     (infra p. 420).--_Editor._

By all the news we get from the North there appears to be something
meditating against England. It is now given for certain that Paul has
embargoed all the English vessels and English property in Russia till
some principle be established for protecting the Rights of neutral
Nations, and securing the liberty of the Seas. The preparations in
Denmark continue, notwithstanding the convention that she has made with
England, which leaves the question with respect to the right set up by
England to stop and search Neutral vessels undecided. I send you the
paragraphs upon the subject.

The tumults are great in all parts of England on account of the
excessive price of corn and bread, which has risen since the harvest.
I attribute it more to the abundant increase of paper, and the
non-circulation of cash, than to any other cause. People in trade
can push the paper off as fast as they receive it, as they did by
continental money in America; but as farmers have not this opportunity,
they endeavor to secure themselves by going considerably in advance.

I have now given you all the great articles of intelligence, for I
trouble not myself with little ones, and consequently not with the
Commissioners, nor any thing they are about, nor with John Adams,
otherwise than to wish him safe home, and a better and wiser man in his
place.

In the present state of circumstances and the prospects arising from
them, it may be proper for America to consider whether it is worth her
while to enter into any treaty at this moment, or to wait the event of
those circumstances which if they go on will render partial treaties
useless by deranging them. But if, in the mean time, she enters into
any treaty it ought to be with a condition to the following purpose:
Reserving to herself the right of joining in an Association of Nations
for the protection of the Rights of Neutral Commerce and the security of
the liberty of the Seas.

The pieces 2, 3, may go to the press. They will make a small pamphlet
and the printers are welcome to put my name to it. (It is best it should
be put.) From thence they will get into the newspapers. I know that the
faction of John Adams abuses me pretty heartily. They are welcome.

It does not disturb me, and they lose their labour; and in return for
it I am doing America more service, as a neutral Nation, than their
expensive Commissioners can do, and she has that service from me for
nothing. The piece No. 1 is only for your own amusement and that of your
friends.

I come now to speak confidentially to you on a private subject. When Mr.
Ellsworth and Davie return to America, Murray will return to Holland,
and in that case there will be nobody in Paris but Mr. Skipwith that
has been in the habit of transacting business with the french Government
since the revolution began. He is on a good standing with them, and if
the chance of the day should place you in the presidency you cannot do
better than appoint him for any purpose you may have occasion for in
France. He is an honest man and will do his country justice, and that
with civility and good manners to the government he is commissioned to
act with; a faculty which that Northern Bear Timothy Pickering wanted,
and which the Bear of that Bear, John Adams, never possessed.

I know not much of Mr. Murray, otherwise than of his unfriendliness to
every American who is not of his faction, but I am sure that Joel Barlow
is a much fitter man to be in Holland than Mr. Murray. It is upon
the fitness of the man to the place that I speak, for I have not
communicated a thought upon the subject to Barlow, neither does he
know, at the time of my writing this (for he is at Havre), that I have
intention to do it.

I will now, by way of relief, amuse you with some account of the
progress of iron bridges.

[Here follows an account of the building of the iron bridge at
Sunderland, England, and some correspondence with Mr. Milbanke, M. P.,
which will be given more fully and precisely in a chapter of vol. IV.
(Appendix), on Iron Bridges, and is therefore omitted here.]

I have now made two other Models [of bridges]. One is pasteboard, five
feet span and five inches of height from the cords. It is in the opinion
of every person who has seen it one of the most beautiful objects the
eye can behold. I then cast a model in metal following the construction
of that in paste-board and of the same dimensions. The whole was
executed in my own Chamber. It is far superior in strength, elegance,
and readiness in execution to the model I made in America, and which you
saw in Paris.(1) I shall bring those models with me when I come
home, which will be as soon as I can pass the seas in safety from the
piratical John Bulls. I suppose you have seen, or have heard of the
Bishop of Landaff's answer to my second part of the Age of Reason. As
soon as I got a copy of it I began a third part, which served also as an
answer to the Bishop; but as soon as the clerical society for promoting
_Christian Knowledge_ knew of my intention to answer the Bishop, they
prosecuted, as a Society, the printer of the first and second parts, to
prevent that answer appearing. No other reason than this can be assigned
for their prosecuting at the time they did, because the first part had
been in circulation above three years and the second part more than one,
and they prosecuted immediately on knowing that I was taking up their
Champion. The Bishop's answer, like Mr. Burke's attack on the french
revolution, served me as a back-ground to bring forward other subjects
upon, with more advantage than if the background was not there. This is
the motive that induced me to answer him, otherwise I should have gone
on without taking any notice of him. I have made and am still making
additions to the manuscript, and shall continue to do so till an
opportunity arrive for publishing it.

     1 "These models exhibit an extraordinary degree not only of
     skill, but of taste, and are wrought with extreme delicacy
     entirely by his own hands. The largest is nearly four feet
     in length; the iron-works, the chains, and every other
     article belonging to it, were forged and manufactured by
     himself. It is intended as the model of a bridge which is to
     be constructed across the Delaware, extending 480 feet, with
     only one arch. The other is to be erected over a lesser
     river, whose name I forget, and is likewise a single arch,
     and of his own workmanship, excepting the chains, which,
     instead of iron, are cut out of paste-hoard by the fair hand
     of his correspondent, the 'Little Corner of the World' (Lady
     Smyth), whose indefatigable perseverance is extraordinary.
     He was offered £3000 for these models and refused it."--
     Yorke's _Letters from France_, These models excited much
     admiration in Washington and Philadelphia. They remained for
     a long time in Peale's Museum at Philadelphia, but no trace
     is left of them.--_Editor._

If any American frigate should come to france, and the direction of
it fall to you, I will be glad you would give me the opportunity of
returning. The abscess under which I suffered almost two years is
entirely healed of itself, and I enjoy exceeding good health. This is
the first of October, and Mr. Skipwith has just called to tell me the
Commissioners set off for Havre to-morrow. This will go by the frigate
but not with the knowledge of the Commissioners. Remember me with much
affection to my friends and accept the same to yourself.

Thomas Paine.




XXXII. PROPOSAL THAT LOUISIANA BE PURCHASED.(1)


(SENT TO THE PRESIDENT, CHRISTMAS DAY, 1802.)

     1 Paine, being at Lovell's Hotel, Washington, suggested the
     purchase of Louisiana to Dr. Michael Leib, representative
     from Pennsylvania, who, being pleased with the idea,
     suggested that he should write it to Jefferson. On the day
     after its reception the President told Paine that "measures
     were already taken in that business."--_Editor._.

Spain has ceded Louisiana to France, and France has excluded Americans
from New Orleans, and the navigation of the Mississippi. The people of
the Western Territory have complained of it to their Government, and the
Government is of consequence involved and interested in the affair. The
question then is--What is the best step to be taken?

The one is to begin by memorial and remonstrance against an infraction
of a right. The other is by accommodation,--still keeping the right in
view, but not making it a groundwork.

Suppose then the Government begin by making a proposal to France to
re-purchase the cession made to her by Spain, of Louisiana, provided it
be with the consent of the people of Louisiana, or a majority thereof.

By beginning on this ground any thing can be said without carrying the
appearance of a threat. The growing power of the Western Territory can
be stated as a matter of information, and also the impossibility
of restraining them from seizing upon New Orleans, and the equal
impossibility of France to prevent it.

Suppose the proposal attended to, the sum to be given comes next on
the carpet. This, on the part of America, will be estimated between the
value of the commerce and the quantity of revenue that Louisiana will
produce.

The French Treasury is not only empty, but the Government has consumed
by anticipation a great part of the next year's revenue. A monied
proposal will, I believe, be attended to; if it should, the claims upon
France can be stipulated as part of the payment, and that sum can be
paid here to the claimants.

----I congratulate you on _The Birthday of the New Sun_,

now called Christmas Day; and I make you a present of a thought on
Louisiana.

T.P.




XXXIII. THOMAS PAINE TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES,


And particularly to the Leaders of the Federal Faction, LETTER I.(1)

     1 The National Intelligencer, November 15th. The venerable
     Mr. Gales, so long associated with this paper, had been in
     youth a prosecuted adherent of Paine in Sheffield, England.
     The paper distinguished itself by the kindly welcome it gave
     Paine on his return to America. (See issues of Nov. 3 and
     10, 1802.) Paine landed at Baltimore, Oct. 30th.--_Editor._,

After an absence of almost fifteen years, I am again returned to the
country in whose dangers I bore my share, and to whose greatness I
contributed my part.

When I sailed for Europe, in the spring of 1787, it was my intention to
return to America the next year, and enjoy in retirement the esteem of
my friends, and the repose I was entitled to. I had stood out the storm
of one revolution, and had no wish to embark in another. But other
scenes and other circumstances than those of contemplated ease were
allotted to me. The French revolution was beginning to germinate when I
arrived in France. The principles of it were good, they were copied
from America, and the men who conducted it were honest. But the fury of
faction soon extinguished the one, and sent the other to the scaffold.
Of those who began that revolution, I am almost the only survivor,
and that through a thousand dangers. I owe this not to the prayers of
priests, nor to the piety of hypocrites, but to the continued protection
of Providence.

But while I beheld with pleasure the dawn of liberty rising in Europe,
I saw with regret the lustre of it fading in America. In less than two
years from the time of my departure some distant symptoms painfully
suggested the idea that the principles of the revolution were expiring
on the soil that produced them. I received at that time a letter from a
female literary correspondent, and in my answer to her, I expressed my
fears on that head.(1)

I now know from the information I obtain upon the spot, that the
impressions that then distressed me, for I was proud of America, were
but too well founded. She was turning her back on her own glory, and
making hasty strides in the retrograde path of oblivion. But a spark
from the altar of _Seventy-six_, unextinguished and unextinguishable
through the long night of error, is again lighting up, in every part of
the Union, the genuine name of rational liberty.

As the French revolution advanced, it fixed the attention of the world,
and drew from the pensioned pen (2) of Edmund Burke a furious attack.
This brought me once more on the public theatre of politics, and
occasioned the pamphlet _Rights of Man_. It had the greatest run of
any work ever published in the English language. The number of copies
circulated in England, Scotland, and Ireland, besides translations
into foreign languages, was between four and five hundred thousand. The
principles of that work were the same as those in _Common Sense_, and
the effects would have been the same in England as that had produced in
America, could the vote of the nation been quietly taken, or had equal
opportunities of consulting or acting existed. The only difference
between the two works was, that the one was adapted to the local
circumstances of England, and the other to those of America. As to
myself, I acted in both cases alike; I relinquished to the people of
England, as I had done to those of America, all profits from the work.
My reward existed in the ambition to do good, and the independent
happiness of my own mind.

     1 Paine here quotes a passage from his letter to Mrs. Few,
     already given in the Memorial to Monroe (XXI.). The entire
     letter to Mrs. Few will be printed in the Appendix to Vol.
     IV. of this work.--_Editor._

     2 See editorial note p. 95 in this volume.--_Editor._

But a faction, acting in disguise, was rising in America; they had lost
sight of first principles. They were beginning to contemplate government
as a profitable monopoly, and the people as hereditary property. It
is, therefore, no wonder that the _Rights of Man_ was attacked by that
faction, and its author continually abused. But let them go on; give
them rope enough and they will put an end to their own insignificance.
There is too much common sense and independence in America to be long
the dupe of any faction, foreign or domestic.

But, in the midst of the freedom we enjoy, the licentiousness of the
papers called Federal, (and I know not why they are called so, for they
are in their principles anti-federal and despotic,) is a dishonour
to the character of the country, and an injury to its reputation
and importance abroad. They represent the whole people of America as
destitute of public principle and private manners. As to any injury they
can do at home to those whom they abuse, or service they can render
to those who employ them, it is to be set down to the account of
noisy nothingness. It is on themselves the disgrace recoils, for the
reflection easily presents itself to every thinking mind, that _those
who abuse liberty when they possess it would abuse power could they
obtain it_; and, therefore, they may as well take as a general motto,
for all such papers, _We and our patrons are not fit to be trusted with
power_.

There is in America, more than in any other country, a large body
of people who attend quietly to their farms, or follow their several
occupations; who pay no regard to the clamours of anonymous scribblers,
who think for themselves, and judge of government, not by the fury of
newspaper writers, but by the prudent frugality of its measures, and the
encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country;
and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election
but on some important occasion. When this body moves, all the little
barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing. To say to this
independent description of men, "You must turn out such and such persons
at the next election, for they have taken off a great many taxes, and
lessened the expenses of government, they have dismissed my son, or my
brother, or myself, from a lucrative office, in which there was nothing
to do"--is to show the cloven foot of faction, and preach the language
of ill-disguised mortification. In every part of the Union, this faction
is in the agonies of death, and in proportion as its fate approaches,
gnashes its teeth and struggles. My arrival has struck it as with an
hydrophobia, it is like the sight of water to canine madness.

As this letter is intended to announce my arrival to my friends, and to
my enemies if I have any, for I ought to have none in America, and as
introductory to others that will occasionally follow, I shall close it
by detailing the line of conduct I shall pursue.

I have no occasion to ask, and do not intend to accept, any place or
office in the government.(1) There is none it could give me that would
be any ways equal to the profits I could make as an author, for I have
an established fame in the literary world, could I reconcile it to my
principles to make money by my politics or religion. I must be in every
thing what I have ever been, a disinterested volunteer; my proper sphere
of action is on the common floor of citizenship, and to honest men I
give my hand and my heart freely.

     1 The President (Jefferson) being an intimate friend of
     Paine, and suspected, despite his reticence, of sympathizing
     with Paine's religions views, was included in the
     denunciations of Paine ("The Two Toms" they were called),
     and Paine here goes out of his way to soften matters for
     Jefferson.--_Editor._.

I have some manuscript works to publish, of which I shall give proper
notice, and some mechanical affairs to bring forward, that will employ
all my leisure time. I shall continue these letters as I see occasion,
and as to the low party prints that choose to abuse me, they are
welcome; I shall not descend to answer them. I have been too much used
to such common stuff to take any notice of it. The government of England
honoured me with a thousand martyrdoms, by burning me in effigy in every
town in that country, and their hirelings in America may do the same.

City of Washington.

THOMAS PAINE.



LETTER II(1)

As the affairs of the country to which I am returned are of more
importance to the world, and to me, than of that I have lately left,
(for it is through the new world the old must be regenerated, if
regenerated at all,) I shall not take up the time of the reader with an
account of scenes that have passed in France, many of which are painful
to remember and horrid to relate, but come at once to the circumstances
in which I find America on my arrival.

Fourteen years, and something more, have produced a change, at least
among a part of the people, and I ask my-self what it is? I meet or hear
of thousands of my former connexions, who are men of the same principles
and friendships as when I left them. But a non-descript race, and of
equivocal generation, assuming the name of _Federalist_,--a name that
describes no character of principle good or bad, and may equally
be applied to either,--has since started up with the rapidity of a
mushroom, and like a mushroom is withering on its rootless stalk. Are
those men _federalized_ to support the liberties of their country or to
overturn them? To add to its fair fame or riot on its spoils? The
name contains no defined idea. It is like John Adams's definition of a
Republic, in his letter to Mr. Wythe of Virginia.(2) _It is_, says he,
_an empire of laws and not of men_. But as laws may be bad as well as
good, an empire of laws may be the best of all governments or the worst
of all tyrannies. But John Adams is a man of paradoxical heresies, and
consequently of a bewildered mind. He wrote a book entitled, "_A Defence
of the American Constitutions_," and the principles of it are an attack
upon them. But the book is descended to the tomb of forgetfulness, and
the best fortune that can attend its author is quietly to follow its
fate. John was not born for immortality. But, to return to Federalism.

     1 National Intelligencer, Nov. 23d, 1802.--_Editor._

     2 Chancellor Wythe, 1728-1806.--_Editor._ vol m--«5

In the history of parties and the names they assume, it often happens
that they finish by the direct contrary principles with which they
profess to begin, and thus it has happened with Federalism.

During the time of the old Congress, and prior to the establishment of
the federal government, the continental belt was too loosely buckled.
The several states were united in name but not in fact, and that nominal
union had neither centre nor circle. The laws of one state frequently
interferred with, and sometimes opposed, those of another. Commerce
between state and state was without protection, and confidence without
a point to rest on. The condition the country was then in, was aptly
described by Pelatiah Webster, when he said, "_thirteen staves and ne'er
a hoop will not make a barrel_."(1)

If, then, by _Federalist_ is to be understood one who was for cementing
the Union by a general government operating equally over all the States,
in all matters that embraced the common interest, and to which the
authority of the States severally was not adequate, for no one State
can make laws to bind another; if, I say, by a _Federalist_ is meant
a person of this description, (and this is the origin of the name,) _I
ought to stand first on the list of Federalists_, for the proposition
for establishing a general government over the Union, came originally
from me in 1783, in a written Memorial to Chancellor Livingston, then
Secretary for Foreign Affairs to Congress, Robert Morris, Minister
of Finance, and his associate, Gouverneur Morris, all of whom are now
living; and we had a dinner and conference at Robert Morris's on the
subject. The occasion was as follows:

Congress had proposed a duty of five per cent, on imported articles, the
money to be applied as a fund towards paying the interest of loans to
be borrowed in Holland. The resolve was sent to the several States to
be enacted into a law. Rhode Island absolutely refused. I was at
the trouble of a journey to Rhode Island to reason with them on the
subject.(2) Some other of the States enacted it with alterations, each
one as it pleased. Virginia adopted it, and afterwards repealed it, and
the affair came to nothing.

     1 "Like a stare in a cask well bound with hoops, it [the
     individual State] stands firmer, is not so easily shaken,
     bent, or broken, as it would be were it set up by itself
     alone."--Pelatiah Webster, 1788. See Paul L. Ford's
     Pamphlets cm the Constitution, etc., p. 128.--Editor

     2  See my "Life of Paine." vol i., p. 103.--Editor,

It was then visible, at least to me, that either Congress must frame the
laws necessary for the Union, and send them to the several States to be
enregistered without any alteration, which would in itself appear like
usurpation on one part and passive obedience on the other, or some
method must be devised to accomplish the same end by constitutional
principles; and the proposition I made in the memorial was, to _add
a continental legislature to Congress, to be elected by the several
States_. The proposition met the full approbation of the gentlemen to
whom it was addressed, and the conversation turned on the manner of
bringing it forward. Gouverneur Morris, in walking with me after dinner,
wished me to throw out the idea in the newspaper; I replied, that I did
not like to be always the proposer of new things, that it would have too
assuming an appearance; and besides, that _I did not think the country
was quite wrong enough to be put right_. I remember giving the same
reason to Dr. Rush, at Philadelphia, and to General Gates, at whose
quarters I spent a day on my return from Rhode Island; and I suppose
they will remember it, because the observation seemed to strike them.(1)

     1 The Letter Books of Robert Morris (16 folio volumes, which
     should be in our national Archives) contain many entries
     relating to Paine's activity in the public service. Under
     date Aug. 21, 1783, about the time referred to by Paine in
     this letter, Robert Morris mentions a conversation with him
     on public affairs. I am indebted to General Meredith Read,
     owner of these Morris papers, for permission to examine
     them.--_Editor._.

But the embarrassments increasing, as they necessarily must from the
want of a better cemented union, the State of Virginia proposed holding
a commercial convention, and that convention, which was not sufficiently
numerous, proposed that another convention, with more extensive and
better defined powers, should be held at Philadelphia, May 10, 1787.

When the plan of the Federal Government, formed by this Convention, was
proposed and submitted to the consideration of the several States, it
was strongly objected to in each of them. But the objections were not on
anti-federal grounds, but on constitutional points. Many were shocked
at the idea of placing what is called Executive Power in the hands of a
single individual. To them it had too much the form and appearance of a
military government, or a despotic one. Others objected that the
powers given to a president were too great, and that in the hands of
an ambitious and designing man it might grow into tyranny, as it did
in England under Oliver Cromwell, and as it has since done in France.
A Republic must not only be so in its principles, but in its forms. The
Executive part of the Federal government was made for a man, and those
who consented, against their judgment, to place Executive Power in the
hands of a single individual, reposed more on the supposed moderation of
the person they had in view, than on the wisdom of the measure itself.

Two considerations, however, overcame all objections. The one was, the
absolute necessity of a Federal Government. The other, the rational
reflection, that as government in America is founded on the
representative system any error in the first essay could be reformed
by the same quiet and rational process by which the Constitution was
formed, and that either by the generation then living, or by those who
were to succeed. If ever America lose sight of this principle, she will
no longer be the _land of liberty_. The father will become the assassin
of the rights of the son, and his descendants be a race of slaves.

As many thousands who were minors are grown up to manhood since the name
of _Federalist_ began, it became necessary, for their information, to
go back and show the origin of the name, which is now no longer what it
originally was; but it was the more necessary to do this, in order to
bring forward, in the open face of day, the apostacy of those who first
called themselves Federalists.

To them it served as a cloak for treason, a mask for tyranny. Scarcely
were they placed in the seat of power and office, than Federalism was to
be destroyed, and the representative system of government, the pride
and glory of America, and the palladium of her liberties, was to be
overthrown and abolished. The next generation was not to be free. The
son was to bend his neck beneath the father's foot, and live, deprived
of his rights, under hereditary control. Among the men of this apostate
description, is to be ranked the ex-president _John Adams_. It has been
the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with
arrogance, and finish in contempt. May such be the fate of all such
characters.

I have had doubts of John Adams ever since the year 1776. In a
conversation with me at that time, concerning the pamphlet _Common
Sense_, he censured it because it attacked the English form of
government. John was for independence because he expected to be made
great by it; but it was not difficult to perceive, for the surliness of
his temper makes him an awkward hypocrite, that his head was as full of
kings, queens, and knaves, as a pack of cards. But John has lost deal.

When a man has a concealed project in his brain that he wants to bring
forward, and fears will not succeed, he begins with it as physicians
do by suspected poison, try it first on an animal; if it agree with the
stomach of the animal, he makes further experiments, and this was the
way John took. His brain was teeming with projects to overturn the
liberties of America, and the representative system of government, and
he began by hinting it in little companies. The secretary of John Jay,
an excellent painter and a poor politician, told me, in presence of
another American, Daniel Parker, that in a company where himself was
present, John Adams talked of making the government hereditary, and that
as Mr. Washington had no children, it should be made hereditary in the
family of Lund Washington.(1) John had not impudence enough to propose
himself in the first instance, as the old French Normandy baron did,
who offered to come over to be king of America, and if Congress did not
accept his offer, that they would give him thirty thousand pounds for
the generosity of it(2); but John, like a mole, was grubbing his way to
it under ground. He knew that Lund Washington was unknown, for nobody
had heard of him, and that as the president had no children to succeed
him, the vice-president had, and if the treason had succeeded, and the
hint with it, the goldsmith might be sent for to take measure of the
head of John or of his son for a golden wig. In this case, the good
people of Boston might have for a king the man they have rejected as a
delegate. The representative system is fatal to ambition.

     1 See supra footnote on p. 288.--_Editor._

     2 See vol. ii. p. 318 of this work.--_Editor._

Knowing, as I do, the consummate vanity of John Adams, and the
shallowness of his judgment, I can easily picture to myself that when
he arrived at the Federal City he was strutting in the pomp of his
imagination before the presidential house, or in the audience hall, and
exulting in the language of Nebuchadnezzar, "Is not this great Babylon,
that I have built for the honour of my Majesty!" But in that unfortunate
hour, or soon after, John, like Nebuchadnezzar, was driven from among
men, and fled with the speed of a post-horse.

Some of John Adams's loyal subjects, I see, have been to present him
with an address on his birthday; but the language they use is too tame
for the occasion. Birthday addresses, like birthday odes, should not
creep along like mildrops down a cabbage leaf, but roll in a torrent of
poetical metaphor. I will give them a specimen for the next year. Here
it is--

When an Ant, in travelling over the globe, lift up its foot, and put it
again on the ground, it shakes the earth to its centre: but when YOU,
the mighty Ant of the East, was born, &c. &c. &c, the centre jumped upon
the surface.

This, gentlemen, is the proper style of addresses from _well-bred_ ants
to the monarch of the ant hills; and as I never take pay for preaching,
praying, politics, or poetry, I make you a present of it. Some people
talk of impeaching John Adams; but I am for softer measures. I would
keep him to make fun of. He will then answer one of the ends for which
he was born, and he ought to be thankful that I am arrived to take his
part. I voted in earnest to save the life of one unfortunate king, and
I now vote in jest to save another. It is my fate to be always plagued
with fools. But to return to Federalism and apostacy.

The plan of the leaders of the faction was to overthrow the liberties
of the new world, and place government on the corrupt system of the old.
They wanted to hold their power by a more lasting tenure than the choice
of their constituents. It is impossible to account for their conduct and
the measures they adopted on any other ground. But to accomplish that
object, a standing army and a prodigal revenue must be raised; and to
obtain these, pretences must be invented to deceive. Alarms of dangers
that did not exist even in imagination, but in the direct spirit of
lying, were spread abroad. Apostacy stalked through the land in the garb
of patriotism, and the torch of treason blinded for a while the flame of
liberty.

For what purpose could an army of twenty-five thousand men be wanted?
A single reflection might have taught the most credulous that while
the war raged between France and England, neither could spare a man to
invade America. For what purpose, then, could it be wanted? The case
carries its own explanation. It was wanted for the purpose of destroying
the representative system, for it could be employed for no other. Are
these men Federalists? If they are, they are federalized to deceive and
to destroy.

The rage against Dr. Logan's patriotic and voluntary mission to France
was excited by the shame they felt at the detection of the false alarms
they had circulated. As to the opposition given by the remnant of
the faction to the repeal of the taxes laid on during the former
administration, it is easily accounted for. The repeal of those taxes
was a sentence of condemnation on those who laid them on, and in the
opposition they gave in that repeal, they are to be considered in the
light of criminals standing on their defence, and the country has passed
judgment upon them.

Thomas Paine.

City of Washington, Lovett's Hotel, Nov. 19, 1802.



LETTER III.(1)


     1 The National Intelligencer, Dec. 29th, 1802.--_Editor._.

To ELECT, and to REJECT, is the prerogative of a free people.

Since the establishment of Independence, no period has arrived that
so decidedly proves the excellence of the representative system of
government, and its superiority over every other, as the time we now
live in. Had America been cursed with John Adams's _hereditary Monarchy_
or Alexander Hamilton's _Senate for life_ she must have sought, in the
doubtful contest of civil war, what she now obtains by the expression of
public will. An appeal to elections decides better than an appeal to the
sword.

The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the
Washington administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped
in mystery to me. That there were men in the government hostile to the
representative system, was once their boast, though it is now their
overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them. But that
so large a mass of the people should become the dupes of those who were
loading them with taxes in order to load them with chains, and deprive
them of the right of election, can be ascribed only to that species
of wildfire rage, lighted up by falsehood, that not only acts without
reflection, but is too impetuous to make any.

There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects
of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth.
Truth is naturally benign; but falsehood believed to be truth is always
furious. The former delights in serenity, is mild and persuasive, and
seeks not the auxiliary aid of invention. The latter sticks at nothing.
It has naturally no morals. Every lie is welcome that suits its purpose.
It is the innate character of the thing to act in this manner, and the
criterion by which it may be known, whether in politics or religion.
When any thing is attempted to be supported by lying, it is presumptive
evidence that the thing so supported is a lie also. The stock on which a
lie can be grafted must be of the same species as the graft.

What is become of the mighty clamour of French invasion, and the cry
that our country is in danger, and taxes and armies must be raised to
defend it? The danger is fled with the faction that created it, and what
is worst of all, the money is fled too. It is I only that have committed
the hostility of invasion, and all the artillery of popguns are prepared
for action. Poor fellows, how they foam! They set half their own
partisans in laughter; for among ridiculous things nothing is more
ridiculous than ridiculous rage. But I hope they will not leave off. I
shall lose half my greatness when they cease to lie.

So far as respects myself, I have reason to believe, and a right to say,
that the leaders of the Reign of Terror in America and the leaders of
the Reign of Terror in France, during the time of Robespierre, were in
character the same sort of men; or how is it to be accounted for, that
I was persecuted by both at the same time? When I was voted out of
the French Convention, the reason assigned for it was, that I was a
foreigner. When Robespierre had me seized in the night, and imprisoned
in the Luxembourg, (where I remained eleven months,) he assigned no
reason for it. But when he proposed bringing me to the tribunal, which
was like sending me at once to the scaffold, he then assigned a reason,
and the reason was, _for the interests of America as well as of France,
"Pour les intérêts de l'Amérique autant que de la France_" The words are
in his own hand-writing, and reported to the Convention by the committee
appointed to examine his papers, and are printed in their report, with
this reflection added to them, "_Why Thomas Paine more than another?
Because he contributed to the liberty of both worlds_."(1)

     1 See my "Life of Paine," vol. ii., pp. 79, 81. Also, the
     historical introduction to XXI., p. 330, of this volume.
     Robespierre never wrote an idle word. This Paine well knew,
     as Mirabeau, who said of Robespierre: "That man will go far
     he believes every word he says."--_Editor._

There must have been a coalition in sentiment, if not in fact, between
the Terrorists of America and the Terrorists of France, and Robespierre
must have known it, or he could not have had the idea of putting America
into the bill of accusation against me. Yet these men, these Terrorists
of the new world, who were waiting in the devotion of their hearts for
the joyful news of my destruction, are the same banditti who are now
bellowing in all the hacknied language of hacknied hypocrisy, about
humanity, and piety, and often about something they call infidelity, and
they finish with the chorus of _Crucify him, crucify him_. I am become
so famous among them, they cannot eat or drink without me. I serve them
as a standing dish, and they cannot make up a bill of fare if I am not
in it.

But there is one dish, and that the choicest of all, that they have not
presented on the table, and it is time they should. They have not yet
_accused Providence of Infidelity_. Yet according to their outrageous
piety, she(1) must be as bad as Thomas Paine; she has protected him in
all his dangers, patronized him in all his undertakings, encouraged him
in all his ways, and rewarded him at last by bringing him in safety and
in health to the Promised Land. This is more than she did by the Jews,
the chosen people, that they tell us she brought out of the land
of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage; for they all died in the
wilderness, and Moses too.

I was one of the nine members that composed the first Committee of
Constitution. Six of them have been destroyed. Sièyes and myself have
survived--he by bending with the times, and I by not bending. The other
survivor joined Robespierre, he was seized and imprisoned in his turn,
and sentenced to transportation. He has since apologized to me for
having signed the warrant, by saying he felt himself in danger and was
obliged to do it.(2)

     1 Is this a "survival" of the goddess Fortuna?--_Editor._

     2 Barère.    His apology to Paine proves that a death-
     warrant had been issued, for Barère did not sign the order
     for Paine's arrest or imprisonment.--_Editor._

Hérault Sechelles, an acquaintance of Mr. Jefferson, and a good patriot,
was my _suppléant_ as member of the Committee of Constitution, that is,
he was to supply my place, if I had not accepted or had resigned, being
next in number of votes to me. He was imprisoned in the Luxembourg with
me, was taken to the tribunal and the guillotine, and I, his principal,
was left.

There were two foreigners in the Convention, Anarcharsis Clootz and
myself. We were both put out of the Convention by the same vote,
arrested by the same order, and carried to prison together the same
night. He was taken to the guillotine, and I was again left. Joel Barlow
was with us when we went to prison.

Joseph Lebon, one of the vilest characters that ever existed, and who
made the streets of Arras run with blood, was my _suppléant_, as member
of the Convention for the department of the Pas de Calais. When I
was put out of the Convention he came and took my place. When I was
liberated from prison and voted again into the Convention, he was sent
to the same prison and took my place there, and he was sent to the
guillotine instead of me. He supplied my place all the way through.

One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxembourg
in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined next day, of
which I now know I was to have been one; and the manner I escaped that
fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident.

The room in which I was lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a
long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward
and flat against the wall; so that when it was open the inside of the
door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three
comrades, fellow prisoners with me, Joseph Vanhuele, of Bruges, since
President of the Municipality of that town, Michael Rubyns, and Charles
Bastini of Louvain.

When persons by scores and by hundreds were to be taken out of the
prison for the guillotine it was always done in the night, and those who
performed that office had a private mark or signal, by which they knew
what rooms to go to, and what number to take. We, as I have stated, were
four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that
number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that
the mark was put on when the door was open, and flat against the
wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the
destroying angel passed by it.(1) A few days after this, Robespierre
fell, and Mr. Monroe arrived and reclaimed me, and invited me to his
house.

     1 Painefs preface to the "Age of Reason" Part IL, and his
     Letter to Washington (p. 222.) show that for some time after
     his release from prison he had attributed his escape from
     the guillotine to a fever which rendered him unconscious at
     the time when his accusation was demanded by Robespierre;
     but it will be seen (XXXI.) that he subsequently visited his
     prison room-mate Vanhuele, who had become Mayor of Bruges,
     and he may have learned from him the particulars of their
     marvellous escape. Carlyle having been criticised by John G.
     Alger for crediting this story of the chalk mark, an
     exhaustive discussion of the facts took place in the London
     Athenoum, July 7, 21, August 25, September 1, 1894, in which
     it was conclusively proved, I think, that there is no reason
     to doubt the truth of the incident See also my article on
     Paine's escape, in The Open Court (Chicago), July 26,1894.
     The discussion in the Athenoum elicited the fact that a
     tradition had long existed in the family of Sampson Perry
     that he had shared Paine's cell and been saved by the
     curious mistake. Such is not the fact. Perry, in his book on
     the French Revolution, and in his "Argus," told the story of
     Paine's escape by his illness, as Paine first told it; and
     he also relates an anecdote which may find place here:
     "Mr. Paine speaks gratefully of the kindness shown him by his
     fellow-prisoners of the same chamber during his severe
     malady, and especially of the skilful and voluntary
     assistance lent him by General O'Hara's surgeon. He relates
     an anecdote of himself which may not be unworthy of
     repeating. An arrêt of the Committee of Public Welfare had
     given directions to the administrators of the palace
     [Luxembourg] to enter all the prisons with additional guards
     and dispossess every prisoner of his knives, forks, and
     every other sharp instrument; and also to take their money
     from them. This happened a short time before Mr. Paine's
     illness, and as this ceremony was represented to him as an
     atrocious plunder in the dregs of municipality, he
     determined to avert its effect so far as it concerned
     himself. He had an English bank note of some value and gold
     coin in his pocket, and as he conceived the visitors would
     rifle them, as well as his trunks (though they did not do so
     by any one) he took off the lock from his door, and hid the
     whole of what he had about him in its inside. He recovered
     his health, he found his money, but missed about three
     hundred of his associated prisoners, who had been sent in
     crowds to the murderous tribunal, while he had been
     insensible of their or his own danger." This was probably
     the money (£200) loaned by Paine to General O'Hara (who
     figured at the Yorktown surrender) in prison.--_Editor._

During the whole of my imprisonment, prior to the fall of Robespierre,
there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours,
and my mind was made up to meet its fate. The Americans in Paris went in
a body to the Convention to reclaim me, but without success. There was
no party among them with respect to me. My only hope then rested on the
government of America, that it would _remember me_. But the icy heart of
ingratitude, in whatever man it be placed, has neither feeling nor
sense of honour. The letter of Mr. Jefferson has served to wipe away the
reproach, and done justice to the mass of the people of America.(1)

     1 Printed in the seventh of this series of Letters.--
     _Editor._.

When a party was forming, in the latter end of 1777, and beginning of
1778, of which John Adams was one, to remove Mr. Washington from the
command of the army on the complaint that _he did nothing_, I wrote the
fifth number of the Crisis, and published it at Lancaster, (Congress
then being at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania,) to ward off that meditated
blow; for though I well knew that the black times of '76 were the
natural consequence of his want of military judgment in the choice of
positions into which the army was put about New York and New Jersey, I
could see no possible advantage, and nothing but mischief, that could
arise by distracting the army into parties, which would have been the
case had the intended motion gone on.

General [Charles] Lee, who with a sarcastic genius joined a great fund
of military knowledge, was perfectly right when he said "_We have no
business on islands, and in the bottom of bogs, where the enemy, by the
aid of its ships, can bring its whole force against apart of ours and
shut it up_." This had like to have been the case at New York, and it
was the case at Fort Washington, and would have been the case at Fort
Lee if General [Nathaniel] Greene had not moved instantly off on the
first news of the enemy's approach. I was with Greene through the whole
of that affair, and know it perfectly.

But though I came forward in defence of Mr. Washington when he was
attacked, and made the best that could be made of a series of blunders
that had nearly ruined the country, he left me to perish when I was in
prison. But as I told him of it in his life-time, I should not now bring
it up if the ignorant impertinence of some of the Federal papers, who
are pushing Mr. Washington forward as their stalking horse, did not make
it necessary.

That gentleman did not perform his part in the Revolution better, nor
with more honour, than I did mine, and the one part was as necessary
as the other. He accepted as a present, (though he was already rich,)
a hundred thousand acres of land in America, and left me to occupy six
foot of earth in France.(1) I wish, for his own reputation, he had acted
with more justice. But it was always known of Mr. Washington, by
those who best knew him, that he was of such an icy and death-like
constitution, that he neither loved his friends nor hated his enemies.
But, be this as it may, I see no reason that a difference between Mr.
Washington and me should be made a theme of discord with other people.
There are those who may see merit in both, without making themselves
partisans of either, and with this reflection I close the subject.

     1 Paine was mistaken, as many others were, about the gifts
     of Virginia (1785) to Washington. They were 100 shares, of
     $100 each, in the James River Company, and 50 shares, of
     £100 each, in the Potomac Company. Washington, accepted on
     condition that he might appropriate them _to public uses_
     which was done in his Will.--_Editor._

As to the hypocritical abuse thrown out by the Federalists on other
subjects, I recommend to them the observance of a commandment that
existed before either Christian or Jew existed:

     Thou shalt make a covenant with thy senses:
     With thine eye  that it behold no evil,
     With thine ear, that it hear no evil,
     With thy tongue, that it speak no evil,
     With thy hands, that they commit no evil.

If the Federalists will follow this commandment, they will leave off
lying.

Thomas Paine.

Federal City, Lovett's Hotel, Nov. 26,1802.



LETTER IV.(1)

     1 The National Intelligencer, Dec. 6th. 1802.--_Editor._.

As Congress is on the point of meeting, the public papers will
necessarily be occupied with the debates of the ensuing session, and
as, in consequence of my long absence from America, my private affairs
require my attendance, (for it is necessary I do this, or I could not
preserve, as I do, my independence,) I shall close my address to the
public with this letter.

I congratulate them on the success of the late elections, and _that_
with the additional confidence, that while honest men are chosen and
wise measures pursued, neither the treason of apostacy, masked under the
name of Federalism, of which I have spoken in my second letter, nor the
intrigues of foreign emissaries, acting in concert with that mask, can
prevail.

As to the licentiousness of the papers calling themselves _Federal_, a
name that apostacy has taken, it can hurt nobody but the party or the
persons who support such papers. There is naturally a wholesome pride
in the public mind that revolts at open vulgarity. It feels itself
dishonoured even by hearing it, as a chaste woman feels dishonour by
hearing obscenity she cannot avoid. It can smile at wit, or be diverted
with strokes of satirical humour, but it detests the _blackguard_. The
same sense of propriety that governs in private companies, governs in
public life. If a man in company runs his wit upon another, it may draw
a smile from some persons present, but as soon as he turns a blackguard
in his language the company gives him up; and it is the same in public
life. The event of the late election shows this to be true; for in
proportion as those papers have become more and more vulgar and abusive,
the elections have gone more and more against the party they support,
or that supports them. Their predecessor, _Porcupine_ [Cobbett] had
wit--these scribblers have none. But as soon as his _blackguardism_ (for
it is the proper name of it) outran his wit, he was abandoned by every
body but the English Minister who protected him.

The Spanish proverb says, "_there never was a cover large enough to hide
itself_"; and the proverb applies to the case of those papers and the
shattered remnant of the faction that supports them. The falsehoods they
fabricate, and the abuse they circulate, is a cover to hide something
from being seen, but it is not large enough to hide itself. It is as
a tub thrown out to the whale to prevent its attacking and sinking the
vessel. They want to draw the attention of the public from thinking
about, or inquiring into, the measures of the late administration, and
the reason why so much public money was raised and expended; and so far
as a lie today, and a new one tomorrow, will answer this purpose, it
answers theirs. It is nothing to them whether they be believed or not,
for if the negative purpose be answered the main point is answered, to
them.

He that picks your pocket always tries to make you look another way.
"Look," says he, "at yon man t'other side the street--what a nose he has
got?--Lord, yonder is a chimney on fire!--Do you see yon man going along
in the salamander great coat? That is the very man that stole one of
Jupiter's satellites, and sold it to a countryman for a gold watch,
and it set his breeches on fire!" Now the man that has his hand in your
pocket, does not care a farthing whether you believe what he says or
not. All his aim is to prevent your looking at _him_; and this is the
case with the remnant of the Federal faction. The leaders of it have
imposed upon the country, and they want to turn the attention of it from
the subject.

In taking up any public matter, I have never made it a consideration,
and never will, whether it be popular or unpopular; but whether it be
_right_ or _wrong_. The right will always become the popular, if it has
courage to show itself, and the shortest way is always a straight line.
I despise expedients, they are the gutter-hole of politics, and the sink
where reputation dies. In the present case, as in every other, I
cannot be accused of using any; and I have no doubt but thousands will
hereafter be ready to say, as Gouverneur Morris said to me, after having
abused me pretty handsomely in Congress for the opposition I gave
the fraudulent demand of Silas Deane of two thousand pounds sterling:
"_Well, we were all duped, and I among the rest!_"(1)

     1 See vol. I., chapters xxii., xxiii., xxiv., of this work.
     Also my "Life of Paine," vol. I., ch. ix., x.--_Editor._

Were the late administration to be called upon to give reasons for
the expence it put the country to, it can give none. The danger of an
invasion was a bubble that served as a cover to raise taxes and armies
to be employed on some other purpose. But if the people of America
believed it true, the cheerfulness with which they supported those
measures and paid those taxes is an evidence of their patriotism; and
if they supposed me their enemy, though in that supposition they did me
injustice, it was not injustice in them. He that acts as he believes,
though he may act wrong, is not conscious of wrong.

But though there was no danger, no thanks are due to the late
administration for it. They sought to blow up a flame between the two
countries; and so intent were they upon this, that they went out of
their way to accomplish it. In a letter which the Secretary of State,
Timothy Pickering, wrote to Mr. Skipwith, the American Consul at Paris,
he broke off from the official subject of his letter, to _thank God_ in
very exulting language, _that the Russians had cut the French army
to pieces_. Mr. Skipwith, after showing me the letter, very prudently
concealed it.

It was the injudicious and wicked acrimony of this letter, and some
other like conduct of the then Secretary of State, that occasioned me,
in a letter to a friend in the government, to say, that if there was any
official business to be done in France, till a regular Minister could
be appointed, it could not be trusted to a more proper person than Mr.
Skipwith. "_He is_," said I, "_an honest man, and will do business, and
that with good manners to the government he is commissioned to act with.
A faculty which that BEAR, Timothy Pickering, wanted, and which the BEAR
of that bear, John Adams, never possessed_."(2)

     2 By reference to the letter itself (p. 376 of this volume)
     it will be seen that Paine here quotes it from memory.--
     _Editor._ vol III--

In another letter to the same friend, in 1797, and which was put
unsealed under cover to Colonel Burr, I expressed a satisfaction
that Mr. Jefferson, since he was not president, had accepted the
vice presidency; "_for_," said I, "_John Adams has such a talent for
blundering and offending, it will be necessary to keep an eye over
him_." He has now sufficiently proved, that though I have not the spirit
of prophecy, I have the gift of _judging right_. And all the world
knows, for it cannot help knowing, that to judge _rightly_ and to write
_clearly_, and that upon all sorts of subjects, to be able to command
thought and as it were to play with it at pleasure, and be always master
of one's temper in writing, is the faculty only of a serene mind, and
the attribute of a happy and philosophical temperament. The scribblers,
who know me not, and who fill their papers with paragraphs about me,
besides their want of talents, drink too many slings and drams in a
morning to have any chance with me. But, poor fellows, they must do
something for the little pittance they get from their employers. This is
my apology for them.

My anxiety to get back to America was great for many years. It is the
country of my heart, and the place of my political and literary birth.
It was the American revolution that made me an author, and forced into
action the mind that had been dormant, and had no wish for public life,
nor has it now. By the accounts I received, she appeared to me to be
going wrong, and that some meditated treason against her liberties
lurked at the bottom of her government. I heard that my friends were
oppressed, and I longed to take my stand among them, and if other times
to _try mens souls_ were to arrive, that I might bear my share. But my
efforts to return were ineffectual.

As soon as Mr. Monroe had made a good standing with the French
government, for the conduct of his predecessor [Morris] had made his
reception as Minister difficult, he wanted to send despatches to his own
government by a person to whom he could confide a verbal communication,
and he fixed his choice on me. He then applied to the Committee of
Public Safety for a passport; but as I had been voted again into the
Convention, it was only the Convention that could give the passport;
and as an application to them for that purpose, would have made my going
publicly known, I was obliged to sustain the disappointment, and Mr.
Monroe to lose the opportunity.(1)

When that gentleman left France to return to America, I was to have
gone with him. It was fortunate I did not. The vessel he sailed in was
visited by a British frigate, that searched every part of it, and down
to the hold, for Thomas Paine.(2) I then went, the same year, to embark
at Havre. But several British frigates were cruizing in sight of the
port who knew I was there, and I had to return again to Paris. Seeing
myself thus cut off from every opportunity that was in my power to
command, I wrote to Mr. Jefferson, that, if the fate of the election
should put him in the chair of the presidency, and he should have
occasion to send a frigate to France, he would give me the opportunity
of returning by it, which he did. But I declined coming by the
_Maryland_, the vessel that was offered me, and waited for the frigate
that was to bring the new Minister, Mr. Chancellor Livingston, to
France. But that frigate was ordered round to the Mediterranean; and
as at that time the war was over, and the British cruisers called in,
I could come any way. I then agreed to come with Commodore Barney in a
vessel he had engaged. It was again fortunate I did not, for the vessel
sank at sea, and the people were preserved in the boat.

     1 The correspondence is in my "Life of Paine," vol. ii.,
     pp. 154-5.--_Editor._

     2 The "Dublin Packet," Captain Clay, in whom Paine, as he
     wrote to Jefferson, "had  no confidence."--_Editor._

Had half the number of evils befallen me that the number of dangers
amount to through which I have been pre-served, there are those who
would ascribe it to the wrath of heaven; why then do they not ascribe
my preservation to the protecting favour of heaven? Even in my worldly
concerns I have been blessed. The little property I left in America,
and which I cared nothing about, not even to receive the rent of it,
has been increasing in the value of its capital more than eight hundred
dollars every year, for the fourteen years and more that I have been
absent from it. I am now in my circumstances independent; and my economy
makes me rich. As to my health, it is perfectly good, and I leave the
world to judge of the stature of my mind. I am in every instance a
living contradiction to the mortified Federalists.

In my publications, I follow the rule I began with in _Common Sense_,
that is, to consult nobody, nor to let any body see what I write till
it appears publicly. Were I to do otherwise, the case would be, that
between the timidity of some, who are so afraid of doing wrong that they
never do right, the puny judgment of others, and the despicable craft of
preferring _expedient to right_, as if the world was a world of babies
in leading strings, I should get forward with nothing. My path is a
right line, as straight and clear to me as a ray of light. The boldness
(if they will have it to be so) with which I speak on any subject, is a
compliment to the judgment of the reader. It is like saying to him,
_I treat you as a man and not as a child_. With respect to any worldly
object, as it is impossible to discover any in me, therefore what I do,
and my manner of doing it, ought to be ascribed to a good motive.

In a great affair, where the happiness of man is at stake, I love
to work for nothing; and so fully am I under the influence of this
principle, that I should lose the spirit, the pleasure, and the pride
of it, were I conscious that I looked for reward; and with this
declaration, I take my leave for the present.(1)

     1 The self-assertion of this and other letters about this
     time was really self-defence, the invective against him, and
     the calumnies, being such as can hardly be credited by those
     not familiar with the publications of that time.--_Editor._

Thomas Paine.

Federal City, Lovett's Hotel, Dec. 3, 1802.



LETTER V.(1)

     1 The National Intelligencer, Feb., 1803. In the Tarions
     collections of these Letters there appears at this point a
     correspondence between Paine and Samuel Adams of Boston, but
     as it relates to religious matters I reserve it for the
     fourth volume.--_Editor._.

It is always the interest of a far greater part of the nation to have
a thing right than to have it wrong; and therefore, in a country whose
government is founded on the system of election and representation, the
fate of every party is decided by its principles.

As this system is the only form and principle of government by which
liberty can be preserved, and the only one that can embrace all the
varieties of a great extent of country, it necessarily follows, that to
have the representation real, the election must be real; and that where
the election is a fiction, the representation is a fiction also. _Like
will always produce like_.

A great deal has been said and written concerning the conduct of Mr.
Burr, during the late contest, in the federal legislature, whether Mr.
Jefferson or Mr. Burr should be declared President of the United States.
Mr. Burr has been accused of intriguing to obtain the Presidency.
Whether this charge be substantiated or not makes little or no part of
the purport of this letter. There is a point of much higher importance
to attend to than any thing that relates to the individual Mr. Burr: for
the great point is not whether Mr. Burr has intrigued, but whether the
legislature has intrigued with _him_.

Mr. Ogden, a relation of one of the senators of New Jersey of the same
name, and of the party assuming the style of Federalists, has written
a letter published in the New York papers, signed with his name, the
purport of which is to exculpate Mr. Burr from the charges brought
against him. In this letter he says:

"When about to return from Washington, two or three _members of
Congress_ of the federal party spoke to me of _their views_, as to the
election of a president, desiring me to converse with Colonel Burr on
the subject, and to ascertain _whether he would enter into terms_. On my
return to New York I called on Colonel Burr, and communicated the above
to him. He explicitly declined the explanation, and _did neither propose
nor agree to any terms_."

How nearly is human cunning allied to folly! The animals to whom nature
has given the faculty we call _cunning_, know always when to use it,
and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and
betrays.

Mr. Ogden's letter is intended to exculpate Mr. Burr from the charge
of intriguing to obtain the presidency; and the letter that he (Ogden)
writes for this purpose is direct evidence against his party in
Congress, that they intrigued with Burr to obtain him for President,
and employed him (Ogden) for the purpose. To save _Aaron_, he betrays
_Moses_, and then turns informer against the _Golden Calf_.

It is but of little importance to the world to know if Mr. Burr
_listened_ to an intriguing proposal, but it is of great importance to
the constituents to know if their representatives in Congress made one.
The ear can commit no crime, but the tongue may; and therefore the right
policy is to drop Mr. Burr, as being only the hearer, and direct the
whole charge against the Federal faction in Congress as the active
original culprit, or, if the priests will have scripture for it, as the
serpent that beguiled Eve.

     1 In the presidential canvas of 1800, the votes in the
     electoral college being equally divided between Burr and
     Jefferson, the election was thrown into the House of
     Representatives. Jefferson was elected on the 36th ballot,
     but he never forgave Burr, and between these two old friends
     Paine had to write this letter under some embarrassment. The
     last paragraph of this Letter shows Paine's desire for a
     reconciliation between Burr and Jefferson. Aaron Burr is one
     of the traditionally slandered figures of American history.
     --_Editor._

The plot of the intrigue was to make Mr. Burr President, on the private
condition of his agreeing to, and entering into, terms with them, that
is, with the proposers. Had then the election been made, the country,
knowing nothing of this private and illegal transaction, would have
supposed, for who could have supposed otherwise, that it had a President
according to the forms, principles, and intention of the constitution.
No such thing. Every form, principle, and intention of the constitution
would have been violated; and instead of a President, it would have had
a mute, a sort of image, hand-bound and tongue-tied, the dupe and slave
of a party, placed on the theatre of the United States, and acting the
farce of President.

It is of little importance, in a constitutional sense, to know what the
terms to be proposed might be, because any terms other than those which
the constitution prescribes to a President are criminal. Neither do I
see how Mr. Burr, or any other person put in the same condition, could
have taken the oath prescribed by the constitution to a President, which
is, "_I do solemnly swear (or affirm,) that I will faithfully execute
the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of
my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States_."

How, I ask, could such a person have taken such an oath, knowing at the
same time that he had entered into the Presidency on terms unknown
in the Constitution, and private, and which would deprive him of the
freedom and power of acting as President of the United States, agreeably
to his constitutional oath?

Mr. Burr, by not agreeing to terms, has escaped the danger to which
they exposed him, and the perjury that would have followed, and also
the punishment annexed thereto. Had he accepted the Presidency on
terms unknown in the constitution, and private, and had the transaction
afterwards transpired, (which it most probably would, for roguery is a
thing difficult to conceal,) it would have produced a sensation in the
country too violent to be quieted, and too just to be resisted; and in
any case the election must have been void.

But what are we to think of those members of Congress, who having taken
an oath of the same constitutional import as the oath of the President,
violate that oath by tampering to obtain a President on private
conditions. If this is not sedition against the constitution and the
country, it is difficult to define what sedition in a representative can
be.

Say not that this statement of the case is the effect of personal or
party resentment. No. It is the effect of _sincere concern_ that such
corruption, of which this is but a sample, should, in the space of a few
years, have crept into a country that had the fairest opportunity that
Providence ever gave, within the knowledge of history, of making itself
an illustrious example to the world.

What the terms were, or were to be, it is probable we never shall know;
or what is more probable, that feigned ones, if any, will be given. But
from the conduct of the party since that time we may conclude, that no
taxes would have been taken off, that the clamour for war would have
been kept up, new expences incurred, and taxes and offices increased
in consequence; and, among the articles of a private nature, that
the leaders in this seditious traffic were to stipulate with the mock
President for lucrative appointments for themselves.

But if these plotters against the Constitution understood their
business, and they had been plotting long enough to be masters of it, a
single article would have comprehended every thing, which is, _That the
President (thus made) should be governed in all cases whatsoever by a
private junto appointed by themselves_. They could then, through the
medium of a mock President, have negatived all bills which their
party in Congress could not have opposed with success, and reduced
representation to a nullity.

The country has been imposed upon, and the real culprits are but few;
and as it is necessary for the peace, harmony, and honour of the Union,
to separate the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the
betrayed, that men who once were friends, and that in the worst of
times, should be friends again, it is necessary, as a beginning, that
this dark business be brought to full investigation. Ogden's letter
is direct evidence of the fact of tampering to obtain a conditional
President. He knows the two or three members of Congress that
commissioned him, and they know who commissioned them.

Thomas Paine.

Federal City, Lovett's Hotel, Jan. 29th, 1803.



LETTER VI.(1)

     1 The Aurora (Philadelphia).--_Editor._.

Religion and War is the cry of the Federalists; Morality and Peace the
voice of Republicans. The union of Morality and Peace is congenial;
but that of Religion and War is a paradox, and the solution of it is
hypocrisy.

The leaders of the Federalists have no judgment; their plans no
consistency of parts; and want of consistency is the natural consequence
of want of principle.

They exhibit to the world the curious spectacle of an _Opposition_
without a _cause_, and conduct without system. Were they, as doctors,
to prescribe medicine as they practise politics, they would poison their
patients with destructive compounds.

There are not two things more opposed to each other than War and
Religion; and yet, in the double game those leaders have to play, the
one is necessarily the theme of their politics, and the other the text
of their sermons. The week-day orator of Mars, and the Sunday preacher
of Federal Grace, play like gamblers into each other's hands, and this
they call Religion.

Though hypocrisy can counterfeit every virtue, and become the associate
of every vice, it requires a great dexterity of craft to give it the
power of deceiving. A painted sun may glisten, but it cannot warm. For
hypocrisy to personate virtue successfully it must know and feel what
virtue is, and as it cannot long do this, it cannot long deceive.
When an orator foaming for War breathes forth in another sentence a
_plaintive piety of words_, he may as well write hypocrisy on his front.

The late attempt of the Federal leaders in Congress (for they acted
without the knowledge of their constituents) to plunge the country into
War, merits not only reproach but indignation. It was madness, conceived
in ignorance and acted in wickedness. The head and the heart went
partners in the crime.

A neglect of punctuality in the performance of a treaty is made
a _cause_ of war by the _Barbary powers_, and of remonstrance and
explanation by _civilised powers_. The Mahometans of Barbary negociate
by the sword--they seize first, and ex-postulate afterwards; and the
federal leaders have been labouring to _barbarize_ the United States by
adopting the practice of the Barbary States, and this they call honour.
Let their honour and their hypocrisy go weep together, for both are
defeated. Their present Administration is too moral for hypocrites, and
too economical for public spendthrifts.

A man the least acquainted with diplomatic affairs must know that a
neglect in punctuality is not one of the legal causes of war, unless
that neglect be confirmed by a refusal to perform; and even then it
depends upon circumstances connected with it. The world would be in
continual quarrels and war, and commerce be annihilated, if Algerine
policy was the law of nations. And were America, instead of becoming an
example to the old world of good and moral government and civil manners,
or, if they like it better, of gentlemanly conduct towards other
nations, to set up the character of ruffian, that of _word and blow, and
the blow first_, and thereby give the example of pulling down the little
that civilization has gained upon barbarism, her Independence, instead
of being an honour and a blessing, would become a curse upon the world
and upon herself.

The conduct of the Barbary powers, though unjust in principle, is suited
to their prejudices, situation, and circumstances. The crusades of the
church to exterminate them fixed in their minds the unobliterated belief
that every Christian power was their mortal enemy. Their religious
prejudices, therefore, suggest the policy, which their situation and
circumstances protect them in. As a people, they are neither commercial
nor agricultural, they neither import nor export, have no property
floating on the seas, nor ships and cargoes in the ports of foreign
nations. No retaliation, therefore, can be acted upon them, and they sin
secure from punishment.

But this is not the case with the United States. If she sins as a
Barbary power, she must answer for it as a Civilized one. Her commerce
is continually passing on the seas exposed to capture, and her ships
and cargoes in foreign ports to detention and reprisal. An act of War
committed by her in the Mississippi would produce a War against the
commerce of the Atlantic States, and the latter would have to curse the
policy that provoked the former. In every point, therefore, in which the
character and interest of the United States be considered, it would
ill become her to set an example contrary to the policy and custom of
Civilized powers, and practised only by the Barbary powers, that of
striking before she expostulates.

But can any man, calling himself a Legislator, and supposed by his
constituents to know something of his duty, be so ignorant as to imagine
that seizing on New Orleans would finish the affair or even contribute
towards it? On the contrary it would have made it worse. The treaty
right of deposite at New Orleans, and the right of the navigation of the
Mississippi into the Gulph of Mexico, are distant things. New Orleans is
more than an hundred miles in the country from the mouth of the river,
and, as a place of deposite, is of no value if the mouth of the river be
shut, which either France or Spain could do, and which our possession
of New Orleans could neither prevent or remove. New Orleans in our
possession, by an act of hostility, would have become a blockaded
port, and consequently of no value to the western people as a place of
deposite. Since, therefore, an interruption had arisen to the commerce
of the western states, and until the matter could be brought to a fair
explanation, it was of less injury to have the port shut and the river
open, than to have the river shut and the port in our possession.

That New Orleans could be taken required no stretch of policy to plan,
nor spirit of enterprize to effect. It was like marching behind a man to
knock him down: and the dastardly slyness of such an attack would have
stained the fame of the United States. Where there is no danger cowards
are bold, and Captain Bobadils are to be found in the Senate as well
as on the stage. Even _Gouverneur_, on such a march, dare have shown a
leg.(1)

     1 Gouverneur Morris being now leader of the belligerent
     faction in Congress, Paine could not resist the temptation
     to allude to a well-known incident (related in his Diary and
     Letters, i., p. 14). A mob in Paris having surrounded his
     fine carriage, crying "Aristocrat!" Morris showed his
     wooden leg, declaring he had lost his leg in the cause of
     American liberty. Morris was never in any fight, his leg
     being lost by a commonplace accident while driving in
     Philadelphia. Although Paine's allusion may appear in bad
     taste, even with this reference, it was politeness itself
     compared with the brutal abuse which Morris (not content
     with imprisoning Paine in Paris) and his adherents were
     heaping on the author on his return to America; also on
     Monroe, whom Jefferson had returned to France to negotiate
     for the purchase of Louisiana.--_Editor._,

The people of the western country to whom the Mississippi serves as
an inland sea to their commerce, must be supposed to understand the
circumstances of that commerce better than a man who is a stranger to
it; and as they have shown no approbation of the war-whoop measures of
the Federal senators, it becomes presumptive evidence they disapprove
them. This is a new mortification for those war-whoop politicians; for
the case is, that finding themselves losing ground and withering away in
the Atlantic States, they laid hold of the affair of New Orleans in the
vain hope of rooting and reinforcing themselves in the western States;
and they did this without perceiving that it was one of those ill judged
hypocritical expedients in politics, that whether it succeeded or failed
the event would be the same. Had their motion [that of Ross and Morris]
succeeded, it would have endangered the commerce of the Atlantic States
and ruined their reputation there; and on the other hand the attempt
to make a tool of the western people was so badly concealed as to
extinguish all credit with them.

But hypocrisy is a vice of sanguine constitution. It flatters and
promises itself every thing; and it has yet to learn, with respect to
moral and political reputation, it is less dangerous to offend than to
deceive.

To the measures of administration, supported by the firmness and
integrity of the majority in Congress, the United States owe, as far as
human means are concerned, the preservation of peace, and of national
honour. The confidence which the western people reposed in the
government and their representatives is rewarded with success. They are
reinstated in their rights with the least possible loss of time; and
their harmony with the people of New Orleans, so necessary to the
prosperity of the United States, which would have been broken, and the
seeds of discord sown in its place, had hostilities been preferred to
accommodation, remains unimpaired. Have the Federal ministers of the
church meditated on these matters? and laying aside, as they ought to
do, their electioneering and vindictive prayers and sermons, returned
thanks that peace is preserved, and commerce, without the stain of
blood?

In the pleasing contemplation of this state of things the mind, by
comparison, carries itself back to those days of uproar and extravagance
that marked the career of the former administration, and decides, by
the unstudied impulse of its own feelings, that something must then have
been wrong. Why was it, that America, formed for happiness, and remote
by situation and circumstances from the troubles and tumults of the
European world, became plunged into its vortex and contaminated with its
crimes? The answer is easy. Those who were then at the head of affairs
were apostates from the principles of the revolution. Raised to an
elevation they had not a right to expect, nor judgment to conduct,
they became like feathers in the air, and blown about by every puff of
passion or conceit.

Candour would find some apology for their conduct if want of judgment
was their only defect. But error and crime, though often alike in their
features, are distant in their characters and in their origin. The one
has its source in the weakness of the head, the other in the hardness
of the heart, and the coalition of the two, describes the former
Administration.(1)

     1 That of John Adams.--_Editor._

Had no injurious consequences arisen from the conduct of that
Administration, it might have passed for error or imbecility, and
been permitted to die and be forgotten. The grave is kind to innocent
offence. But even innocence, when it is a cause of injury, ought to
undergo an enquiry.

The country, during the time of the former Administration, was kept in
continual agitation and alarm; and that no investigation might be made
into its conduct, it entrenched itself within a magic circle of terror,
and called it a SEDITION LAW.(1) Violent and mysterious in its measures
and arrogant in its manners, it affected to disdain information, and
insulted the principles that raised it from obscurity. John Adams and
Timothy Pickering were men whom nothing but the accidents of the times
rendered visible on the political horizon. Elevation turned their heads,
and public indignation hath cast them to the ground. But an inquiry
into the conduct and measures of that Administration is nevertheless
necessary.

The country was put to great expense. Loans, taxes, and standing armies
became the standing order of the day. The militia, said Secretary
Pickering, are not to be depended upon, and fifty thousand men must be
raised. For what? No cause to justify such measures has yet appeared. No
discovery of such a cause has yet been made. The pretended Sedition Law
shut up the sources of investigation, and the precipitate flight of John
Adams closed the scene. But the matter ought not to sleep here.

It is not to gratify resentment, or encourage it in others, that I enter
upon this subject. It is not in the power of man to accuse me of a
persecuting spirit. But some explanation ought to be had. The motives
and objects respecting the extraordinary and expensive measures of the
former Administration ought to be known. The Sedition Law, that shield
of the moment, prevented it then, and justice demands it now. If the
public have been imposed upon, it is proper they should know it; for
where judgment is to act, or a choice is to be made, knowledge is first
necessary. The conciliation of parties, if it does not grow out of
explanation, partakes of the character of collusion or indifference.

     1 Passed July 14, 1798, to continue until March 3, 1801.
     This Act, described near the close of this Letter, and one
     passed June 35th, giving the President despotic powers over
     aliens in the United States, constituted the famous "Alien
     and Sedition Laws." Hamilton opposed them, and rightly saw
     in them the suicide of the Federal party.--_Editor._,

There has been guilt somewhere; and it is better to fix it where
it belongs, and separate the deceiver from the deceived, than that
suspicion, the bane of society, should range at large, and sour the
public mind. The military measures that were proposed and carrying on
during the former administration, could not have for their object the
defence of the country against invasion. This is a case that decides
itself; for it is self evident, that while the war raged in Europe,
neither France nor England could spare a man to send to America. The
object, therefore, must be something at home, and that something was the
overthrow of the representative system of government, for it could be
nothing else. But the plotters got into confusion and became enemies to
each other. Adams hated and was jealous of Hamilton, and Hamilton hated
and despised both Adams and Washington.(1) Surly Timothy stood aloof, as
he did at the affair of Lexington, and the part that fell to the public
was to pay the expense.(2)

     1 Hamilton's bitter pamphlet against Adams appeared in 1800,
     but his old quarrel with Washington (1781) had apparently
     healed. Yet, despite the favors lavished by Washington on
     Hamilton, there is no certainty that the latter ever changed
     his unfavorable opinion of the former, as expressed in a
     letter to General Schuylor, Feb. 18, 1781 (Lodge's
     "Hamilton's Works," vol. viii., p. 35).--_Editor._

     2 Colonel Pickering's failure, in 1775, to march his Salem
     troops in time to intercept the British retreat from
     Lexington was attributed to his half-heartedness
     in the patriotic cause.--_Editor._

But ought a people who, but a few years ago, were fighting the battles
of the world, for liberty had no home but here, ought such a people
to stand quietly by and see that liberty undermined by apostacy
and overthrown by intrigue? Let the tombs of the slain recall their
recollection, and the forethought of what their children are to be
revive and fix in their hearts the love of liberty.

If the former administration can justify its conduct, give it the
opportunity. The manner in which John Adams disappeared from the
government renders an inquiry the more necessary. He gave some account
of himself, lame and confused as it was, to certain _eastern wise men_
who came to pay homage to him on his birthday. But if he thought it
necessary to do this, ought he not to have rendered an account to
the public. They had a right to expect it of him. In that tête-à-tête
account, he says, "Some measures were the effect of imperious necessity,
much against my inclination." What measures does Mr. Adams mean, and
what is the imperious necessity to which he alludes? "Others (says he)
were measures of the Legislature, which, although approved when passed,
were never previously proposed or recommended by me." What measures,
it may be asked, were those, for the public have a right to know the
conduct of their representatives? "Some (says he) left to my discretion
were never executed, because no necessity for them, in my judgment, ever
occurred."

What does this dark apology, mixed with accusation, amount to, but
to increase and confirm the suspicion that something was wrong?
Administration only was possessed of foreign official information,
and it was only upon that information communicated by him publicly or
privately, or to Congress, that Congress could act; and it is not in
the power of Mr. Adams to show, from the condition of the belligerent
powers, that any imperious necessity called for the warlike and
expensive measures of his Administration.

What the correspondence between Administration and Rufus King in London,
or Quincy Adams in Holland, or Berlin, might be, is but little known.
The public papers have told us that the former became cup-bearer from
the London underwriters to Captain Truxtun,(1) for which, as Minister
from a neutral nation, he ought to have been censured. It is, however,
a feature that marks the politics of the Minister, and hints at the
character of the correspondence.

     1 Thomas Truxtun (1755-1822), for having captured the French
     frigate "L'Insurgente," off Hen's Island, 1799, was
     presented at Lloyd's coffee-house with plate to the value of
     600 guineas. Rufus King (1755-1827), made Minister to England
     in 1796, continued under Adams, and for two years under
     Jefferson's administration.--_Editor._

I know that it is the opinion of several members of both houses of
Congress, that an enquiry, with respect to the conduct of the late
Administration, ought to be gone into. The convulsed state into which
the country has been thrown will be best settled by a full and fair
exposition of the conduct of that Administration, and the causes and
object of that conduct. To be deceived, or to remain deceived, can be
the interest of no man who seeks the public good; and it is the deceiver
only, or one interested in the deception, that can wish to preclude
enquiry.

The suspicion against the late Administration is, that it was plotting
to overturn the representative system of government, and that it spread
alarms of invasions that had no foundation, as a pretence for raising
and establishing a military force as the means of accomplishing that
object.

The law, called the Sedition Law, enacted, that if any person should
write or publish, or cause to be written or published, any libel
[without defining what a libel is] against the Government of the United
States, or either house of congress, or against the President, he
should be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by
imprisonment not exceeding two years.

But it is a much greater crime for a president to plot against a
Constitution and the liberties of the people, than for an individual to
plot against a President; and consequently, John Adams is accountable to
the public for his conduct, as the individuals under his administration
were to the sedition law.

The object, however, of an enquiry, in this case, is not to punish, but
to satisfy; and to shew, by example, to future administrations, that an
abuse of power and trust, however disguised by appearances, or rendered
plausible by pretence, is one time or other to be accounted for.

Thomas Paine.

BORDENTOWN, ON THE DELAWARE,

New Jersey, March 12, 1803. vol. III--27



LETTER VII.

     EDITOR'S PREFACE.

     This letter was printed in _The True American_, Trenton, New
     Jersey, soon after Paine's return to his old home at
     Bordenton. It is here printed from the original manuscript,
     for which I am indebted to Mr. W. F. Havemeyer of New York.
     Although the Editor has concluded to present Paine's
     "Maritime Compact" in the form he finally gave it, the
     articles were printed in French in 1800, and by S. H. Smith,
     Washington, at the close of the same year. There is an
     interesting history connected with it. John Hall, in his
     diary ("Trenton, 20 April, 1787") relates that Paine told
     him of Dr. Franklin, whom he (Paine) had just visited in
     Philadelphia,  and the Treaty he, the Doctor, made with the
     late King of Prussia by adding an article that, should war
     ever break out, Commerce should be free. The Doctor said he
     showed it to Vergennes, who said it met his idea, and was
     such as he would make even with England. In his Address to
     the People of France, 1797 (see p. 366), Paine closes with a
     suggestion on the subject, and a year later (September 30,
     1798), when events were in a critical condition, he sent
     nine articles of his proposed _Pacte Maritime_ to
     Talleyrand, newly appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. The
     letters that passed are here taken from the originals (State
     Archives, Paris, États Unis, vol. 48).


"Rue Theatre française, No. 4, 9 Vendemaire, 6 year.

"Citizen Minister: I promised you some observations on the state of
things between France and America. I divide the case into two parts.
First, with respect to some Method that shall effectually put an end to
all interruptions of the American Commerce. Secondly, with respect to
the settlement for the captures that have been made on that Commerce.

"As to the first case (the interruption of the American Commerce
by France) it has foundation in the British Treaty, and it is the
continuance of that treaty that renders the remedy difficult. Besides,
the American administration has blundered so much in the business of
treaty-making, that it is probable it will blunder again in making
another with France. There is, however, one method left, and there is
but one that I can see, that will be effectual. It is a _non-importation
Convention; that America agrees not to import from any Nation in Europe
who shall interrupt her Commerce on the seas, any goods, wares, or
merchandize whatever, and that all her ports shall be shut against
the Nation that gives the offence_. This will draw America out of her
difficulties with respect to her treaty with England.

"But it will be far better if this non-importation convention were to
be a general convention of Nations acting as a Whole. It would give a
better protection to Neutral Commerce than the armed neutrality could
do. I would rather be a Neutral Nation under the protection of such a
Convention, which costs nothing to make it, than be under the protection
of a navy equal to that of Great Britain. France should be the patron of
such a Convention and sign it. It would be giving both her consent and
her protection to the Rights of Neutral Nations. If England refuse to
sign it she will nevertheless be obliged to respect it, or lose all her
Commerce.

"I enclose you a plan I drew up about four months ago, when there was
expectation that Mr. Madison would come to France. It has lain by me
ever since.

"The second part, that of settlement for the captures, I will make the
subject of a future correspondence. Salut et respect."


Talleyrand's Reply ("Foreign Relations, 15 Vendemaire An. 6," Oct.
6, 1797): "I have the honor to return you, Citizen, with very sincere
thanks, your Letter to General Washington which you have had the
goodness to show me.

"I have received the letter which you have taken the trouble to write
me, the 9th of this month. I need not assure you of the appreciation
with which I shall receive the further indications you promise on the
means of terminating in a durable manner the differences which must
excite your interest as a patriot and as a Republican. Animated by
such a principle your ideas cannot fail to throw valuable light on the
discussion you open, and which should have for its object to reunite the
two Republics in whose alienation the enemies of liberty triumph."

Paine's plan made a good impression in France--He writes to Jefferson,
October 6, 1800, that the Consul Le Brun, at an entertainment given to
the American envoys, gave for his toast: "À l'union de 1' Amérique avec
les Puissances du Nord pour faire respecter la liberté des mers."

The malignant mind, like the jaundiced eye, sees everything through a
false medium of its own creating. The light of heaven appears stained
with yellow to the distempered sight of the one, and the fairest actions
have the form of crimes in the venomed imagination of the other.

For seven months, both before and after my return to America in October
last, the apostate papers styling themselves "Federal" were filled with
paragraphs and Essays respecting a letter from Mr. Jefferson to me at
Paris; and though none of them knew the contents of the letter, nor the
occasion of writing it, malignity taught them to suppose it, and the
lying tongue of injustice lent them its aid.

That the public may no longer be imposed upon by Federal apostacy, I
will now publish the Letter, and the occasion of its being written.

The Treaty negociated in England by John Jay, and ratified by the
Washington Administration, had so disgracefully surrendered the right
and freedom of the American flag, that all the Commerce of the
United States on the Ocean became exposed to capture, and suffered in
consequence of it. The duration of the Treaty was limited to two years
after the war; and consequently America could not, during that period,
relieve herself from the Chains which the Treaty had fixed upon her.
This being the case, the only relief that could come must arise out of
something originating in Europe, that would, in its consequences, extend
to America. It had long been my opinion that Commerce contained within
itself the means of its own protection; but as the time for bringing
forward any new system is not always happening, it is necessary to watch
its approach, and lay hold of it before it passes away.

As soon as the late Emperor Paul of Russia abandoned his coalition with
England and become a Neutral Power, this Crisis of time, and also of
circumstances, was then arriving; and I employed it in arranging a plan
for the protection of the Commerce of Neutral Nations during War,
that might, in its operation and consequences, relieve the Commerce of
America. The Plan, with the pieces accompanying it, consisted of
about forty pages. The Citizen Bonneville, with whom I lived in Paris,
translated it into French; Mr. Skipwith, the American Consul, Joel
Barlow, and myself, had the translation printed and distributed as
a present to the Foreign Ministers of all the Neutral Nations then
resident in Paris. This was in the summer of 1800.

It was entitled Maritime Compact (in French _Pacte Maritime_), The plan,
exclusive of the pieces that accompanied it, consisted of the following
Preamble and Articles.


MARITIME COMPACT.

Being an Unarmed Association of Nations for the protection of the Rights
and Commerce of Nations that shall be neutral in time of War.

Whereas, the Vexations and Injuries to which the Rights and Commerce of
Neutral Nations have been, and continue to be, exposed during the time
of maritime War, render it necessary to establish a law of Nations for
the purpose of putting an end to such vexations and Injuries, and to
guarantee to the Neutral Nations the exercise of their just Rights,

We, therefore, the undersigned Powers, form ourselves into an
Association, and establish the following as a Law of Nations on the
Seas.

ARTICLE THE FIRST. Definition of the Rights of neutral Nations.

The Rights of Nations, such as are exercised by them in their
intercourse with each other in time of Peace, are, and of right ought to
be, the Rights of Neutral Nations at all times; because,

First, those Rights not having been abandoned by them, remain with them.

Secondly, because those Rights cannot become forfeited or void, in
consequence of War breaking out between two or more other Nations.

A War of Nation against Nation being exclusively the act of the Nations
that make the War, and not the act of the Neutral Nations, cannot,
whether considered in itself or in its consequences, destroy or diminish
the Rights of the Nations remaining in Peace.


ARTICLE THE SECOND.

The Ships and Vessels of Nations that rest neuter and at Peace with the
World during a War with other Nations, have a Right to navigate freely
on the Seas as they navigated before that War broke out, and to proceed
to and enter the Port or Ports of any of the Belligerent Powers, _with
the consent of that Power_, without being seized, searched, visited, or
any ways interrupted, by the Nation or Nations with which that Nation is
at War.


ARTICLE THE THIRD.

For the Conservation of the aforesaid Rights, We, the undersigned
Powers, engaging to each other our Sacred Faith and Honour, declare,

That if any Belligerent Power shall seize, search, visit, or any ways
interrupt any Ship or Vessel belonging to the Citizens or Subjects of
any of the Powers composing this Association, then each and all of the
said undersigned Powers will cease to import, and will not permit to
be imported into the Ports or Dominions of any of the said undersigned
Powers, in any Ship or Vessel whatever, any Goods, wares, or
Merchandize, produced or manufactured in, or exported from, the
Dominions of the Power so offending against the Association hereby
established and Proclaimed.


ARTICLE THE FOURTH.

That all the Ports appertaining to any and all of the Powers composing
this Association shall be shut against the Flag of the offending Nation.


ARTICLE THE FIFTH.

That no remittance or payment in Money, Merchandize, or Bills of
Exchange, shall be made by any of the Citizens, or Subjects, of any of
the Powers composing this Association, to the Citizens or Subjects of
the offending Nation, for the Term of one year, or until reparation
be made. The reparation to be ---- times the amount of the damages
sustained.


ARTICLE THE SIXTH.

If any Ship or Vessel appertaining to any of the Citizens or Subjects of
any of the Powers composing this Association shall be seized, searched,
visited, or interrupted, by any Belligerent Nation, or be forcibly
prevented entering the Port of her destination, or be seized, searched,
visited, or interrupted, in coming out of such Port, or be forcibly
prevented from proceeding to any new destination, or be insulted or
visited by any Agent from on board any Vessel of any Belligerent Power,
the Government or Executive Power of the Nation to which the Ship or
Vessel so seized, searched, visited, or interrupted belongs, shall, on
evidence of the fact, make public Proclamation of the same, and send
a Copy thereof to the Government, or Executive, of each of the Powers
composing this Association, who shall publish the same in all the extent
of his Dominions, together with a Declaration, that at the expiration
of ---- days after publication, the penal articles of this Association
shall be put in execution against the offending Nation.


ARTICLE THE SEVENTH.

If reparation be not made within the space of one year, the said
Proclamation shall be renewed for one year more, and so on.


ARTICLE THE EIGHTH.

The Association chooses for itself a Flag to be carried at the Mast-head
conjointly with the National Flag of each Nation composing this
Association.

The Flag of the Association shall be composed of the same colors as
compose the Rainbow, and arranged in the same order as they appear in
that Phenomenon.


ARTICLE THE NINTH.

And whereas, it may happen that one or more of the Nations composing
this Association may be, at the time of forming it, engaged in War or
become so in future, in that case, the Ships and Vessels of such Nation
shall carry the Flag of the Association bound round the Mast, to denote
that the Nation to which she belongs is a Member of the Association and
a respecter of its Laws.

N. B. This distinction in the manner of carrying the Flag is mearly for
the purpose, that Neutral Vessels having the Flag at the Mast-head, may
be known at first sight.


ARTICLE THE TENTH.

And whereas, it is contrary to the moral principles of Neutrality and
Peace, that any Neutral Nation should furnish to the Belligerent Powers,
or any of them, the means of carrying on War against each other, We,
therefore, the Powers composing this Association, Declare, that we
will each one for itself, prohibit in our Dominions the exportation or
transportation of military stores, comprehending gunpowder, cannon, and
cannon-balls, fire arms of all kinds, and all kinds of iron and steel
weapons used in War. Excluding therefrom all kinds of Utensils and
Instruments used in civil or domestic life, and every other article that
cannot, in its immediate state, be employed in War.

Having thus declared the moral Motives of the foregoing Article, We
declare also the civil and political Intention thereof, to wit,

That as Belligerent Nations have no right to visit or search any Ship or
Vessel belonging to a Nation at Peace, and under the protection of
the Laws and Government thereof, and as all such visit or search is an
insult to the Nation to which such Ship or Vessel belongs and to
the Government of the same, We, therefore, the Powers composing this
Association, will take the right of prohibition on ourselves to whom it
properly belongs, and by whom only it can be legally exercised, and
not permit foreign Nations, in a state of War, to usurp the right of
legislating by Proclamation for any of the Citizens or Subjects of the
Powers composing this Association.

It is, therefore, in order to take away all pretence of search or visit,
which by being offensive might become a new cause of War, that we will
provide Laws and publish them by Proclamation, each in his own Dominion,
to prohibit the supplying, or carrying to, the Belligerent Powers,
or either of them, the military stores or articles before mentioned,
annexing thereto a penalty to be levied or inflicted upon any persons
within our several Dominions transgressing the same. And we invite all
Persons, as well of the Belligerent Nations as of our own, or of
any other, to give information of any knowledge they may have of
any transgressions against the said Law, that the offenders may be
prosecuted.

By this conduct we restore the word Contraband (_contra_ and _ban_) to
its true and original signification, which means against Law, edict, or
Proclamation; and none but the Government of a Nation can have, or can
exercise, the right of making Laws, edicts, or Proclamations, for the
conduct of its Citizens or Subjects.

Now We, the undersigned Powers, declare the aforesaid Articles to be a
Law of Nations at all times, or until a Congress of Nations shall meet
to form some Law more effectual.

And we do recommend that immediately on the breaking out of War between
any two or more Nations, that Deputies be appointed by all Neutral
Nations, whether members of this Association or not, to meet in Congress
in some central place to take cognizance of any violations of the Rights
of Neutral Nations.

Signed, &c.


For the purpose of giving operation to the aforesaid plan of an _unarmed
Association_, the following Paragraph was subjoined:

It may be judged proper for the order of Business, that the Association
of Nations have a President for a term of years, and the Presidency to
pass by rotation, to each of the parties composing the Association.

In that case, and for the sake of regularity, the first President to
be the Executive power of the most northerly Nation composing the
Association, and his deputy or Minister at the Congress to be President
of the Congress,--and the next most northerly to be Vice-president, who
shall succeed to the Presidency, and so on. The line determining the
Geographical situation of each, to be the latitude of the Capital of
each Nation.

If this method be adopted it will be proper that the first President
be nominally constituted in order to give rotation to the rest. In that
case the following Article might be added to the foregoing, viz't. The
Constitution of the Association nominates the Emperor Paul to be _first
President_ of the Association of Nations for the protection of Neutral
Commerce, and securing the freedom of the Seas.


The foregoing plan, as I have before mentioned, was presented to the
Ministers of all the Neutral Nations then in Paris, in the summer of
1800. Six Copies were given to the Russian General Springporten; and a
Russian Gentleman who was going to Petersburgh took two expressly for
the purpose of putting them into the hands of Paul I sent the original
manuscript, in my own handwriting, to Mr. Jefferson, and also wrote him
four Letters, dated the 1st, 4th, 6th, 16th of October, 1800, giving
him an account of what was then going on in Europe respecting Neutral
Commerce.

The Case was, that in order to compel the English Government to
acknowledge the rights of Neutral Commerce, and that free Ships make
free Goods, the _Emperor Paul_, in the month of September following the
publication of the plan, shut all the Ports of Russia against England.
Sweden and Denmark did the same by their Ports, and Denmark shut up
Hamburgh. Prussia shut up the Elbe and the Weser. The ports of Spain,
Portugal, and Naples were shut up, and, in general, all the ports of
Italy, except Venice, which the Emperor of Germany held; and had it not
been for the untimely death of Paul, a _Law of Nations_, founded on the
authority of Nations, for establishing the rights of Neutral Commerce
and the freedom of the Seas, would have been proclaimed, and the
Government of England must have consented to that Law, or the Nation
must have lost its Commerce; and the consequence to America would have
been, that such a Law would, in a great measure if not entirely, have
released her from the injuries of Jay's Treaty.

Of all these matters I informed Mr. Jefferson. This was before he was
President, and the Letter he wrote me after he was President was in
answer to those I had written to him and the manuscript Copy of the plan
I had sent here. Here follows the Letter:


Washington, March 18, 1801. Dear Sir:

Your letters of Oct. 1st, 4th, 6th, 16th, came duly to hand, and the
papers which they covered were, according to your permission, published
in the Newspapers, and in a Pamphlet, and under your own name. These
papers contain precisely our principles, and I hope they will be
generally recognized here. _Determined as we are to avoid, if possible,
wasting the energies of our People in war and destruction, we shall
avoid implicating ourselves with the Powers of Europe, even in support
of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other Interests
different from ours that we must avoid being entangled in them. We
believe we can enforce those principles as to ourselves by Peaceable
means, now that we are likely to have our Public Councils detached from
foreign views. The return of our citizens from the phrenzy into which
they had been wrought, partly by ill conduct in France, partly by
artifices practiced upon them, is almost extinct, and will, I believe,
become quite so_, But these details, too minute and long for a Letter,
will be better developed by Mr. Dawson, the Bearer of this, a Member of
the late Congress, to whom I refer you for them. He goes in the Maryland
Sloop of War, which will wait a few days at Havre to receive his Letters
to be written on his arrival at Paris. You expressed a wish to get a
passage to this Country in a Public Vessel. Mr. Dawson is charged with
orders to the Captain of the Maryland to receive and accommodate you
back if you can be ready to depart at such a short warning. Rob't R.
Livingston is appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republic of
France, but will not leave this, till we receive the ratification of
the Convention by Mr. Dawson. I am in hopes you will find us returned
generally to sentiments worthy of former times. In these it will be
your glory to have steadily laboured and with as much effect as any man
living. That you may long live to continue your useful Labours and to
reap the reward in the thankfulness of Nations is my sincere prayer.
Accept assurances of my high esteem and affectionate attachment.

Thomas Jefferson.


This, Citizens of the United States, is the Letter about which the
leaders and tools of the Federal faction, without knowing its contents
or the occasion of writing it, have wasted so many malignant falsehoods.
It is a Letter which, on account of its wise economy and peaceable
principles, and its forbearance to reproach, will be read by every good
Man and every good Citizen with pleasure; and the faction, mortified at
its appearance, will have to regret they forced it into publication. The
least atonement they can now offer is to make the Letter as public as
they have made their own infamy, and learn to lie no more.

The same injustice they shewed to Mr. Jefferson they shewed to me. I
had employed myself in Europe, and at my own expense, in forming and
promoting a plan that would, in its operation, have benefited the
Commerce of America; and the faction here invented and circulated an
account in the papers they employ, that I had given a plan to the French
for burning all the towns on the Coast from Savannah to Baltimore. Were
I to prosecute them for this (and I do not promise that I will not, for
the Liberty of the Press is not the liberty of lying,) there is not a
federal judge, not even one of Midnight appointment, but must, from the
nature of the case, be obliged to condemn them. The faction, however,
cannot complain they have been restrained in any thing. They have had
their full swing of lying uncontradicted; they have availed themselves,
unopposed, of all the arts Hypocrisy could devise; and the event has
been, what in all such cases it ever will and ought to be, _the ruin of
themselves_.

The Characters of the late and of the present Administrations are now
sufficiently marked, and the adherents of each keep up the distinction.
The former Administration rendered itself notorious by outrage,
coxcombical parade, false alarms, a continued increase of taxes, and an
unceasing clamor for War; and as every vice has a virtue opposed to
it, the present Administration moves on the direct contrary line.
The question, therefore, at elections is not properly a question upon
Persons, but upon principles. Those who are for Peace, moderate taxes,
and mild Government, will vote for the Administration that conducts
itself by those principles, in whatever hands that Administration may
be.

There are in the United States, and particularly in the middle States,
several religious Sects, whose leading moral principle is PEACE. It is,
therefore, impossible that such Persons, consistently with the dictates
of that principle, can vote for an Administration that is clamorous
for War. When moral principles, rather than Persons, are candidates for
Power, to vote is to perform a moral duty, and not to vote is to neglect
a duty.

That persons who are hunting after places, offices, and contracts,
should be advocates for War, taxes, and extravagance, is not to be
wondered at; but that so large a portion of the People who had nothing
to depend upon but their Industry, and no other public prospect but that
of paying taxes, and bearing the burden, should be advocates for the
same measures, is a thoughtlessness not easily accounted for. But reason
is recovering her empire, and the fog of delusion is clearing away.

Thomas Paine.

BORDENTOWN, ON THE DELAWARE,

New Jersey, April 21, 1803.(1)


     1 Endorsed: "Sent by Gen. Bloomfield per Mr. Wilson for Mr.
     Duane." And, in a later hand: "Paine Letter 6. Found among
     the Bartram Papers sent by Col. Carr."--Editor.




XXXIV. TO THE FRENCH INHABITANTS OF LOUISIANA.(1)

     1 In a letter to Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury
     (Oct 14, 1804), John Randolph of Roanoke proposed "the
     printing of -- thousand copies of Tom Paine's answer to
     their remonstrance, and transmitting them by as many
     thousand troops, who can speak a language perfectly
     intelligible to the people of Louisiana, whatever that of
     their government may be," The purchase of Louisiana was
     announced to the Senate by President Jefferson, October 17,
     1803.--Editor.

A publication having the appearance of a memorial and remonstrance, to
be presented to Congress at the ensuing session, has appeared in several
papers. It is therefore open to examination, and I offer you my remarks
upon it. The title and introductory paragraph are as follows:

"_To the Congress of the United States in the Senate and House of
Representatives convened_: We the subscribers, planters, merchants, and
other inhabitants of Louisiana, respectfully approach the legislature
of the United States with a memorial of _our rights_, a remonstrance
against certain laws which contravene them, and a petition for
that redress to which the laws of nature, sanctioned by positive
stipulations, have entitled us."

It often happens that when one party, or one that thinks itself a party,
talks much about its rights, it puts those of the other party upon
examining into their own, and such is the effect produced by your
memorial.

A single reading of that memorial will show it is the work of some
person who is not of your people. His acquaintance with the cause,
commencement, progress, and termination of the American revolution,
decides this point; and his making our merits in that revolution the
ground of your claims, as if our merits could become yours, show she
does not understand your situation.

We obtained our rights by calmly understanding principles, and by the
successful event of a long, obstinate, and expensive war. But it is
not incumbent on us to fight the battles of the world for the world's
profit. You are already participating, without any merit or expense in
obtaining it, the blessings of freedom acquired by ourselves; and in
proportion as you become initiated into the principles and practice of
the representative system of government, of which you have yet had no
experience, you will participate more, and finally be partakers of the
whole. You see what mischief ensued in France by the possession of power
before they understood principles. They earned liberty in words, but
not in fact. The writer of this was in France through the whole of
the revolution, and knows the truth of what he speaks; for after
endeavouring to give it principle, he had nearly fallen a victim to its
rage.

There is a great want of judgment in the person who drew up your
memorial. He has mistaken your case, and forgotten his own; and by
trying to court your applause has injured your pretensions. He has
written like a lawyer, straining every point that would please his
client, without studying his advantage. I find no fault with the
composition of the memorial, for it is well written; nor with the
principles of liberty it contains, considered in the abstract. The error
lies in the misapplication of them, and in assuming a ground they have
not a right to stand upon. Instead of their serving you as a ground of
reclamation against us, they change into a satire on yourselves. Why
did you not speak thus when you ought to have spoken it? We fought for
liberty when you stood quiet in slavery.

The author of the memorial injudiciously confounding two distinct
cases together, has spoken as if he was the memorialist of a body of
Americans, who, after sharing equally with us in all the dangers and
hardships of the revolutionary war, had retired to a distance and made
a settlement for themselves. If, in such a situation, Congress had
established a temporary government over them, in which they were not
personally consulted, they would have had a right to speak as the
memorial speaks. But your situation is different from what the situation
of such persons would be, and therefore their ground of reclamation
cannot of right become yours. You are arriving at freedom by the easiest
means that any people ever enjoyed it; without contest, without expense,
and even without any contrivance of your own. And you already so far
mistake principles, that under the name of _rights_ you ask for _powers;
power to import and enslave Africans_; and _to govern_ a territory that
_we have purchased_.

To give colour to your memorial, you refer to the treaty of cession, (in
which _you were not_ one of the contracting parties,) concluded at Paris
between the governments of the United States and France.

"The third article" you say "of the treaty lately concluded at
Paris declares, that the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be
incorporated in the union of the United States, and admitted _as soon as
possible, according to the principles_ of the Federal Constitution, to
the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens
of the United States; and _in the mean time_, they shall be protected
in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the exercise of the
religion they profess."

As from your former condition, you cannot be much acquainted with
diplomatic policy, and I am convinced that even the gentleman who
drew up the memorial is not, I will explain to you the grounds of this
article. It may prevent your running into further errors.

The territory of Louisiana had been so often ceded to different European
powers, that it became a necessary article on the part of France,
and for the security of Spain, the ally of France, and which accorded
perfectly with our own principles and intentions, that it should be
_ceded no more_; and this article, stipulating for the incorporation of
Louisiana into the union of the United States, stands as a bar against
all future cession, and at the same time, as well as "_in the mean
time_" secures to you a civil and political permanency, personal
security and liberty which you never enjoyed before.

France and Spain might suspect, (and the suspicion would not have been
ill-founded had the cession been treated for in the administration of
John Adams, or when Washington was president, and Alexander Hamilton
president over him,) that we _bought_ Louisiana for the British
government, or with a view of selling it to her; and though such
suspicion had no just ground to stand upon with respect to our present
president, Thomas Jefferson, who is not only not a man of intrigue but
who possesses that honest pride of principle that cannot be intrigued
with, and which keeps intriguers at a distance, the article was
nevertheless necessary as a precaution against future contingencies.
But you, from not knowing the political ground of the article, apply
to yourselves _personally_ and _exclusively_, what had reference to the
_territory_, to prevent its falling into the hands of any foreign
power that might endanger the [establishment of] _Spanish_ dominion in
America, or those of the _French_ in the West India Islands.

You claim, (you say), to be incorporated into the union of the United
States, and your remonstrances on this subject are unjust and without
cause.

You are already _incorporated_ into it as fully and effectually as the
Americans themselves are, who are settled in Louisiana. You enjoy the
same rights, privileges, advantages, and immunities, which they
enjoy; and when Louisiana, or some part of it, shall be erected into a
constitutional State, you also will be citizens equal with them.

You speak in your memorial, as if you were the only people who were
to live in Louisiana, and as if the territory was purchased that
you exclusively might govern it. In both these cases you are greatly
mistaken. The emigrations from the United States into the purchased
territory, and the population arising therefrom, will, in a few years,
exceed you in numbers. It is but twenty-six years since Kentucky
began to be settled, and it already contains more than _double_ your
population.

In a candid view of the case, you ask for what would be injurious to
yourselves to receive, and unjust in us to grant. _Injurious_, because
the settlement of Louisiana will go on much faster under the government
and guardianship of Congress, then if the government of it were
committed to _your_ hands; and consequently, the landed property
you possessed as individuals when the treaty was concluded, or have
purchased since, will increase so much faster in value.--_Unjust to
ourselves_, because as the reimbursements of the purchase money must
come out of the sale of the lands to new settlers, the government of it
cannot suddenly go out of the hands of Congress. They are guardians of
that property for _all the people of the United States_. And besides
this, as the new settlers will be chiefly from the United States, it
would be unjust and ill policy to put them and their property under the
jurisdiction of a people whose freedom they had contributed to purchase.
You ought also to recollect, that the French Revolution has not
exhibited to the world that grand display of principles and rights, that
would induce settlers from other countries to put themselves under a
French jurisdiction in Louisiana. Beware of intriguers who may push you
on from private motives of their own.

You complain of two cases, one of which you have _no right_, no concern
with; and the other is founded in direct injustice.

You complain that Congress has passed a law to divide the country
into two territories. It is not improper to inform you, that after the
revolutionary war ended, Congress divided the territory acquired by
that war into ten territories; each of which was to be erected into a
constitutional State, when it arrived at a certain population mentioned
in the Act; and, in the mean time, an officer appointed by the
President, as the Governor of Louisiana now is, presided, as Governor
of the Western Territory, over all such parts as have not arrived at
the maturity of _statehood_. Louisiana will require to be divided
into twelve States or more; but this is a matter that belongs to _the
purchaser_ of the territory of Louisiana, and with which the inhabitants
of the town of New-Orleans have no right to interfere; and beside this,
it is probable that the inhabitants of the other territory would choose
to be independent of New-Orleans. They might apprehend, that on some
speculating pretence, their produce might be put in requisition, and a
maximum price put on it--a thing not uncommon in a French government.
As a general rule, without refining upon sentiment, one may put
confidence in the justice of those who have no inducement to do us
injustice; and this is the case Congress stands in with respect to both
territories, and to all other divisions that may be laid out, and to all
inhabitants and settlers, of whatever nation they may be.

There can be no such thing as what the memorial speaks of, that is, _of
a Governor appointed by the President who may have no interest in the
welfare of Louisiana_. He must, from the nature of the case, have more
interest in it than any other person can have. He is entrusted with the
care of an extensive tract of country, now the property of the United
States by purchase. The value of those lands will depend on the
increasing prosperity of Louisiana, its agriculture, commerce, and
population. You have only a local and partial interest in the town of
New-Orleans, or its vicinity; and if, in consequence of exploring the
country, new seats of commerce should offer, his general interest would
lead him to open them, and your partial interest to shut them up.

There is probably some justice in your remark, as it applies to the
governments under which you _formerly_ lived. Such governments
always look with jealousy, and an apprehension of revolt, on colonies
increasing in prosperity and population, and they send governors to
_keep them down_. But when you argue from the conduct of governments
_distant and despotic_, to that of _domestic_ and _free_ government, it
shows you do not understand the principles and interest of a Republic,
and to put you right is friendship. We have had experience, and you have
not.

The other case to which I alluded, as being founded in direct injustice,
is that in which you petition for _power_, under the name of _rights_,
to import and enslave Africans!

_Dare you put up a petition to Heaven for such a power, without fearing
to be struck from the earth by its justice?_

_Why, then, do you ask it of man against man?_

_Do you want to renew in Louisiana the horrors of Domingo?_


Common Sense.

Sept 22, 1804.


END OF VOLUME III.






THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS PAINE

By Thomas Paine


Collected And Edited By Moncure Daniel Conway

VOLUME IV.




THE AGE OF REASON


(1796)


   Contents

   Editor's Introduction

                     Part One
  Chapter I - The Author's Profession Of Faith
  Chapter II - Of Missions And Revelations
  Chapter III - Concerning The Character of Jesus Christ, And His History
  Chapter IV - Of The Bases Of Christianity
  Chapter V - Examination In Detail Of The Preceding Bases
  Chapter VI - Of The True Theology
  Chapter VII - Examination Of The Old Testament
  Chapter VIII - Of The New Testament
  Chapter IX - In What The True Revelation Consists
  Chapter X - Concerning God, And The Lights Cast On His Existence And
              Attributes By The Bible
  Chapter XI - Of The Theology Of The Christians; And The True Theology
  Chapter XII - The Effects Of Christianism On Education; Proposed Reforms
  Chapter XIII - Comparison Of Christianism With The Religious Ideas
                 Inspired By Nature
  Chapter XIV - System Of The Universe
  Chapter XV - Advantages Of The Existence Of Many Worlds In Each Solar
               System
  Chapter XVI - Applications Of The Preceding To The System Of The
                Christians
  Chapter XVII - Of The Means Employed In All Time, And Almost
                 Universally, To Deceive The Peoples
  Recapitulation

                          Part Two
  Preface
  Chapter I - The Old Testament
  Chapter II - The New Testament
  Chapter III - Conclusion




EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.

IN the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its
king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every
tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them a
great English and American heart--Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for Louis
Caper--"Kill the king but spare the man." Now he pleaded,--"Disbelieve
in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that idol the Father of
Mankind!"

In Paine's Preface to the Second Part of "The Age of Reason" he
describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year
1793. "I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has
since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an
order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General,
for putting me in arrestation." This was on the morning of December 28.
But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted--"in the state it has
since appeared." For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an
appeal for Paine's liberation, wrote as follows: "I deliver to Merlin
de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason],
formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding
foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by
the author in the beginning of the year '93 (old style). I undertook its
translation before the revolution against priests, and it was published
in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it, seemed
offended with me for having translated this work."

Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of
Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually
suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France
or elsewhere. In Paine's letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present
volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the
progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life "by opposing
atheism." The time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted
the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793,
the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the decrees
against them of March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of Couthon, even
greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the readiness with
which death was inflicted for the most theoretical opinion not approved
by the "Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given
Couthon by Paine's book involved danger to him and his translator.
On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of Lanthenas was
included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton persuaded
Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in danger.
Whether this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the
"Goddess Nature" or not, the statements of author and translator
are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the manuscript, with
considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he
has stated in the Preface to Part II.

A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence,
proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de
Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This
discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences
of the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such
clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important.
Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded
that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript
before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an
instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would
Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation.
This original work was divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have
restored, translating their headings into English. The "Age of Reason"
is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its original
completeness.

It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his
"Age of Reason" (Part I.) which went through the press while he was in
prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as
abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the
dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas
"trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The addition of these
words to Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only
recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological
writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.

To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be
attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded
to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have
corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and
enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine
was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be
supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of
Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me
that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written
before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793,
Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation,
and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as
possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English
readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an
erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light
on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He
states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that
"man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of
one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his
intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a
similar remark to John Adams in 1776. Like the Quakers among whom he
was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for
anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light," and
as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation
of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the
inspiration of the Old Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and
at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject. There is
little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during
the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on
the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable
method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without
publishing it. At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of
"The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy,
was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.

Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian
phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions
in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or
before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were
substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements
concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo
Tolstoi to the London 'Times' of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy
(The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century,
and the narrative says:

"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya'
were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental
idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God
himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives
in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an
historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance...
Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves
'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to
show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers who, in 1818,
visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious
subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus
Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!' From the Old and New
Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,' mostly the moral
teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following:--All
men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may
be, are worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have
directed further, against the State authority.... Amongst themselves
they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be
contrary to their ideas."

Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the
birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American
Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union
of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on
a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This
faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by
a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or
an Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's
"inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age
of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the
apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.

Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before
publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out
some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he
believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in
making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England,
in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the
common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish
any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to lay the
corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself, without
regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of
mankind to the 'Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to
his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ
from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of
every one, is accepted." ("Rights of Man." See my edition of Paine's
Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George Fox
confuting the doctor in America who "denied the light and Spirit of
God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians.
Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him 'whether or not, when
he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that
reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such a thing in him that did
so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken
wrong.' So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people."
(Journal of George Fox, September 1672.)

Paine, who coined the phrase "Religion of Humanity" (The Crisis, vii.,
1778), did but logically defend it in "The Age of Reason," by denying a
special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in
any particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused
publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of
Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief,"
affirms that "inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental
teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.

The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason,"
(October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich,
on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester,
read a paper in which he said: "I cannot deny that the increase of
scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of the
Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by
our forefathers. The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we
play fast and loose either with words or with science, cannot be brought
into harmony with what we have learnt from geology. Its ethnological
statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The stories of
the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in
their present form. Some historical element may underlie many of the
traditions in the first eleven chapters in that book, but this we cannot
hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament
also, that "the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly
contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations
and even inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition."
The Canon thinks the interval too short for these importations to be
serious, but that any question of this kind is left open proves the Age
of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many texts are
as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like
it "serious" enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors
their charities. When men interpolate, it is because they believe their
interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of
the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into
the first American edition without indication of its being an editorial
footnote. This footnote was: "The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History." Dr. Priestley, then in
America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page from the
"Age of Reason" he made three alterations,--one of which changed "church
mythologists" into "Christian mythologists,"--and also raised the
editorial footnote into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim.
Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the gospel of Luke being
carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's
own invention, of no better authority whatever." And so on with further
castigation of the author for what he never wrote, and which he himself
(Priestley) was the unconscious means of introducing into the text
within the year of Paine's publication.

If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man,
and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could
make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very
wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of "The Age
of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred
deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts
of friendly editors to improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were
misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale
in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the
manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself
altered in some editions!), in which he says: "If this has happened
within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing,
which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have
happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing,
and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it
an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John."

Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the
far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into
which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of
their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance, speaking
of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness,
common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says
"there is rarely much to be said for their work as an example of the
adequate treatment of a grave and difficult investigation," and that
they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness of
a priori philosophizing." [NOTE: Science and Christian Tradition, p.
18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not name Paine, evidently
because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine represents the
turning-point of the historical freethinking movement; he renounced the
'a priori' method, refused to pronounce anything impossible outside
pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and really founded the
Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many things from the
rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and Baur (being the
first to expatiate on "Christian Mythology"), from Renan (being the
first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and notably from Huxley,
who has repeated Paine's arguments on the untrustworthiness of the
biblical manuscripts and canon, on the inconsistencies of the narratives
of Christ's resurrection, and various other points. None can be more
loyal to the memory of Huxley than the present writer, and it is even
because of my sense of his grand leadership that he is here mentioned as
a typical instance of the extent to which the very elect of free-thought
may be unconsciously victimized by the phantasm with which they are
contending. He says that Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth
century type, but Paine was of the nineteenth century type; and it was
precisely because of his critical method that he excited more animosity
than his deistical predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend
the biblical narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge
the tribunal of reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The
ultimate answer by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years
ago England was suppressing Paine's works, and many an honest Englishman
has gone to prison for printing and circulating his "Age of Reason."
The same views are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of
learning, and even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine,
begun by bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of
the representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder.
It is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to
understand the religious history of England, and of America, without
studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings
of Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such
practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist
Church in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of
Quakerism in America.

Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine's
time took the "Age of Reason" very seriously indeed. Beginning with
the learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of
learned men replied to Paine's work, and it became a signal for the
commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have
continued to our time; and indeed the so-called "Broad Church" is to
some extent an outcome of "The Age of Reason." It would too much enlarge
this Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine (thirty-six are
catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be remarked that they
were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities that raged in
the pulpits. I must venture to quote one passage from his very learned
antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., "late Fellow of Jesus
College, Cambridge." Wakefield, who had resided in London during all the
Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders uttered against
the author of "Rights of Man," indirectly brands them in answering
Paine's argument that the original and traditional unbelief of the Jews,
among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is an important evidence
against them. The learned divine writes:

"But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the
example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to
the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries,
and such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in
blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions
and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an
impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a
wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to
identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will
a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future
period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and
mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently
extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated
by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a
melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance
from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of
upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned
in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these
very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the
kingdom?" After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine
pleaded so earnestly,--while in England he was denounced as an
accomplice in the deed,--he devoted himself to the preparation of a
Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and
adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what
was variously known as White's Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris,
No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh
manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, "The Age of Reason,"
and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793. It is
entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793, but with
the title "L'Age de la Raison" instead of that which it bore in
1794, "Le Siecle de la Raison." The latter, printed "Au Burcau de
l'imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas
Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire
du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre
d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES
DROITS DE L'HOMME."

When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine,
unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal
function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion
and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose
researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are
original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives
at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's
landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had
supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The
arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness"
(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was
that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"--Paine
being then in prison,--but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord."
This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis,
whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion
(said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour),
and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades,
that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest
to the world,--"The Age of Reason,"--in the state in which it has since
appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would
be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of
the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious
mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written
the book.

In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on
his way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American
ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an
unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were
taken with Paine's proofs.

I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work
on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any
punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I
will now add that in following Paine's quotations from the Bible I have
adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too
extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse.

Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and
released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old
friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his
(Paine's) relentless enemy, Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in
Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from semi-starvation,
cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken to the Minister's
own residence. It was not supposed that he could survive, and he owed
his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe. It was while thus
a prisoner in his room, with death still hovering over him, that Paine
wrote Part Second of "The Age of Reason."

The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795,
and claimed to be "from the Author's manuscript." It is marked as
"Entered at Stationers Hall," and prefaced by an apologetic note of
"The Bookseller to the Public," whose commonplaces about avoiding both
prejudice and partiality, and considering "both sides," need not be
quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine
heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following
hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:

"SIR,--I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition
[part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the
Author's Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent
any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is
printed from the author's manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the
Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.

"I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to London.
I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what means any
copy has got over to London. If any person has made a manuscript copy
I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you would talk to Mr.
----- upon this subject as I wish to know by what means this trick has
been played, and from whom the publisher has got possession of any copy.

"T. PAINE.

"PARIS, December 4, 1795"

Eaton's cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter on
the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably "Symonds"
in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed upon. Eaton,
already in trouble for printing one of Paine's political pamphlets, fled
to America, and an edition of the "Age of Reason" was issued under a new
title; no publisher appears; it is said to be "printed for, and sold by
all the Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland." It is also said to
be "By Thomas Paine, author of several remarkable performances." I have
never found any copy of this anonymous edition except the one in my
possession. It is evidently the edition which was suppressed by the
prosecution of Williams for selling a copy of it.

A comparison with Paine's revised edition reveals a good many clerical
and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The
worst are in the preface, where, instead of "1793," the misleading
date "1790" is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part
First,--an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his
calumnious American "biographer," Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency.
The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in
different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: "The
intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into
politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of the
Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and Faggot
of the Church." The rogue who copied this little knew the care with
which Paine weighed words, and that he would never call persecution
"religious," nor connect the guillotine with the "State," nor concede
that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of fire and faggot.
What Paine wrote was: "The intolerant spirit of church persecution had
transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary,
supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine, of the Stake."

An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen, ex-M.P.,
which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides being one
of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the original
publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not appear on
the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows of New
York, who copyrighted Part I. of the "Age of Reason." He published the
pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on his
way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine's intimate friend in New
York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the author's
writings, left in manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she was a
freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after her
return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is dated at
Paris, January 20, 1797.

"SIR,--Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for
America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two
letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which
you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age
of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that matter.

"As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past
you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with
his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the
second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache.
I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my
own direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till April
following, but he had advertised it long before.

"I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages,
from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of
Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded
to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return
from America told me that he put it into the post office at New York for
Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention this
that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been published
or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote to me, from London 29
August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds sterling
for the manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my intention it
should not appear till it appeared in America, as that, and not England
was the place for its operation.

"You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several
works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking
I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right,
but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at
least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. If
he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. It is my intention
to return to America in the course of the present year. I shall then
[do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will employ
many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with you
upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to
undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by
disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents,
that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The
printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part
of 'the Age of Reason' made a manuscript copy of the work while he was
printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means that
an edition of it came out in London.

"We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal
elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the
French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister. While
Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening matters with
this government, for he was in good credit with them tho' they were in
high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington Administration.
It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has played off so much
prudent hypocrisy between France and England that neither government
believes anything he says.

"Your friend, etc.,

"THOMAS PAINE."

It would appear that Symonds' stolen edition must have got ahead of that
sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue in
all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those of
England. For in England it was only the shilling edition--that
revised by Paine--which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the
half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was
left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the
suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who
sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold
one copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his
trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of Williams.
He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by
it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln's Inn. He
felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in tears.
She led him into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet called
up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts in a
wretched little room, where there were three children, two suffering
with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort of murder to
take away to prison the husband, who was not a freethinker, and lamented
his publication of the book, and a meeting of the Society which had
retained him was summoned. There was a full meeting, the Bishop of
London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded them that Williams was
yet to be brought up for sentence, described the scene he had witnessed,
and Williams' penitence, and, as the book was now suppressed, asked
permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy, he urged, was a part
of the Christianity they were defending. Not one of the Society took his
side,--not even "philanthropic" Wilberforce--and Erskine threw up his
brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to give Williams only a year
in prison instead of the three he said had been intended.

While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating
Erskine's speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon "On the
Existence and Attributes of the Deity," all of which was from Paine's
"Age of Reason," except a brief "Address to the Deity" appended.
This picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of Paine's
"Discourse to the Theophilanthropists" (their and the author's names
removed) under the title of "Atheism Refuted." Both of these pamphlets
are now before me, and beside them a London tract of one page just sent
for my spiritual benefit. This is headed "A Word of Caution." It begins
by mentioning the "pernicious doctrines of Paine," the first being "that
there is No GOD" (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine
existence taken from Paine's works. It should be added that this one
dingy page is the only "survival" of the ancient Paine effigy in the
tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to this
no Society or Publisher's name is attached.

The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years' war
for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many
notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at Choring
Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,--its head imprisoned
more than nine years for publishing the "Age of Reason." This last
victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not adherents
of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet Street,
where free-thinking publications have since been sold without
interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the "Age of
Reason." remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention
it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the
Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a libel
upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families; and the
fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was alone
prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion that the
"Age of Reason" was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as we
have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist,
the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the
University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of
Arts,--but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke
as "the swinish multitude." Skepticism, or its free utterance, was
temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the
out-lawed vindicator of the "Rights of Man." But that long combat has
now passed away. Time has reduced the "Age of Reason" from a flag of
popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as
its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth
he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that "Tom Paine was
so wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box
which was bandied about the world till it came to a button-manufacturer;
and now Paine is travelling round the world in the form of buttons!"
This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be regarded as
unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones may be
recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found useful in
holding clerical vestments together.

But the careful reader will find in Paine's "Age of Reason" something
beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention to
the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a
famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery
already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years
before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while
the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the
phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on
"the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by
that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition
to do good ones." This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the
foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred
years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity
subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion,
and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been
reached.



CHAPTER I - THE AUTHOR'S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts
upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the
subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced
period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to
my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of
the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a question, even by
those who might disapprove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total
abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything
appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles
of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work
of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of
superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we
lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France,
have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual
profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that
sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with
itself.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this
life.

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties
consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our
fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in
addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the
things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by
the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the
Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to
mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally
faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in
disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not
believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express
it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far
corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe
his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared
himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade
of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for
that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more
destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw
the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government
would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The
adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,
whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited, by
pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon
first principles of religion, that until the system of government should
be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before
the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the
system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priest-craft
would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

CHAPTER II - OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.

EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending
some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The
Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles
and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not
open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation,
or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God
to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came
by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the
Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches
accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them
all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I
proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word
'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something
communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a
communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that
something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any
other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to
a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it
ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the
first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they
are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.
Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After
this, it is only an account of something which that person says was
a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to
believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same
manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word
for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables
of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to
believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling
them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian
telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of
divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any
man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself,
without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE: It is,
however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God 'visits
the sins of the fathers upon the children'. This is contrary to every
principle of moral justice.--Author.]

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to
Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay
evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the
angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave
out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and
that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I
have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a
much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even
this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves.
It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon
hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given
to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the
heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and
that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.
Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology
were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new
thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten;
the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar
opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with
hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful,
or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among
the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people
only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of
one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology,
never credited the story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian
Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct
incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed
founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then
followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which
was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the
statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the
canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the
Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as
crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome
was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the
idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes
of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to
abolish the amphibious fraud.



CHAPTER III - CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.

NOTHING that is here said can apply, even with the most distant
disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and
an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of the
most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had been
preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years
before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has
not been exceeded by any.

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or
anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his
writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and
as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the
necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having
brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to
take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story
must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds
everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous
conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore
the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though
they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not
be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that
admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was
told could prove it himself.

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension
through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits
of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection
and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public
and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or
the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody
is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it
should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of
this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction
to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that
evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons,
not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole
world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called
upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the
resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular
and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is
equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story,
so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and
imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is
as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the
books in which the account is related were written by the persons whose
names they bear. The best surviving evidence we now have respecting this
affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended from the people who
lived in the time this resurrection and ascension is said to have
happened, and they say 'it is not true.' It has long appeared to me a
strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the
story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the
truth of what I have told you, by producing the people who say it is
false.

That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified,
which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations
strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent
morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the
corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon
him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The
accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition
and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were
then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman
government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his
doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that
Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation
from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous
reformer and revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has
here: "However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions
this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated,
too much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life."--Editor.
(Conway)]



CHAPTER IV - OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.

IT is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I
am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves
the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for absurdity
and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the
mythology of the ancients.

The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war
against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him
at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined
him afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns
himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the
circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested the
idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind itself up
with that circumstance.

The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a
mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable
suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the
Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.

Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little
from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much
farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story
of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in
order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken
to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is
made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish
traditions.

The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were
obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is
then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a
serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with
Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of
this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the
eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have
supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to
send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that they
would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith
can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former
mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women,
and doing more mischief. But instead of this, they leave him at large,
without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is,
that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of
making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL
the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet
into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the
Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none
of the combatants could be either killed or wounded--put Satan into
the pit--let him out again--given him a triumph over the whole
creation--damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian
mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent
this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and
man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be
sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing [NOTE: The French
work has: "yielding to an unrestrained appetite."--Editor.] had eaten an
apple.



CHAPTER V - EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.

PUTTING aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,
or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to
an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more
derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more
contradictory to his power, than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were
under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power
equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty.
They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from
the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power
increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they represent him
only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.
After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists
everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of
space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as
defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation,
all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having
compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering
the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this
Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth,
and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had
they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself
on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his
new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph,
and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good
lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no
doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they
would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also
many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived
to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself,
that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from
examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story. The more
unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object
of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has "blind and" preceding
dismal.--Editor.]



CHAPTER VI - OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born--a world furnished to our
hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep
or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these
things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can
our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and
suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that
nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be
paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that
account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion
that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is
becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation
to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe and
what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I therefore
pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the New
Testament.



CHAPTER VII - EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

THESE books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which,
by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain
it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for
us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to the
report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell, except
that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically appears to
be as follows:

When the church mythologists established their system, they collected
all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It
is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings
as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament, are in
the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or whether
they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the
collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should
not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as
the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of
votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all
the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise;
for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the
people were that did all this, we know nothing of. They call themselves
by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the
matter.

As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these
books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which is no
evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the
internal evidence contained in the books themselves.

In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now
proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the
books in question.

Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom
that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a thing,
or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or
seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of
which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the
historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of
it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and,
therefore, is not the word of God.

When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and
whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah,
or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do
with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or
his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth
either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could
not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better
nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of
that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which
the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel
shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.

As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis opens,
it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had
among them before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from
that country, they put it at the head of their history, without telling,
as it is most probable that they did not know, how they came by it.
The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be traditionary. It
begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is nobody that hears. It
is addressed to nobody. It has neither first, second, nor third person.
It has every criterion of being a tradition. It has no voucher. Moses
does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality that
he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lords spake
unto Moses, saying."

Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at
a loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such
subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among
the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and
particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence
and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is
a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.--The
case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the
Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any
of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to
contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is
more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by
the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.--Editor.] is
filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a
demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that
has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I
sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what
deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the
miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the
Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find
a great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power
and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than
many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time as
since.

The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably
a collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his
situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of ethics.
They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not
more wise and oeconomical than those of the American Franklin.

All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the
Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers,
who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together--and those works still
retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation. [NOTE: As
there are many readers who do not see that a composition is poetry,
unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add this note.

Poetry consists principally in two things--imagery and composition. The
composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing
long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line
of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable
where a short one should be, and that line will lose its poetical
harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of misplacing a
note in a song.

The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to
poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in
any other kind of writing than poetry.

To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will
take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the
same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the
last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is
poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:--

  "Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth
  'T is God himself that calls attention forth.

Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which
I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure,
and showing the intention of the poet.

  "O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes
  Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;
  Then would I give the mighty flood release
  And weep a deluge for the human race."--Author.]

There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that
describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we
call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later times
have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word
'propesying' meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of
playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.

We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns--of prophesying
with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other
instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying
with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no
meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous,
because we have changed the meaning of the word.

We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he
prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he
prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets
were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,
and this was called prophesying.

The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that
Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down
with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they prophesied,
and that he prophesied with them. But it appears afterwards, that Saul
prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part badly; for it is said
that an "evil spirit from God [NOTE: As thos; men who call themselves
divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling one another, I leave
them to contest the meaning of the first part of the phrase, that of an
evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to the meaning of the word
prophesy.--Author.] came upon Saul, and he prophesied."

Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than
this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the
word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone
would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the word
prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to it the
sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in which it is
here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a man might
then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may now be a poet or a
musician, without any regard to the morality or the immorality of his
character. The word was originally a term of science, promiscuously
applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject upon
which poetry and music might be exercised.

Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted
anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their
name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the
prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though
perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts
we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry.

We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well
tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees
in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there are degrees
in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when
we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.

It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon
what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once
to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has been
mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from
those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them, and
the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under
that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.--In many things,
however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than
that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that accompanies
them, under the abused name of the Word of God.

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must
necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the
utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or accident
whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the Word of
God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any written or human
language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is
subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation
necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the
mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of
wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,
whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of
God.--The Word of God exists in something else.

Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression
all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my
rule of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would
nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout
the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the
grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible
tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.



CHAPTER VIII - OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New
Testament. The new Testament! that is, the 'new' Will, as if there could
be two wills of the Creator.

Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a
new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or
procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication
extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New
Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by
profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other
person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.

The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give
a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of
him. It appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a
preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this
short time that those men became acquainted with him. They make mention
of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish
doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was several years
before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had
this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of
him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself
during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his
father's trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that
he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not
write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not
being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few
errors traceable to Paine's not having a Bible at hand while writing
Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the reverse
may in fact be inferred.--Editor.]

It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the
most universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a
foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule
driver. The first and the last of these men were founders of different
systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called
men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The
great trait in his character is philanthropy.

The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much known,
at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held with
his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or suspended
preaching publicly. Judas could no otherways betray him than by giving
information where he was, and pointing him out to the officers that went
to arrest him; and the reason for employing and paying Judas to do this
could arise only from the causes already mentioned, that of his not
being much known, and living concealed.

The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed
divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and
his being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the
information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be
apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified.

The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the
world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been
the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or
of anything else?

The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case
he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but,
thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of
dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying,
made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently,
even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that
Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as
well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.

This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam,
must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or
have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently,
the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their
system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things
happening to Adam and to us.

That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die;
and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the
crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation,
(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute
for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently
representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a
pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles,
St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this
quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there
to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy;
the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus
interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to
instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the
habit without being aware of the cause.

If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he
was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they
sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have
endured would have been 'to live.' His existence here was a state
of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his
original country was to die.--In fine, everything in this strange system
is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth,
and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and
absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed
to something better.

How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were
written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know
nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were originally
written. The matters they now contain may be classed under two heads:
anecdote, and epistolary correspondence.

The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are
altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place.
They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said
to him; and in several instances they relate the same event differently.
Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect to those
books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers, but because
revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by the persons
who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any discourse
or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the Acts of the
Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal part.

All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas,
called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of
epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice
in the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are
genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which
is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with
the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of
religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name
it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended
imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom,
by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,
dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that
name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that
those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion,
and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could stand
in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services for him.
The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or doctrine of
what is called the redemption (which is said to have been accomplished
by the act of one person in the room of another) was originally
fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary
and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the books upon
which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been manufactured
and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this church credit,
when she tells us that those books are genuine in every part, any more
than we give her credit for everything else she has told us; or for the
miracles she says she has performed? That she could fabricate writings
is certain, because she could write; and the composition of the writings
in question, is of that kind that anybody might do it; and that she did
fabricate them is not more inconsistent with probability, than that she
should tell us, as she has done, that she could and did work miracles.

Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time,
be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called
redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be
subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only be
referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; and
this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication. For
the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption
has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral
justice.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me
in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for
me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is
changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if
the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to
destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is
then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is
founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which
another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again
with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of
money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same
persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories;
and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is
fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his
Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest
consolation to think so.

Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally,
than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate
himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as
one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his
Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to
intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard
for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or
turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life
in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His
humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth
a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of
vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF
REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a
system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human
reason, as if man could give reason to himself.

Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for
human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault
with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is
never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do,
even in the govemment of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When
it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for
sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for;
for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the
Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he
were to say--thou knowest not so well as I.



CHAPTER IX - IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.

BUT some perhaps will say--Are we to have no word of God--no revelation?
I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word,
which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh
universally to man.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of
being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
The idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad
tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is
consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the
extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours
believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in
contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of
navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man
might walk to the end of it.

But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He could
speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the world
several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the same
language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every
man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to
translate from one language into another, not only without losing a
great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and
besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time
Christ lived.

It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end
be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be
accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and
infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in
accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the
purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly.
But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man
faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human
language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is
incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and
uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in
manifesting himself universally to man.

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a
word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,
independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various
as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.
It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it
cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the
will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself
from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and
to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary
for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of
the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the
unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do
we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with
which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it
in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In
fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the
scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the
Creation.



CHAPTER X - CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE

AND ATTRIBUTES BY THE BIBLE.

THE only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first
cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is
for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief
of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is
difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end;
but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the
power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but
it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.

In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the
internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence
to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make
himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any
tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising
from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to
the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally
different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of
which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God.

It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take
away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything;
and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book
called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those
people pretend to reject reason?

Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to
us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I
recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions;
for they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of
Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the
inferences they make are drawn from that volume.

I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English verse
by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I have not
the opportunity of seeing it:

  The spacious firmament on high,
  With all the blue etherial sky,
  And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
  Their great original proclaim.
  The unwearied sun, from day to day,
  Does his Creator's power display,
  And publishes to every land
  The work of an Almighty hand.
  Soon as the evening shades prevail,
  The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
  And nightly to the list'ning earth
  Repeats the story of her birth;
  Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
  And all the planets, in their turn,
  Confirm the tidings as they roll,
  And spread the truth from pole to pole.
  What though in solemn silence all
  Move round this dark terrestrial ball
  What though no real voice, nor sound,
  Amidst their radiant orbs be found,
  In reason's ear they all rejoice,
  And utter forth a glorious voice,
  Forever singing as they shine,
  THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE.

What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made
these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the
force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and his
rule of moral life will follow of course.

The allusions in job have all of them the same tendency with this Psalm;
that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise unknown,
from truths already known.

I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly;
but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I
am speaking upon. "Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou find
out the Almighty to perfection?"

I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no
Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct
answers.

First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first
place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by
searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing
could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it
is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that
there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is God.

Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only
because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the
Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this
manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that
immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me
invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.

It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of the
person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is only
by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that the
second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even absurd, to
have put a second question, more difficult than the first, if the first
question had been answered negatively. The two questions have different
objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the second to his
attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls infinitely short
in discovering the whole of the other.

I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men
called apostles, that conveys any idea of what God is. Those writings
are chiefly controversial; and the gloominess of the subject they dwell
upon, that of a man dying in agony on a cross, is better suited to the
gloomy genius of a monk in a cell, by whom it is not impossible they
were written, than to any man breathing the open air of the Creation.
The only passage that occurs to me, that has any reference to the works
of God, by which only his power and wisdom can be known, is related to
have been spoken by Jesus Christ, as a remedy against distrustful care.
"Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin."
This, however, is far inferior to the allusions in Job and in the 19th
Psalm; but it is similar in idea, and the modesty of the imagery is
correspondent to the modesty of the man.



CHAPTER XI - OF THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of
atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a
man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of man-ism with
but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness.
It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls
a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth
and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious
eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything upside
down, and representing it in reverse; and among the revolutions it has
thus magically produced, it has made a revolution in Theology.

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle
of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of
the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and
is the true theology.

As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of
human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the
study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works
or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the
mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it
has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a
beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag
of superstition.

The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to be
more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the
book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the
original system of theology. The internal evidence of those orations
proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation of the works
of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God revealed and manifested
in those works, made a great part of the religious devotion of the
times in which they were written; and it was this devotional study and
contemplation that led to the discovery of the principles upon which
what are now called Sciences are established; and it is to the discovery
of these principles that almost all the Arts that contribute to the
convenience of human life owe their existence. Every principal art has
some science for its parent, though the person who mechanically performs
the work does not always, and but very seldom, perceive the connection.

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences 'human
inventions;' it is only the application of them that is human.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and
unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed.
Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account when
an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails to
take place according to the account there given. This shows that man is
acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it would
be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to say that
those laws are an human invention.

It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the
scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to calculate
and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human invention.
Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable; and the
scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and are, of
necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the heavenly
bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to ascertain the time
when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take place.

The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the foreknowledge
of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the motion of the
heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of science that
is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle, which, when
applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called astronomy;
when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean, it is called
navigation; when applied to the construction of figures drawn by a rule
and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to the construction
of plans of edifices, it is called architecture; when applied to the
measurement of any portion of the surface of the earth, it is called
land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of science. It is an eternal
truth: it contains the mathematical demonstration of which man speaks,
and the extent of its uses are unknown.

It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a
triangle is an human invention.

But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the
principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the mind,
of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The triangle does
not make the principle, any more than a candle taken into a room that
was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before were invisible. All
the properties of a triangle exist independently of the figure, and
existed before any triangle was drawn or thought of by man. Man had no
more to do in the formation of those properties or principles, than
he had to do in making the laws by which the heavenly bodies move; and
therefore the one must have the same divine origin as the other.

In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle,
so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called
a lever. But the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing distinct
from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did not; it
attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the instrument,
therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither can all the
efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That which, in all
such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the principle itself
rendered perceptible to the senses.

Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a
knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things on
earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant from
him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he gain
that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?

It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to
man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle
upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The offspring
of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other than the
principles of science applied practically. The man who proportions the
several parts of a mill uses the same scientific principles as if he had
the power of constructing an universe, but as he cannot give to matter
that invisible agency by which all the component parts of the immense
machine of the universe have influence upon each other, and act in
motional unison together, without any apparent contact, and to which
man has given the name of attraction, gravitation, and repulsion, he
supplies the place of that agency by the humble imitation of teeth and
cogs. All the parts of man's microcosm must visibly touch. But could
he gain a knowledge of that agency, so as to be able to apply it in
practice, we might then say that another canonical book of the word of
God had been discovered.

If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he alter
the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort of lever
which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation) forms, when
in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from, (one point of that
line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to, and the chord of
the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the air, are the
three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever describes also a
triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two triangles, calculated
scientifically, or measured geometrically,--and also the sines,
tangents, and secants generated from the angles, and geometrically
measured,--have the same proportions to each other as the different
weights have that will balance each other on the lever, leaving the
weight of the lever out of the case.

It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can put
wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill. Still the
case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did not make the
principle that gives the wheels those powers. This principle is as
unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is the same principle
under a different appearance to the eye.

The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each other
is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two wheels
were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have described,
suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for the two wheels,
scientifically considered, are no other than the two circles generated
by the motion of the compound lever.

It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of
science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts have
originated.

The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the
structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It
is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours,
"I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the
starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now
provide for his own comfort, AND LEARN FROM MY MUNIFICENCE TO ALL, TO BE
KIND TO EACH OTHER."

Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye is
endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible distance, an
immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or of what use is
it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man? What has man to do
with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with the star he calls the
north star, with the moving orbs he has named Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,
Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow from their being visible?
A less power of vision would have been sufficient for man, if the
immensity he now possesses were given only to waste itself, as it were,
on an immense desert of space glittering with shows.

It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the
book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being
visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
vision. But when he contemplates the subject in this light, he sees an
additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for in vain
would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.



CHAPTER XII - THE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANISM ON EDUCATION; PROPOSED
REFORMS.

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so
also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is
now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not
consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of
languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.

The Greeks were a learned people, but learning with them did not consist
in speaking Greek, any more than in a Roman's speaking Latin, or a
Frenchman's speaking French, or an Englishman's speaking English. From
what we know of the Greeks, it does not appear that they knew or studied
any language but their own, and this was one cause of their becoming
so learned; it afforded them more time to apply themselves to better
studies. The schools of the Greeks were schools of science and
philosophy, and not of languages; and it is in the knowledge of the
things that science and philosophy teach that learning consists.

Almost all the scientific learning that now exists, came to us from the
Greeks, or the people who spoke the Greek language. It therefore
became necessary to the people of other nations, who spoke a different
language, that some among them should learn the Greek language, in order
that the learning the Greeks had might be made known in those nations,
by translating the Greek books of science and philosophy into the mother
tongue of each nation.

The study, therefore, of the Greek language (and in the same manner for
the Latin) was no other than the drudgery business of a linguist; and
the language thus obtained, was no other than the means, or as it were
the tools, employed to obtain the learning the Greeks had. It made no
part of the learning itself; and was so distinct from it as to make it
exceedingly probable that the persons who had studied Greek sufficiently
to translate those works, such for instance as Euclid's Elements, did
not understand any of the learning the works contained.

As there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages, all
the useful books being already translated, the languages are become
useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is
wasted. So far as the study of languages may contribute to the progress
and communication of knowledge (for it has nothing to do with the
creation of knowledge) it is only in the living languages that new
knowledge is to be found; and certain it is, that, in general, a
youth will learn more of a living language in one year, than of a dead
language in seven; and it is but seldom that the teacher knows much of
it himself. The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise
from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their
being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same
thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek
linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian
plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin,
compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect
to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It
would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish
the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it
originally did, in scientific knowledge.

The apology that is sometimes made for continuing to teach the dead
languages is, that they are taught at a time when a child is not capable
of exerting any other mental faculty than that of memory. But this
is altogether erroneous. The human mind has a natural disposition to
scientific knowledge, and to the things connected with it. The first and
favourite amusement of a child, even before it begins to play, is that
of imitating the works of man. It builds bouses with cards or sticks; it
navigates the little ocean of a bowl of water with a paper boat; or dams
the stream of a gutter, and contrives something which it calls a mill;
and it interests itself in the fate of its works with a care that
resembles affection. It afterwards goes to school, where its genius is
killed by the barren study of a dead language, and the philosopher is
lost in the linguist.

But the apology that is now made for continuing to teach the dead
languages, could not be the cause at first of cutting down learning to
the narrow and humble sphere of linguistry; the cause therefore must be
sought for elsewhere. In all researches of this kind, the best evidence
that can be produced, is the internal evidence the thing carries with
itself, and the evidence of circumstances that unites with it; both of
which, in this case, are not difficult to be discovered.

Putting then aside, as matter of distinct consideration, the outrage
offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the
innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low
contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man,
in order to make an excuse to himself for not executing his supposed
sentence upon Adam; putting, I say, those things aside as matter of
distinct consideration, it is certain that what is called the
christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of
the creation--the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple--the
amphibious idea of a man-god--the corporeal idea of the death of a
god--the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian
system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all
irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has
given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and
wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure
of the universe that God has made.

The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of
faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge
that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of
God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works
of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth
of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their
purpose to cut learning down to a size less dangerous to their project,
and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead
study of dead languages.

They not only rejected the study of science out of the christian
schools, but they persecuted it; and it is only within about the last
two centuries that the study has been revived. So late as 1610, Galileo,
a Florentine, discovered and introduced the use of telescopes, and by
applying them to observe the motions and appearances of the heavenly
bodies, afforded additional means for ascertaining the true structure
of the universe. Instead of being esteemed for these discoveries, he was
sentenced to renounce them, or the opinions resulting from them, as a
damnable heresy. And prior to that time Virgilius was condemned to be
burned for asserting the antipodes, or in other words, that the earth
was a globe, and habitable in every part where there was land; yet the
truth of this is now too well known even to be told. [NOTE: I cannot
discover the source of this statement concerning the ancient author
whose Irish name Feirghill was Latinized into Virgilius. The British
Museum possesses a copy of the work (Decalogiunt) which was the pretext
of the charge of heresy made by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, against
Virgilius, Abbot--bishop of Salzburg, These were leaders of the
rival "British" and "Roman parties, and the British champion made a
countercharge against Boniface of irreligious practices." Boniface had
to express a "regret," but none the less pursued his rival. The Pope,
Zachary II., decided that if his alleged "doctrine, against God and his
soul, that beneath the earth there is another world, other men, or
sun and moon," should be acknowledged by Virgilius, he should be
excommunicated by a Council and condemned with canonical sanctions.
Whatever may have been the fate involved by condemnation with "canonicis
sanctionibus," in the middle of the eighth century, it did not fall on
Virgilius. His accuser, Boniface, was martyred, 755, and it is probable
that Virgilius harmonied his Antipodes with orthodoxy. The gravamen of
the heresy seems to have been the suggestion that there were men not of
the progeny of Adam. Virgilius was made Bishop of Salzburg in 768. He
bore until his death, 789, the curious title, "Geometer and Solitary,"
or "lone wayfarer" (Solivagus). A suspicion of heresy clung to his
memory until 1233, when he was raised by Gregory IX, to sainthood beside
his accuser, St. Boniface.--Editor. (Conway)]

If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make
no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no
moral ill in believing the earth was flat like a trencher, any more than
there was moral virtue in believing it was round like a globe; neither
was there any moral ill in believing that the Creator made no other
world than this, any more than there was moral virtue in believing that
he made millions, and that the infinity of space is filled with worlds.
But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system
of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner
almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different
ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with
the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though
otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the
criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by
contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this
view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible
evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of
creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the
supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the
result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but
persecuted the professors. Had Newton or Descartes lived three or four
hundred years ago, and pursued their studies as they did, it is most
probable they would not have lived to finish them; and had Franklin
drawn lightning from the clouds at the same time, it would have been at
the hazard of expiring for it in flames.

Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but,
however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to
believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of
ignorance commenced with the Christian system. There was more knowledge
in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and
as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said,
was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it
succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism. [NOTE by
Paine: It is impossible for us now to know at what time the heathen
mythology began; but it is certain, from the internal evidence that it
carries, that it did not begin in the same state or condition in which
it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except Saturn, were of modern
invention. The supposed reign of Saturn was prior to that which is
called the heathen mythology, and was so far a species of theism that
it admitted the belief of only one God. Saturn is supposed to have
abdicated the govemment in favour of his three sons and one daughter,
Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, and Juno; after this, thousands of other
gods and demigods were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods
increased as fast as the calendar of saints and the calendar of courts
have increased since.

All the corruptions that have taken place, in theology and in religion
have been produced by admitting of what man calls 'revealed religion.'
The mythologists pretended to more revealed religion than the christians
do. They had their oracles and their priests, who were supposed to
receive and deliver the word of God verbally on almost all occasions.

Since then all corruptions down from Moloch to modern predestinarianism,
and the human sacrifices of the heathens to the christian sacrifice of
the Creator, have been produced by admitting of what is called revealed
religion, the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and
impositions is, not to admit of any other revelation than that which is
manifested in the book of Creation., and to contemplate the Creation as
the only true and real word of God that ever did or ever will exist;
and every thing else called the word of God is fable and
imposition.--Author.]

It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause,
that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years
to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression
of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed,
that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in
knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now so much admire
would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. But
the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about
the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long
chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in
which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills
beyond.

It is an inconsistency scarcely possible to be credited, that any
thing should exist, under the name of a religion, that held it to be
irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that
God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The
event that served more than any other to break the first link in this
long chain of despotic ignorance, is that known by the name of the
Reformation by Luther. From that time, though it does not appear to have
made any part of the intention of Luther, or of those who are called
Reformers, the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their
natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the
Reformation did; for, with respect to religious good, it might as well
not have taken place. The mythology still continued the same; and a
multiplicity of National Popes grew out of the downfall of the Pope of
Christendom.



CHAPTER XIII - COMPARISON OF CHRISTIANISM WITH THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS
INSPIRED BY NATURE.

HAVING thus shewn, from the internal evidence of things, the cause
that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for
substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the
Sciences, I proceed, in addition to the several observations already
made in the former part of this work, to compare, or rather to confront,
the evidence that the structure of the universe affords, with the
christian system of religion. But as I cannot begin this part better
than by referring to the ideas that occurred to me at an early part of
life, and which I doubt not have occurred in some degree to almost every
other person at one time or other, I shall state what those ideas were,
and add thereto such other matter as shall arise out of the subject,
giving to the whole, by way of preface, a short introduction.

My father being of the quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have
an exceedingly good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful
learning. Though I went to the grammar school, I did not learn Latin,
not only because I had no inclination to learn languages, but because of
the objection the quakers have against the books in which the language
is taught. But this did not prevent me from being acquainted with the
subjects of all the Latin books used in the school.

The natural bent of my mind was to science. I had some turn, and
I believe some talent for poetry; but this I rather repressed than
encouraged, as leading too much into the field of imagination. As
soon as I was able, I purchased a pair of globes, and attended the
philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards
acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society, then
living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer.

I had no disposition for what was called politics. It presented to
my mind no other idea than is contained in the word jockeyship. When,
therefore, I turned my thoughts towards matters of government, I had to
form a system for myself, that accorded with the moral and philosophic
principles in which I had been educated. I saw, or at least I thought I
saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of America;
and it appeared to me, that unless the Americans changed the plan they
were then pursuing, with respect to the government of England, and
declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves
in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that
was then offering itself to mankind through their means. It was from
these motives that I published the work known by the name of Common
Sense, which is the first work I ever did publish, and so far as I can
judge of myself, I believe I should never have been known in the world
as an author on any subject whatever, had it not been for the affairs
of America. I wrote Common Sense the latter end of the year 1775, and
published it the first of January, 1776. Independence was declared the
fourth of July following. [NOTE: The pamphlet Common Sense was first
advertised, as "just published," on January 10, 1776. His plea for the
Officers of Excise, written before leaving England, was printed, but not
published until 1793. Despite his reiterated assertion that Common Sense
was the first work he ever published the notion that he was "junius"
still finds some believers. An indirect comment on our Paine-Junians
may be found in Part 2 of this work where Paine says a man capable of
writing Homer "would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to
another." It is probable that Paine ascribed the Letters of Junius to
Thomas Hollis. His friend F. Lanthenas, in his translation of the Age of
Reason (1794) advertises his translation of the Letters of Junius from
the English "(Thomas Hollis)." This he could hardly have done without
consultation with Paine. Unfortunately this translation of Junius cannot
be found either in the Bibliotheque Nationale or the British Museum, and
it cannot be said whether it contains any attempt at an identification
of Junius--Editor.]

Any person, who has made observations on the state and progress of the
human mind, by observing his own, can not but have observed, that there
are two distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we
produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those
that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a
rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to
examine, as well as I was able, if they were worth entertaining; and it
is from them I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. As
to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves
only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning
for himself afterwards. Every person of learning is finally his own
teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct
quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their
place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so
lasting as when they begin by conception. Thus much for the introductory
part.

From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea, and acting upon it
by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the christian system, or
thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was: but I
well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon
read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the church, upon
the subject of what is called Redemption by the death of the Son of God.
After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going
down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at
the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was
making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son,
when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man
would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose
they preached such sermons. This was not one of those kind of thoughts
that had any thing in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious
reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such
an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it.
I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe,
that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind
of a child, cannot be a true system.

It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell
their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They
sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of
what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities:
there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God
Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the christian story of God the
Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that
is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a
child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and
better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved
by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is
only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The
true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating
the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in
endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and
mechanical.

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in
the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but
they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out
of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help
smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could have been
consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it
would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a
bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had
made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE by
Paine: As this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know
what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the
name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name
from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work,
representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of
the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon
round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their
relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system,
their relative distances from each other, and their different
magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the
heavens.--Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and
of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general
knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or,
as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things
afford with the christian system of faith.

Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this
world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is
so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the
creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that
story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is,
to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous
as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once
little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the
air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he
who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.

Though the belief of a plurality of worlds was familiar to the
ancients, it is only within the last three centuries that the extent and
dimensions of this globe that we inhabit have been ascertained. Several
vessels, following the tract of the ocean, have sailed entirely round
the world, as a man may march in a circle, and come round by the
contrary side of the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular
dimensions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would measure the
widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only twenty-five thousand and
twenty English miles, reckoning sixty-nine miles and an half to an
equatorial degree, and may be sailed round in the space of about three
years. [NOTE by Paine: Allowing a ship to sail, on an average, three
miles in an hour, she would sail entirely round the world in less than
one year, if she could sail in a direct circle, but she is obliged to
follow the course of the ocean.--Author.]

A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to us to be
great; but if we compare it with the immensity of space in which it is
suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in the air, it is infinitely less
in proportion than the smallest grain of sand is to the size of
the world, or the finest particle of dew to the whole ocean, and is
therefore but small; and, as will be hereafter shown, is only one of a
system of worlds, of which the universal creation is composed.

It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity of space
in which this and all the other worlds are suspended, if we follow a
progression of ideas. When we think of the size or dimensions of, a
room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop.
But when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when
it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any
walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our
ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and
asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what beyond
the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination returns and
says, there is no end. Certainly, then, the Creator was not pent for
room when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have to seek
the reason in something else.

If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this, of which the
Creator has given us the use as our portion in the immense system of
creation, we find every part of it, the earth, the waters, and the air
that surround it, filled, and as it were crowded with life, down from
the largest animals that we know of to the smallest insects the naked
eye can behold, and from thence to others still smaller, and totally
invisible without the assistance of the microscope. Every tree, every
plant, every leaf, serves not only as an habitation, but as a world
to some numerous race, till animal existence becomes so exceedingly
refined, that the effluvia of a blade of grass would be food for
thousands.

Since then no part of our earth is left unoccupied, why is it to be
supposed that the immensity of space is a naked void, lying in eternal
waste? There is room for millions of worlds as large or larger than
ours, and each of them millions of miles apart from each other.

Having now arrived at this point, if we carry our ideas only one thought
further, we shall see, perhaps, the true reason, at least a very good
reason for our happiness, why the Creator, instead of making one immense
world, extending over an immense quantity of space, has preferred
dividing that quantity of matter into several distinct and separate
worlds, which we call planets, of which our earth is one. But before I
explain my ideas upon this subject, it is necessary (not for the sake
of those that already know, but for those who do not) to show what the
system of the universe is.



CHAPTER XIV - SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE.

THAT part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the
system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in
English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides the Sun, of
six distinct orbs, or planets, or worlds, besides the secondary bodies,
called the satellites, or moons, of which our earth has one that attends
her in her annual revolution round the Sun, in like manner as the
other satellites or moons, attend the planets or worlds to which they
severally belong, as may be seen by the assistance of the telescope.

The Sun is the center round which those six worlds or planets revolve at
different distances therefrom, and in circles concentric to each other.
Each world keeps constantly in nearly the same tract round the Sun, and
continues at the same time turning round itself, in nearly an upright
position, as a top turns round itself when it is spinning on the ground,
and leans a little sideways.

It is this leaning of the earth (23 1/2 degrees) that occasions summer
and winter, and the different length of days and nights. If the earth
turned round itself in a position perpendicular to the plane or level
of the circle it moves in round the Sun, as a top turns round when it
stands erect on the ground, the days and nights would be always of the
same length, twelve hours day and twelve hours night, and the season
would be uniformly the same throughout the year.

Every time that a planet (our earth for example) turns round itself, it
makes what we call day and night; and every time it goes entirely round
the Sun, it makes what we call a year, consequently our world turns
three hundred and sixty-five times round itself, in going once round the
Sun.

The names that the ancients gave to those six worlds, and which are
still called by the same names, are Mercury, Venus, this world that we
call ours, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They appear larger to the eye than
the stars, being many million miles nearer to our earth than any of the
stars are. The planet Venus is that which is called the evening star,
and sometimes the morning star, as she happens to set after, or rise
before the Sun, which in either case is never more than three hours.

The Sun as before said being the center, the planet or world nearest the
Sun is Mercury; his distance from the Sun is thirty-four million miles,
and he moves round in a circle always at that distance from the Sun, as
a top may be supposed to spin round in the tract in which a horse goes
in a mill. The second world is Venus; she is fifty-seven million miles
distant from the Sun, and consequently moves round in a circle much
greater than that of Mercury. The third world is this that we inhabit,
and which is eighty-eight million miles distant from the Sun, and
consequently moves round in a circle greater than that of Venus. The
fourth world is Mars; he is distant from the sun one hundred and
thirty-four million miles, and consequently moves round in a circle
greater than that of our earth. The fifth is Jupiter; he is distant from
the Sun five hundred and fifty-seven million miles, and consequently
moves round in a circle greater than that of Mars. The sixth world is
Saturn; he is distant from the Sun seven hundred and sixty-three million
miles, and consequently moves round in a circle that surrounds the
circles or orbits of all the other worlds or planets.

The space, therefore, in the air, or in the immensity of space, that
our solar system takes up for the several worlds to perform their
revolutions in round the Sun, is of the extent in a strait line of the
whole diameter of the orbit or circle in which Saturn moves round the
Sun, which being double his distance from the Sun, is fifteen hundred
and twenty-six million miles; and its circular extent is nearly five
thousand million; and its globical content is almost three thousand five
hundred million times three thousand five hundred million square miles.
[NOTE by Paine: If it should be asked, how can man know these things? I
have one plain answer to give, which is, that man knows how to calculate
an eclipse, and also how to calculate to a minute of time when the
planet Venus, in making her revolutions round the Sun, will come in a
strait line between our earth and the Sun, and will appear to us about
the size of a large pea passing across the face of the Sun. This happens
but twice in about a hundred years, at the distance of about eight years
from each other, and has happened twice in our time, both of which were
foreknown by calculation. It can also be known when they will happen
again for a thousand years to come, or to any other portion of time.
As therefore, man could not be able to do these things if he did not
understand the solar system, and the manner in which the revolutions of
the several planets or worlds are performed, the fact of calculating an
eclipse, or a transit of Venus, is a proof in point that the knowledge
exists; and as to a few thousand, or even a few million miles, more
or less, it makes scarcely any sensible difference in such immense
distances.--Author.]

But this, immense as it is, is only one system of worlds. Beyond this,
at a vast distance into space, far beyond all power of calculation, are
the stars called the fixed stars. They are called fixed, because they
have no revolutionary motion, as the six worlds or planets have that
I have been describing. Those fixed stars continue always at the same
distance from each other, and always in the same place, as the Sun does
in the center of our system. The probability, therefore, is that each of
those fixed stars is also a Sun, round which another system of worlds or
planets, though too remote for us to discover, performs its revolutions,
as our system of worlds does round our central Sun. By this easy
progression of ideas, the immensity of space will appear to us to be
filled with systems of worlds; and that no part of space lies at
waste, any more than any part of our globe of earth and water is left
unoccupied.

Having thus endeavoured to convey, in a familiar and easy manner, some
idea of the structure of the universe, I return to explain what I before
alluded to, namely, the great benefits arising to man in consequence of
the Creator having made a Plurality of worlds, such as our system is,
consisting of a central Sun and six worlds, besides satellites, in
preference to that of creating one world only of a vast extent.



CHAPTER XV - ADVANTAGES OF THE EXISTENCE OF MANY WORLDS IN EACH SOLAR
SYSTEM.

IT is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of
science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from
thence to our understanding) which those several planets or worlds of
which our system is composed make in their circuit round the Sun.

Had then the quantity of matter which these six worlds contain been
blended into one solitary globe, the consequence to us would have
been, that either no revolutionary motion would have existed, or not a
sufficiency of it to give us the ideas and the knowledge of science we
now have; and it is from the sciences that all the mechanical arts that
contribute so much to our earthly felicity and comfort are derived.

As therefore the Creator made nothing in vain, so also must it be
believed that he organized the structure of the universe in the most
advantageous manner for the benefit of man; and as we see, and from
experience feel, the benefits we derive from the structure of the
universe, formed as it is, which benefits we should not have had the
opportunity of enjoying if the structure, so far as relates to our
system, had been a solitary globe, we can discover at least one reason
why a plurality of worlds has been made, and that reason calls forth the
devotional gratitude of man, as well as his admiration.

But it is not to us, the inhabitants of this globe, only, that the
benefits arising from a plurality of worlds are limited. The inhabitants
of each of the worlds of which our system is composed, enjoy the same
opportunities of knowledge as we do. They behold the revolutionary
motions of our earth, as we behold theirs. All the planets revolve
in sight of each other; and, therefore, the same universal school of
science presents itself to all.

Neither does the knowledge stop here. The system of worlds next to us
exhibits, in its revolutions, the same principles and school of science,
to the inhabitants of their system, as our system does to us, and in
like manner throughout the immensity of space.

Our ideas, not only of the almightiness of the Creator, but of his
wisdom and his beneficence, become enlarged in proportion as we
contemplate the extent and the structure of the universe. The solitary
idea of a solitary world, rolling or at rest in the immense ocean of
space, gives place to the cheerful idea of a society of worlds, so
happily contrived as to administer, even by their motion, instruction
to man. We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to
consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge
the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded.



CHAPTER XVI - APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE
CHRISTIANS.

BUT, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the
christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only
one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than
twenty-five thousand miles. An extent which a man, walking at the rate
of three miles an hour for twelve hours in the day, could he keep on in
a circular direction, would walk entirely round in less than two years.
Alas! what is this to the mighty ocean of space, and the almighty power
of the Creator!

From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that
the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his
protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our
world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple! And,
on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless
creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case,
the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes
God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world
to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary
interval of life.

It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in
the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon
that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of
religion, have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of
religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally
good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily
must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever
existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the
strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every
evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or
renders it absurd.

It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging
myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who
persuaded themselves that what is called a pious fraud, might, at least
under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the
fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for
it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on.

The persons who first preached the christian system of faith, and in
some measure combined with it the morality preached by Jesus Christ,
might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology
that then prevailed. From the first preachers the fraud went on to
the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud
became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief became
again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by
preaching it.

But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost
general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the
continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred
years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if
the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally
no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be
maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe
afforded.



CHAPTER XVII - OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST
UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLES.

HAVING thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real
word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called the word
of God, as shown to us in a printed book that any man might make, I
proceed to speak of the three principal means that have been employed in
all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind.

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, The first two
are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be
suspected.

With respect to Mystery, everything we behold is, in one sense, a
mystery to us. Our own existence is a mystery: the whole vegetable world
is a mystery. We cannot account how it is that an acorn, when put into
the ground, is made to develop itself and become an oak. We know not how
it is that the seed we sow unfolds and multiplies itself, and returns to
us such an abundant interest for so small a capital.

The fact however, as distinct from the operating cause, is not a
mystery, because we see it; and we know also the means we are to
use, which is no other than putting the seed in the ground. We know,
therefore, as much as is necessary for us to know; and that part of
the operation that we do not know, and which if we did, we could not
perform, the Creator takes upon himself and performs it for us. We are,
therefore, better off than if we had been let into the secret, and left
to do it for ourselves.

But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word
mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can
be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth,
and not a God of mystery or obscurity. Mystery is the antagonist
of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and
represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery;
and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped, is the work of its
antagonist, and never of itself.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of
moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery. The belief of a God,
so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the
most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of
necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a
practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our
acting towards each other as he acts benignly towards all. We cannot
serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such
service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is
that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God
has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of
the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.

The very nature and design of religion, if I may so express it, prove
even to demonstration that it must be free from every thing of mystery,
and unincumbered with every thing that is mysterious. Religion,
considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and,
therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of
all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries
of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises
out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon
what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself
thereto.

When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion
incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not
only above but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the
necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar
to all questions, inquiries and speculations. The word mystery answered
this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is in itself
without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.

As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an
occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter
to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.

But before going further into this subject, it will be proper to inquire
what is to be understood by a miracle.

In the same sense that every thing may be said to be a mystery, so also
may it be said that every thing is a miracle, and that no one thing is
a greater miracle than another. The elephant, though larger, is not a
greater miracle than a mite: nor a mountain a greater miracle than an
atom. To an almighty power it is no more difficult to make the one than
the other, and no more difficult to make a million of worlds than to
make one. Every thing, therefore, is a miracle, in one sense; whilst,
in the other sense, there is no such thing as a miracle. It is a miracle
when compared to our power, and to our comprehension. It is not a
miracle compared to the power that performs it. But as nothing in this
description conveys the idea that is affixed to the word miracle, it is
necessary to carry the inquiry further.

Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they
call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary
to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole
extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of
nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us
wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her
natural power of acting.

The ascension of a man several miles high into the air, would have
everything in it that constitutes the idea of a miracle, if it were not
known that a species of air can be generated several times lighter than
the common atmospheric air, and yet possess elasticity enough to prevent
the balloon, in which that light air is inclosed, from being compressed
into as many times less bulk, by the common air that surrounds it. In
like manner, extracting flashes or sparks of fire from the human body,
as visibly as from a steel struck with a flint, and causing iron or
steel to move without any visible agent, would also give the idea of a
miracle, if we were not acquainted with electricity and magnetism; so
also would many other experiments in natural philosophy, to those who
are not acquainted with the subject. The restoring persons to life who
are to appearance dead as is practised upon drowned persons, would also
be a miracle, if it were not known that animation is capable of being
suspended without being extinct.

Besides these, there are performances by slight of hand, and by persons
acting in concert, that have a miraculous appearance, which, when known,
are thought nothing of. And, besides these, there are mechanical and
optical deceptions. There is now an exhibition in Paris of ghosts or
spectres, which, though it is not imposed upon the spectators as a fact,
has an astonishing appearance. As, therefore, we know not the extent to
which either nature or art can go, there is no criterion to determine
what a miracle is; and mankind, in giving credit to appearances, under
the idea of their being miracles, are subject to be continually imposed
upon.

Since then appearances are so capable of deceiving, and things not
real have a strong resemblance to things that are, nothing can be more
inconsistent than to suppose that the Almighty would make use of means,
such as are called miracles, that would subject the person who performed
them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the person who related
them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported
thereby to be suspected as a fabulous invention.

Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to
any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that
of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most
inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show,
for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any
idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the
doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the
Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and
make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of
evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the
thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says
that he saw it; and, therefore, the thing, were it true, would have no
better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.

Suppose I were to say, that when I sat down to write this book, a hand
presented itself in the air, took up the pen and wrote every word that
is herein written; would any body believe me? Certainly they would not.
Would they believe me a whit the more if the thing had been a fact?
Certainly they would not. Since then a real miracle, were it to happen,
would be subject to the same fate as the falsehood, the inconsistency
becomes the greater of supposing the Almighty would make use of means
that would not answer the purpose for which they were intended, even if
they were real.

If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the
course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course
to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the
person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily
decided, which is,--Is it more probable that nature should go out of
her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our
time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe
that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore,
at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.

The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large
enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have
approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the
whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter
would decide itself as before stated, namely, Is it more probable that a
man should have, swallowed a whale, or told a lie?

But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with
it in his belly to Nineveh, and to convince the people that it was true
have cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale,
would they not have believed him to have been the devil instead of a
prophet? or if the whale had carried Jonah to Nineveh, and cast him up
in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to
have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?

The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the
New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ,
and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the
highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him
all the kingdoms of the world. How happened it that he did not discover
America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any
interest.

I have too much respect for the moral character of Christ to believe
that he told this whale of a miracle himself: neither is it easy to
account for what purpose it could have been fabricated, unless it were
to impose upon the connoisseurs of miracles, as is sometimes practised
upon the connoisseurs of Queen Anne's farthings, and collectors of
relics and antiquities; or to render the belief of miracles ridiculous,
by outdoing miracle, as Don Quixote outdid chivalry; or to embarrass the
belief of miracles, by making it doubtful by what power, whether of God
or of the devil, any thing called a miracle was performed. It requires,
however, a great deal of faith in the devil to believe this miracle.

In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be
placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable, and their
existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer any
useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to
obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without
any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle
could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it
requires a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a miracle upon
man's report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles
as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be
considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the
full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it
is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth
rejects. Thus much for Mystery and Miracle.

As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy
took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. It was
not sufficient to know what had been done, but what would be done. The
supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and if
he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to strike
within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity could make
it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only
to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had repented
himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous systems make of
man!

It has been shewn, in a former part of this work, that the original
meaning of the words prophet and prophesying has been changed, and that
a prophet, in the sense of the word as now used, is a creature of modern
invention; and it is owing to this change in the meaning of the words,
that the flights and metaphors of the Jewish poets, and phrases and
expressions now rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the
local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used,
have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations
at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and
commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every
thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a
prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type.

If by a prophet we are to suppose a man to whom the Almighty
communicated some event that would take place in future, either there
were such men, or there were not. If there were, it is consistent to
believe that the event so communicated would be told in terms that could
be understood, and not related in such a loose and obscure manner as to
be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal
as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. It is
conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose he would
deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called
prophecies in the book called the Bible come under this description.

But it is with Prophecy as it is with Miracle. It could not answer the
purpose even if it were real. Those to whom a prophecy should be told
could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had
been revealed to him, or whether he conceited it; and if the thing that
he prophesied, or pretended to prophesy, should happen, or some thing
like it, among the multitude of things that are daily happening, nobody
could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether
it was accidental. A prophet, therefore, is a character useless and
unnecessary; and the safe side of the case is to guard against being
imposed upon, by not giving credit to such relations.

Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that
belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which
so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world,
and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave
encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by
keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.

RECAPITULATION.

HAVING now extended the subject to a greater length than I first
intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the
whole.

First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in
writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already
assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal
language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations
are subject, the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the
probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it
upon the world.

Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing word
of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power, it
demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.

Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral
goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all
his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all
men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards
each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and
revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a
violation of moral duty.

I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content
myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that
gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he
pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable
to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have
had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.

It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all
religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace
are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an
universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing
new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed
at first. ["In the childhood of the world," according to the first
(French) version; and the strict translation of the final sentence is:
"Deism was the religion of Adam, supposing him not an imaginary being;
but none the less must it be left to all men to follow, as is their
right, the religion and worship they prefer."--Editor.] Adam, if ever
there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the mean time, let
every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he
prefers.


END OF PART I





THE AGE OF REASON - PART II


   Contents

  * Preface
  * Chapter I - The Old Testament
  * Chapter II - The New Testament
  * Chapter III - Conclusion




PREFACE

I HAVE mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had
long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I
had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to
be the last work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which
existed in France in the latter end of the year 1793, determined me to
delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the Revolution
which Philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. The Idea,
always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty,--that
priests could forgive sins,--though it seemed to exist no longer, had
blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the
commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution
had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, stiled
Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine
of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others
daily carried to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also
intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself.

Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of the Age of Reason;
I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament [It must be borne in mind
that throughout this work Paine generally means by "Bible" only the Old
Testament, and speaks of the New as the "Testament."--Editor.] to
refer to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any;
notwithstanding which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer,
though writing at his ease and with a Library of Church Books about him,
can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion
was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There
were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly
pointed at by Bourdon de l'Oise, in his speech on that motion.

Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down
and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I had not
finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared,
[This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part
of 1793. See Introduction.--Editor.] before a guard came there, about
three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of
Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation as
a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I
contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the
Manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my
possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France
either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of
the citizens of the United States.

It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and
the interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who accompanied
them to examine my papers, treated me not only with civility, but with
respect. The keeper of the 'Luxembourg, Benoit, a man of good heart,
shewed to me every friendship in his power, as did also all his family,
while he continued in that station. He was removed from it, put
into arrestation, and carried before the tribunal upon a malignant
accusation, but acquitted.

After I had been in Luxembourg about three weeks, the Americans then in
Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim me as their countryman
and friend; but were answered by the President, Vadier, who was also
President of the Committee of Surety General, and had signed the order
for my arrestation, that I was born in England. [These excited Americans
do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in
Vadeer's reply, namely that their application was "unofficial," i.e. not
made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister.
For the detailed history of all this see vol. iii.--Editor.] I heard no
more, after this, from any person out of the walls of the prison, till
the fall of Robespierre, on the 9th of Thermidor--July 27, 1794.

About two months before this event, I was seized with a fever that in
its progress had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects
of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered with renewed
satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written
the former part of The Age of Reason. I had then but little expectation
of surviving, and those about me had less. I know therefore by
experience the conscientious trial of my own principles.

I was then with three chamber comrades: Joseph Vanheule of Bruges,
Charles Bastfni, and Michael Robyns of Louvain. The unceasing and
anxious attention of these three friends to me, by night and day, I
remember with gratitude and mention with pleasure. It happened that a
physician (Dr. Graham) and a surgeon, (Mr. Bond,) part of the suite of
General O'Hara, [The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out
the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to
Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him 300 pounds when he
(O'Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of
his cell-door.--Editor.] were then in the Luxembourg: I ask not myself
whether it be convenient to them, as men under the English Government,
that I express to them my thanks; but I should reproach myself if I did
not; and also to the physician of the Luxembourg, Dr. Markoski.

I have some reason to believe, because I cannot discover any other, that
this illness preserved me in existence. Among the papers of Robespierre
that were examined and reported upon to the Convention by a Committee of
Deputies, is a note in the hand writing of Robespierre, in the following
words:

"Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation, pour l'interet de
l'Amerique autant que de la France."

[Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest
of America, as well as of France.] From what cause it was that the
intention was not put in execution, I know not, and cannot inform
myself; and therefore I ascribe it to impossibility, on account of that
illness.

The Convention, to repair as much as lay in their power the injustice I
had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the
Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without
permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not
because right principles have been violated, that they are to be
abandoned.

I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written,
some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of
"The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so
doing, I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and
against me, as much as they please; they do me more service than they
intend, and I can have no objection that they write on. They will find,
however, by this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to
them, that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over
again. The first is brushed away by accident.

They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and
Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse
books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former
part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts
than they deserved.

I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call
Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out. They are
so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about
authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them
right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may know
how to begin.

THOMAS PAINE. October, 1795.




CHAPTER I - THE OLD TESTAMENT

IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but
before any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself
must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of
it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as
proof of any thing.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and
of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the
world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed
and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable
meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and
insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant
directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the
other, but something different from both; and this they have called
understanding the Bible.

It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former
part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these
pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand
the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it
best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that
Thomas Paine understands it not.

Now instead of wasting their time, and heating themselves in fractious
disputations about doctrinal points drawn from the Bible, these men
ought to know, and if they do not it is civility to inform them,
that the first thing to be understood is, whether there is sufficient
authority for believing the Bible to be the word of God, or whether
there is not?

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command
of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of
moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph
le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by
any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed
to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon
whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given
them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they
spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women
and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are
repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting
ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the
Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that
the books that tell us so were written by his authority?

It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth;
on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more
ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of
a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and
that of the Jews is as much to be suspected as any other.

To charger the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their
own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all
assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is
matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations
were done by the express command of God. To believe therefore the Bible
to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of
God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read
the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender,
sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself,
if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the
sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be
sufficient to determine my choice.

But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in
the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a
priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not
entitled to credit, as being the word of God.

But, before I proceed to this examination, I will show wherein the Bible
differs from all other ancient writings with respect to the nature of
the evidence necessary to establish its authenticity; and this is is
the more proper to be done, because the advocates of the Bible, in their
answers to the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' undertake to say, and
they put some stress thereon, that the authenticity of the Bible is as
well established as that of any other ancient book: as if our belief of
the one could become any rule for our belief of the other.

I know, however, but of one ancient book that authoritatively challenges
universal consent and belief, and that is Euclid's Elements of Geometry;
[Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years
before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the
city of Alexandria, in Egypt.--Author.] and the reason is, because it
is a book of self-evident demonstration, entirely independent of its
author, and of every thing relating to time, place, and circumstance.
The matters contained in that book would have the same authority they
now have, had they been written by any other person, or had the work
been anonymous, or had the author never been known; for the identical
certainty of who was the author makes no part of our belief of the
matters contained in the book. But it is quite otherwise with respect to
the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel, etc.: those are
books of testimony, and they testify of things naturally incredible;
and therefore the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those
books, rests, in the first place, upon the certainty that they were
written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; secondly, upon the credit we give
to their testimony. We may believe the first, that is, may believe the
certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same
manner that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a
case, and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should
be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not
written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, every part of the authority and
authenticity of those books is gone at once; for there can be no such
thing as forged or invented testimony; neither can there be anonymous
testimony, more especially as to things naturally incredible; such
as that of talking with God face to face, or that of the sun and moon
standing still at the command of a man.

The greatest part of the other ancient books are works of genius; of
which kind are those ascribed to Homer, to Plato, to Aristotle, to
Demosthenes, to Cicero, etc. Here again the author is not an essential
in the credit we give to any of those works; for as works of genius they
would have the same merit they have now, were they anonymous. Nobody
believes the Trojan story, as related by Homer, to be true; for it is
the poet only that is admired, and the merit of the poet will remain,
though the story be fabulous. But if we disbelieve the matters related
by the Bible authors (Moses for instance) as we disbelieve the things
related by Homer, there remains nothing of Moses in our estimation, but
an imposter. As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we
credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no
further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus
relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a
blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus
Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by
Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his
army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are
quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not
believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish
our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or
elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural
and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the Bible have no
claim to our belief of the Bible because that we believe things stated
in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated
in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or
because they are self-evident, like Euclid; or admire them because they
are elegant, like Homer; or approve them because they are sedate, like
Plato; or judicious, like Aristotle.

Having premised these things, I proceed to examine the authenticity of
the Bible; and I begin with what are called the five books of Moses,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. My intention is to
shew that those books are spurious, and that Moses is not the author of
them; and still further, that they were not written in the time of Moses
nor till several hundred years afterwards; that they are no other than
an attempted history of the life of Moses, and of the times in which he
is said to have lived, and also of the times prior thereto, written by
some very ignorant and stupid pretenders to authorship, several hundred
years after the death of Moses; as men now write histories of things
that happened, or are supposed to have happened, several hundred or
several thousand years ago.

The evidence that I shall produce in this case is from the books
themselves; and I will confine myself to this evidence only. Were I to
refer for proofs to any of the ancient authors, whom the advocates of
the Bible call prophane authors, they would controvert that authority,
as I controvert theirs: I will therefore meet them on their own ground,
and oppose them with their own weapon, the Bible.

In the first place, there is no affirmative evidence that Moses is
the author of those books; and that he is the author, is altogether an
unfounded opinion, got abroad nobody knows how. The style and manner
in which those books are written give no room to believe, or even to
suppose, they were written by Moses; for it is altogether the style and
manner of another person speaking of Moses. In Exodus, Leviticus and
Numbers, (for every thing in Genesis is prior to the times of Moses and
not the least allusion is made to him therein,) the whole, I say, of
these books is in the third person; it is always, the Lord said unto
Moses, or Moses said unto the Lord; or Moses said unto the people,
or the people said unto Moses; and this is the style and manner that
historians use in speaking of the person whose lives and actions they
are writing. It may be said, that a man may speak of himself in the
third person, and, therefore, it may be supposed that Moses did; but
supposition proves nothing; and if the advocates for the belief that
Moses wrote those books himself have nothing better to advance than
supposition, they may as well be silent.

But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in
the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner,
it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who
speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd:--for
example, Numbers xii. 3: "Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the
men which were on the face of the earth." If Moses said this of himself,
instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and
arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which
side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the
author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the
author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of
meekness, and is a lie in sentiment.

In Deuteronomy, the style and manner of writing marks more evidently
than in the former books that Moses is not the writer. The manner here
used is dramatical; the writer opens the subject by a short introductory
discourse, and then introduces Moses as in the act of speaking, and when
he has made Moses finish his harrangue, he (the writer) resumes his own
part, and speaks till he brings Moses forward again, and at last closes
the scene with an account of the death, funeral, and character of Moses.

This interchange of speakers occurs four times in this book: from the
first verse of the first chapter, to the end of the fifth verse, it is
the writer who speaks; he then introduces Moses as in the act of making
his harrangue, and this continues to the end of the 40th verse of the
fourth chapter; here the writer drops Moses, and speaks historically of
what was done in consequence of what Moses, when living, is supposed to
have said, and which the writer has dramatically rehearsed.

The writer opens the subject again in the first verse of the fifth
chapter, though it is only by saying that Moses called the people of
Israel together; he then introduces Moses as before, and continues him
as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 26th chapter. He does the
same thing at the beginning of the 27th chapter; and continues Moses
as in the act of speaking, to the end of the 28th chapter. At the 29th
chapter the writer speaks again through the whole of the first verse,
and the first line of the second verse, where he introduces Moses for
the last time, and continues him as in the act of speaking, to the end
of the 33d chapter.

The writer having now finished the rehearsal on the part of Moses, comes
forward, and speaks through the whole of the last chapter: he begins by
telling the reader, that Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, that he
saw from thence the land which (the writer says) had been promised to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he, Moses, died there in the land of
Moab, that he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, but that no
man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day, that is unto the time in
which the writer lived who wrote the book of Deuteronomy. The writer
then tells us, that Moses was one hundred and ten years of age when he
died--that his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and he
concludes by saying, that there arose not a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom, says this anonymous writer, the Lord knew face to
face.

Having thus shewn, as far as grammatical evidence implies, that
Moses was not the writer of those books, I will, after making a few
observations on the inconsistencies of the writer of the book of
Deuteronomy, proceed to shew, from the historical and chronological
evidence contained in those books, that Moses was not, because he could
not be, the writer of them; and consequently, that there is no authority
for believing that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and
children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say they
were, at the command of God. It is a duty incumbent on every true deist,
that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the
Bible.

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy, whoever he was, for it is an
anonymous work, is obscure, and also contradictory with himself in the
account he has given of Moses.

After telling that Moses went to the top of Pisgah (and it does not
appear from any account that he ever came down again) he tells us, that
Moses died there in the land of Moab, and that he buried him in a valley
in the land of Moab; but as there is no antecedent to the pronoun he,
there is no knowing who he was, that did bury him. If the writer meant
that he (God) buried him, how should he (the writer) know it? or why
should we (the readers) believe him? since we know not who the writer
was that tells us so, for certainly Moses could not himself tell where
he was buried.

The writer also tells us, that no man knoweth where the sepulchre of
Moses is unto this day, meaning the time in which this writer lived;
how then should he know that Moses was buried in a valley in the land
of Moab? for as the writer lived long after the time of Moses, as is
evident from his using the expression of unto this day, meaning a great
length of time after the death of Moses, he certainly was not at his
funeral; and on the other hand, it is impossible that Moses himself
could say that no man knoweth where the sepulchre is unto this day. To
make Moses the speaker, would be an improvement on the play of a child
that hides himself and cries nobody can find me; nobody can find Moses.

This writer has no where told us how he came by the speeches which he
has put into the mouth of Moses to speak, and therefore we have a right
to conclude that he either composed them himself, or wrote them from
oral tradition. One or other of these is the more probable, since he
has given, in the fifth chapter, a table of commandments, in which that
called the fourth commandment is different from the fourth commandment
in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. In that of Exodus, the reason given
for keeping the seventh day is, because (says the commandment) God made
the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh; but in
that of Deuteronomy, the reason given is, that it was the day on which
the children of Israel came out of Egypt, and therefore, says this
commandment, the Lord thy God commanded thee to kee the sabbath-day This
makes no mention of the creation, nor that of the coming out of Egypt.
There are also many things given as laws of Moses in this book, that are
not to be found in any of the other books; among which is that inhuman
and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the
father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned
to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.--But priests
have always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy
preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken
the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle
the ox when he treadeth Out the corn:" and that this might not escape
observation, they have noted it in the table of contents at the head of
the chapter, though it is only a single verse of less than two lines. O
priests! priests! ye are willing to be compared to an ox, for the sake
of tythes. [An elegant pocket edition of Paine's Theological Works
(London. R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a
Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his "Age of Reason"
to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work)
has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the
summit of a well stocked hill.--Editor.]--Though it is impossible for
us to know identically who the writer of Deuteronomy was, it is not
difficult to discover him professionally, that he was some Jewish
priest, who lived, as I shall shew in the course of this work, at least
three hundred and fifty years after the time of Moses.

I come now to speak of the historical and chronological evidence. The
chronology that I shall use is the Bible chronology; for I mean not to
go out of the Bible for evidence of any thing, but to make the Bible
itself prove historically and chronologically that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him. It is therefore proper that I
inform the readers (such an one at least as may not have the opportunity
of knowing it) that in the larger Bibles, and also in some smaller ones,
there is a series of chronology printed in the margin of every page for
the purpose of showing how long the historical matters stated in each
page happened, or are supposed to have happened, before Christ, and
consequently the distance of time between one historical circumstance
and another.

I begin with the book of Genesis.--In Genesis xiv., the writer gives an
account of Lot being taken prisoner in a battle between the four kings
against five, and carried off; and that when the account of Lot being
taken came to Abraham, that he armed all his household and marched to
rescue Lot from the captors; and that he pursued them unto Dan. (ver.
14.)

To shew in what manner this expression of Pursuing them unto Dan applies
to the case in question, I will refer to two circumstances, the one in
America, the other in France. The city now called New York, in America,
was originally New Amsterdam; and the town in France, lately called
Havre Marat, was before called Havre-de-Grace. New Amsterdam was changed
to New York in the year 1664; Havre-de-Grace to Havre Marat in the year
1793. Should, therefore, any writing be found, though without date,
in which the name of New-York should be mentioned, it would be certain
evidence that such a writing could not have been written before, and
must have been written after New Amsterdam was changed to New York, and
consequently not till after the year 1664, or at least during the course
of that year. And in like manner, any dateless writing, with the name
of Havre Marat, would be certain evidence that such a writing must have
been written after Havre-de-Grace became Havre Marat, and consequently
not till after the year 1793, or at least during the course of that
year.

I now come to the application of those cases, and to show that there
was no such place as Dan till many years after the death of Moses; and
consequently, that Moses could not be the writer of the book of Genesis,
where this account of pursuing them unto Dan is given.

The place that is called Dan in the Bible was originally a town of the
Gentiles, called Laish; and when the tribe of Dan seized upon this
town, they changed its name to Dan, in commemoration of Dan, who was the
father of that tribe, and the great grandson of Abraham.

To establish this in proof, it is necessary to refer from Genesis to
chapter xviii. of the book called the Book of judges. It is there said
(ver. 27) that "they (the Danites) came unto Laish to a people that were
quiet and secure, and they smote them with the edge of the sword [the
Bible is filled with murder] and burned the city with fire; and they
built a city, (ver. 28,) and dwelt therein, and [ver. 29,] they called
the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan, their father; howbeit
the name of the city was Laish at the first."

This account of the Danites taking possession of Laish and changing it
to Dan, is placed in the book of Judges immediately after the death of
Samson. The death of Samson is said to have happened B.C. 1120 and
that of Moses B.C. 1451; and, therefore, according to the historical
arrangement, the place was not called Dan till 331 years after the death
of Moses.

There is a striking confusion between the historical and the
chronological arrangement in the book of judges. The last five chapters,
as they stand in the book, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, are put chronologically
before all the preceding chapters; they are made to be 28 years before
the 16th chapter, 266 before the 15th, 245 before the 13th, 195 before
the 9th, go before the 4th, and 15 years before the 1st chapter. This
shews the uncertain and fabulous state of the Bible. According to the
chronological arrangement, the taking of Laish, and giving it the name
of Dan, is made to be twenty years after the death of Joshua, who was
the successor of Moses; and by the historical order, as it stands in
the book, it is made to be 306 years after the death of Joshua, and 331
after that of Moses; but they both exclude Moses from being the writer
of Genesis, because, according to either of the statements, no such a
place as Dan existed in the time of Moses; and therefore the writer of
Genesis must have been some person who lived after the town of Laish had
the name of Dan; and who that person was nobody knows, and consequently
the book of Genesis is anonymous, and without authority.

I come now to state another point of historical and chronological
evidence, and to show therefrom, as in the preceding case, that Moses is
not the author of the book of Genesis.

In Genesis xxxvi. there is given a genealogy of the sons and descendants
of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name of the kings
of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, "And these are
the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel."

Now, were any dateless writing to be found, in which, speaking of any
past events, the writer should say, these things happened before there
was any Congress in America, or before there was any Convention in
France, it would be evidence that such writing could not have been
written before, and could only be written after there was a Congress
in America or a Convention in France, as the case might be; and,
consequently, that it could not be written by any person who died before
there was a Congress in the one country, or a Convention in the other.

Nothing is more frequent, as well in history as in conversation, than
to refer to a fact in the room of a date: it is most natural so to do,
because a fact fixes itself in the memory better than a date; secondly,
because the fact includes the date, and serves to give two ideas at
once; and this manner of speaking by circumstances implies as positively
that the fact alluded to is past, as if it was so expressed. When a
person in speaking upon any matter, says, it was before I was married,
or before my son was born, or before I went to America, or before I went
to France, it is absolutely understood, and intended to be understood,
that he has been married, that he has had a son, that he has been in
America, or been in France. Language does not admit of using this mode
of expression in any other sense; and whenever such an expression is
found anywhere, it can only be understood in the sense in which only it
could have been used.

The passage, therefore, that I have quoted--that "these are the kings
that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the children
of Israel," could only have been written after the first king began to
reign over them; and consequently that the book of Genesis, so far from
having been written by Moses, could not have been written till the time
of Saul at least. This is the positive sense of the passage; but the
expression, any king, implies more kings than one, at least it implies
two, and this will carry it to the time of David; and, if taken in
a general sense, it carries itself through all times of the Jewish
monarchy.

Had we met with this verse in any part of the Bible that professed to
have been written after kings began to reign in Israel, it would have
been impossible not to have seen the application of it. It happens then
that this is the case; the two books of Chronicles, which give a history
of all the kings of Israel, are professedly, as well as in fact, written
after the Jewish monarchy began; and this verse that I have quoted,
and all the remaining verses of Genesis xxxvi. are, word for word, In 1
Chronicles i., beginning at the 43d verse.

It was with consistency that the writer of the Chronicles could say as
he has said, 1 Chron. i. 43, "These are the kings that reigned in Edom,
before there reigned any king ever the children of Israel," because he
was going to give, and has given, a list of the kings that had reigned
in Israel; but as it is impossible that the same expression could have
been used before that period, it is as certain as any thing can be
proved from historical language, that this part of Genesis is taken from
Chronicles, and that Genesis is not so old as Chronicles, and probably
not so old as the book of Homer, or as AEsop's Fables; admitting Homer
to have been, as the tables of chronology state, contemporary with
David or Solomon, and AEsop to have lived about the end of the Jewish
monarchy.

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which
only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there
remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and
traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies. The story of
Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the
Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account
of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the
immortality of the giants of the Mythology.

Besides, the character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most
horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the
wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the
pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation,
committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the
history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering
excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): "And
Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation,
went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the
officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains
over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them,
'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children
of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against
the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the
congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the
little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with
him; but all the women-children that have not known a man by lying with
him, keep alive for Yourselves.'"

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have
disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than
Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to
massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child
murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of
an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of
those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a
brother, and what will be their feelings? It is in vain that we attempt
to impose upon nature, for nature will have her course, and the religion
that tortures all her social ties is a false religion.

After this detestable order, follows an account of the plunder taken,
and the manner of dividing it; and here it is that the profaneings of
priestly hypocrisy increases the catalogue of crimes. Verse 37, "And the
Lord's tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen;
and the beeves were thirty and six thousand, of which the Lord's tribute
was threescore and twelve; and the asses were thirty thousand, of which
the Lord's tribute was threescore and one; and the persons were sixteen
thousand, of which the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." In short, the
matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the
Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear;
for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number
of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses was
thirty-two thousand.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended
word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for
granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit
themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the
benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to
believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another
thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be
greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders
of the Almighty!

But to return to my subject, that of showing that Moses is not the
author of the books ascribed to him, and that the Bible is spurious.
The two instances I have already given would be sufficient, without any
additional evidence, to invalidate the authenticity of any book that
pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters
it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them
unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not
even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are
in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a
man could prophecy in the preter tense.

But there are many other passages scattered throughout those books that
unite in the same point of evidence. It is said in Exodus, (another of
the books ascribed to Moses,) xvi. 35: "And the children of Israel did
eat manna until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna until
they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan."

Whether the children of Israel ate manna or not, or what manna was, or
whether it was anything more than a kind of fungus or small mushroom, or
other vegetable substance common to that part of the country, makes no
part of my argument; all that I mean to show is, that it is not Moses
that could write this account, because the account extends itself beyond
the life time of Moses. Moses, according to the Bible, (but it is such
a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to
believe, or whether any) died in the wilderness, and never came upon
the borders of 'the land of Canaan; and consequently, it could not be
he that said what the children of Israel did, or what they ate when they
came there. This account of eating manna, which they tell us was written
by Moses, extends itself to the time of Joshua, the successor of
Moses, as appears by the account given in the book of Joshua, after
the children of Israel had passed the river Jordan, and came into the
borders of the land of Canaan. Joshua, v. 12: "And the manna ceased on
the morrow, after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither
had the children of Israel manna any more, but they did eat of the fruit
of the land of Canaan that year."

But a more remarkable instance than this occurs in Deuteronomy; which,
while it shows that Moses could not be the writer of that book, shows
also the fabulous notions that prevailed at that time about giants' In
Deuteronomy iii. 11, among the conquests said to be made by Moses, is
an account of the taking of Og, king of Bashan: "For only Og, king
of Bashan, remained of the race of giants; behold, his bedstead was a
bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine
cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after
the cubit of a man." A cubit is 1 foot 9 888/1000 inches; the length
therefore of the bed was 16 feet 4 inches, and the breadth 7 feet 4
inches: thus much for this giant's bed. Now for the historical part,
which, though the evidence is not so direct and positive as in the
former cases, is nevertheless very presumable and corroborating
evidence, and is better than the best evidence on the contrary side.

The writer, by way of proving the existence of this giant, refers to his
bed, as an ancient relick, and says, is it not in Rabbath (or Rabbah)
of the children of Ammon? meaning that it is; for such is frequently the
bible method of affirming a thing. But it could not be Moses that said
this, because Moses could know nothing about Rabbah, nor of what was in
it. Rabbah was not a city belonging to this giant king, nor was it one
of the cities that Moses took. The knowledge therefore that this bed was
at Rabbah, and of the particulars of its dimensions, must be referred to
the time when Rabbah was taken, and this was not till four hundred
years after the death of Moses; for which, see 2 Sam. xii. 26: "And Joab
[David's general] fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and
took the royal city," etc.

As I am not undertaking to point out all the contradictions in time,
place, and circumstance that abound in the books ascribed to Moses, and
which prove to demonstration that those books could not be written by
Moses, nor in the time of Moses, I proceed to the book of Joshua, and
to shew that Joshua is not the author of that book, and that it is
anonymous and without authority. The evidence I shall produce is
contained in the book itself: I will not go out of the Bible for proof
against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is
always good against itself.

Joshua, according to Joshua i., was the immediate successor of Moses; he
was, moreover, a military man, which Moses was not; and he continued as
chief of the people of Israel twenty-five years; that is, from the time
that Moses died, which, according to the Bible chronology, was B.C.
1451, until B.C. 1426, when, according to the same chronology, Joshua
died. If, therefore, we find in this book, said to have been written
by Joshua, references to facts done after the death of Joshua, it is
evidence that Joshua could not be the author; and also that the book
could not have been written till after the time of the latest fact
which it records. As to the character of the book, it is horrid; it is
a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal as those
recorded of his predecessor in villainy and hypocrisy, Moses; and the
blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to
the orders of the Almighty.

In the first place, the book of Joshua, as is the case in the preceding
books, is written in the third person; it is the historian of Joshua
that speaks, for it would have been absurd and vainglorious that Joshua
should say of himself, as is said of him in the last verse of the sixth
chapter, that "his fame was noised throughout all the country."--I now
come more immediately to the proof.

In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said "And Israel served the Lord all the days
of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua." Now,
in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people
had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written
by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the
elders that out-lived Joshua.

There are several passages of a general meaning with respect to time,
scattered throughout the book of Joshua, that carries the time in which
the book was written to a distance from the time of Joshua, but without
marking by exclusion any particular time, as in the passage above
quoted. In that passage, the time that intervened between the death
of Joshua and the death of the elders is excluded descriptively and
absolutely, and the evidence substantiates that the book could not have
been written till after the death of the last.

But though the passages to which I allude, and which I am going to
quote, do not designate any particular time by exclusion, they imply a
time far more distant from the days of Joshua than is contained between
the death of Joshua and the death of the elders. Such is the passage, x.
14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon,
and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale
only fit to amuse children) [NOTE: This tale of the sun standing still
upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of
those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have
happened without being known all over the world. One half would have
wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and
the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation
in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand
still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and
that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well
enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, The stars
in their courses fought against Sisera; but it is inferior to the
figurative declaration of Mahomet to the persons who came to expostulate
with him on his goings on, Wert thou, said he, to come to me with the
sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my
career. For Joshua to have exceeded Mahomet, he should have put the sun
and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his
dark lanthorn, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want
them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it
is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes
the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime
again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews
the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have
stood still.--Author.] the passage says: "And there was no day like
that, before it, nor after it, that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a
man."

The time implied by the expression after it, that is, after that day,
being put in comparison with all the time that passed before it, must,
in order to give any expressive signification to the passage, mean a
great length of time:--for example, it would have been ridiculous to
have said so the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the
next year; to give therefore meaning to the passage, comparative with
the wonder it relates, and the prior time it alludes to, it must mean
centuries of years; less however than one would be trifling, and less
than two would be barely admissible.

A distant, but general time is also expressed in chapter viii.; where,
after giving an account of the taking the city of Ai, it is said, ver.
28th, "And Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, a desolation
unto this day;" and again, ver. 29, where speaking of the king of Ai,
whom Joshua had hanged, and buried at the entering of the gate, it is
said, "And he raised thereon a great heap of stones, which remaineth
unto this day," that is, unto the day or time in which the writer of the
book of Joshua lived. And again, in chapter x. where, after speaking of
the five kings whom Joshua had hanged on five trees, and then thrown in
a cave, it is said, "And he laid great stones on the cave's mouth, which
remain unto this very day."

In enumerating the several exploits of Joshua, and of the tribes, and
of the places which they conquered or attempted, it is said, xv. 63, "As
for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah
could not drive them out; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of
Judah AT JERUSALEM unto this day." The question upon this passage is, At
what time did the Jebusites and the children of Judah dwell together at
Jerusalem? As this matter occurs again in judges i. I shall reserve my
observations till I come to that part.

Having thus shewn from the book of Joshua itself, without any auxiliary
evidence whatever, that Joshua is not the author of that book, and
that it is anonymous, and consequently without authority, I proceed, as
before-mentioned, to the book of Judges.

The book of Judges is anonymous on the face of it; and, therefore, even
the pretence is wanting to call it the word of God; it has not so much
as a nominal voucher; it is altogether fatherless.

This book begins with the same expression as the book of Joshua. That of
Joshua begins, chap i. 1, Now after the death of Moses, etc., and this
of the Judges begins, Now after the death of Joshua, etc. This, and the
similarity of stile between the two books, indicate that they are the
work of the same author; but who he was, is altogether unknown; the only
point that the book proves is that the author lived long after the time
of Joshua; for though it begins as if it followed immediately after his
death, the second chapter is an epitome or abstract of the whole book,
which, according to the Bible chronology, extends its history through a
space of 306 years; that is, from the death of Joshua, B.C. 1426 to the
death of Samson, B.C. 1120, and only 25 years before Saul went to seek
his father's asses, and was made king. But there is good reason to
believe, that it was not written till the time of David, at least, and
that the book of Joshua was not written before the same time.

In Judges i., the writer, after announcing the death of Joshua, proceeds
to tell what happened between the children of Judah and the native
inhabitants of the land of Canaan. In this statement the writer, having
abruptly mentioned Jerusalem in the 7th verse, says immediately after,
in the 8th verse, by way of explanation, "Now the children of Judah had
fought against Jerusalem, and taken it;" consequently this book could
not have been written before Jerusalem had been taken. The reader will
recollect the quotation I have just before made from Joshua xv. 63,
where it said that the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at
Jerusalem at this day; meaning the time when the book of Joshua was
written.

The evidence I have already produced to prove that the books I have
hitherto treated of were not written by the persons to whom they are
ascribed, nor till many years after their death, if such persons ever
lived, is already so abundant, that I can afford to admit this passage
with less weight than I am entitled to draw from it. For the case is,
that so far as the Bible can be credited as an history, the city of
Jerusalem was not taken till the time of David; and consequently, that
the book of Joshua, and of Judges, were not written till after the
commencement of the reign of David, which was 370 years after the death
of Joshua.

The name of the city that was afterward called Jerusalem was originally
Jebus, or Jebusi, and was the capital of the Jebusites. The account of
David's taking this city is given in 2 Samuel, v. 4, etc.; also in 1
Chron. xiv. 4, etc. There is no mention in any part of the Bible that it
was ever taken before, nor any account that favours such an opinion.
It is not said, either in Samuel or in Chronicles, that they "utterly
destroyed men, women and children, that they left not a soul to
breathe," as is said of their other conquests; and the silence here
observed implies that it was taken by capitulation; and that the
Jebusites, the native inhabitants, continued to live in the place
after it was taken. The account therefore, given in Joshua, that "the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah" at Jerusalem at this day,
corresponds to no other time than after taking the city by David.

Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges,
is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling
story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling
country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. [The text of
Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine's words are likely to
convey.--Editor.] Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It
is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from
murder and rapine.

I come next to the two books of Samuel, and to shew that those books
were not written by Samuel, nor till a great length of time after
the death of Samuel; and that they are, like all the former books,
anonymous, and without authority.

To be convinced that these books have been written much later than the
time of Samuel, and consequently not by him, it is only necessary
to read the account which the writer gives of Saul going to seek his
father's asses, and of his interview with Samuel, of whom Saul went
to enquire about those lost asses, as foolish people now-a-days go to a
conjuror to enquire after lost things.

The writer, in relating this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, does
not tell it as a thing that had just then happened, but as an ancient
story in the time this writer lived; for he tells it in the language or
terms used at the time that Samuel lived, which obliges the writer to
explain the story in the terms or language used in the time the writer
lived.

Samuel, in the account given of him in the first of those books, chap.
ix. 13 called the seer; and it is by this term that Saul enquires after
him, ver. 11, "And as they [Saul and his servant] went up the hill to
the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water; and they
said unto them, Is the seer here?" Saul then went according to the
direction of these maidens, and met Samuel without knowing him, and said
unto him, ver. 18, "Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is? and
Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer."

As the writer of the book of Samuel relates these questions and answers,
in the language or manner of speaking used in the time they are said
to have been spoken, and as that manner of speaking was out of use when
this author wrote, he found it necessary, in order to make the story
understood, to explain the terms in which these questions and
answers are spoken; and he does this in the 9th verse, where he says,
"Before-time in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he
spake, Come let us go to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet,
was before-time called a seer." This proves, as I have before said, that
this story of Saul, Samuel, and the asses, was an ancient story at the
time the book of Samuel was written, and consequently that Samuel did
not write it, and that the book is without authenticity.

But if we go further into those books the evidence is still more
positive that Samuel is not the writer of them; for they relate things
that did not happen till several years after the death of Samuel. Samuel
died before Saul; for i Samuel, xxviii. tells, that Saul and the witch
of Endor conjured Samuel up after he was dead; yet the history of
matters contained in those books is extended through the remaining part
of Saul's life, and to the latter end of the life of David, who succeeded
Saul. The account of the death and burial of Samuel (a thing which he
could not write himself) is related in i Samuel xxv.; and the chronology
affixed to this chapter makes this to be B.C. 1060; yet the history of
this first book is brought down to B.C. 1056, that is, to the death of
Saul, which was not till four years after the death of Samuel.

The second book of Samuel begins with an account of things that did not
happen till four years after Samuel was dead; for it begins with the
reign of David, who succeeded Saul, and it goes on to the end of David's
reign, which was forty-three years after the death of Samuel; and,
therefore, the books are in themselves positive evidence that they were
not written by Samuel.

I have now gone through all the books in the first part of the Bible,
to which the names of persons are affixed, as being the authors of those
books, and which the church, styling itself the Christian church, have
imposed upon the world as the writings of Moses, Joshua and Samuel; and
I have detected and proved the falsehood of this imposition.--And now ye
priests, of every description, who have preached and written against the
former part of the 'Age of Reason,' what have ye to say? Will ye with
all this mass of evidence against you, and staring you in the face,
still have the assurance to march into your pulpits, and continue to
impose these books on your congregations, as the works of inspired
penmen and the word of God? when it is as evident as demonstration can
make truth appear, that the persons who ye say are the authors, are not
the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of
pretence have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud?
What have ye still to offer against the pure and moral religion of
deism, in support of your system of falsehood, idolatry, and pretended
revelation? Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible
is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and
children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend,
whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at
detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his
injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition,
or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the
horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The
evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this
work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it
wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquillize the minds
of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the
Almighty which priestcraft and the Bible had infused into their minds,
and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his
moral justice and benevolence.

I come now to the two books of Kings, and the two books of
Chronicles.--Those books are altogether historical, and are chiefly
confined to the lives and actions of the Jewish kings, who in general
were a parcel of rascals: but these are matters with which we have no
more concern than we have with the Roman emperors, or Homer's account of
the Trojan war. Besides which, as those books are anonymous, and as we
know nothing of the writer, or of his character, it is impossible for
us to know what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein.
Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable
and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which
distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world,
have rendered obsolete and uninteresting.

The chief use I shall make of those books will be that of comparing
them with each other, and with other parts of the Bible, to show the
confusion, contradiction, and cruelty in this pretended word of God.

The first book of Kings begins with the reign of Solomon, which,
according to the Bible chronology, was B.C. 1015; and the second
book ends B.C. 588, being a little after the reign of Zedekiah, whom
Nebuchadnezzar, after taking Jerusalem and conquering the Jews, carried
captive to Babylon. The two books include a space of 427 years.

The two books of Chronicles are an history of the same times, and in
general of the same persons, by another author; for it would be absurd
to suppose that the same author wrote the history twice over. The first
book of Chronicles (after giving the genealogy from Adam to Saul, which
takes up the first nine chapters) begins with the reign of David; and
the last book ends, as in the last book of Kings, soon, after the reign
of Zedekiah, about B.C. 588. The last two verses of the last chapter
bring the history 52 years more forward, that is, to 536. But these
verses do not belong to the book, as I shall show when I come to speak
of the book of Ezra.

The two books of Kings, besides the history of Saul, David, and Solomon,
who reigned over all Israel, contain an abstract of the lives of
seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and
of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation,
immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose
separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each
other.

These two books are little more than a history of assassinations,
treachery, and wars. The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed
themselves to practise on the Canaanites, whose country they had
savagely invaded, under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards
practised as furiously on each other. Scarcely half their kings died a
natural death, and in some instances whole families were destroyed
to secure possession to the successor, who, after a few years, and
sometimes only a few months, or less, shared the same fate. In 2 Kings
x., an account is given of two baskets full of children's heads, seventy
in number, being exposed at the entrance of the city; they were the
children of Ahab, and were murdered by the orders of Jehu, whom Elisha,
the pretended man of God, had anointed to be king over Israel, on
purpose to commit this bloody deed, and assassinate his predecessor. And
in the account of the reign of Menahem, one of the kings of Israel who
had murdered Shallum, who had reigned but one month, it is said, 2 Kings
xv. 16, that Menahem smote the city of Tiphsah, because they opened
not the city to him, and all the women therein that were with child he
ripped up.

Could we permit ourselves to suppose that the Almighty would distinguish
any nation of people by the name of his chosen people, we must suppose
that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of
the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and
cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,--a people who, corrupted by and
copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua,
Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the
face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness. If we will not
stubbornly shut our eyes and steel our hearts it is impossible not to
see, in spite of all that long-established superstition imposes upon the
mind, that the flattering appellation of his chosen people is no other
than a LIE which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to
cover the baseness of their own characters; and which Christian priests
sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe.

The two books of Chronicles are a repetition of the same crimes; but the
history is broken in several places, by the author leaving out the reign
of some of their kings; and in this, as well as in that of Kings, there
is such a frequent transition from kings of Judah to kings of Israel,
and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative
is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes
contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in
rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel,
Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead
in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of
Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth
year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then
king of Judah, Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat king of judah, began to
reign." That is, one chapter says Joram of Judah began to reign in the
second year of Joram of Israel; and the other chapter says, that Joram
of Israel began to reign in the fifth year of Joram of Judah.

Several of the most extraordinary matters related in one history, as
having happened during the reign of such or such of their kings, are not
to be found in the other, in relating the reign of the same king: for
example, the two first rival kings, after the death of Solomon, were
Rehoboam and Jeroboam; and in i Kings xii. and xiii. an account is given
of Jeroboam making an offering of burnt incense, and that a man, who
is there called a man of God, cried out against the altar (xiii. 2): "O
altar, altar! thus saith the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto
the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the
priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones
shall be burned upon thee." Verse 4: "And it came to pass, when king
Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the
altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar, saying, Lay
hold on him; and his hand which he put out against him dried up so that
he could not pull it again to him."

One would think that such an extraordinary case as this, (which is
spoken of as a judgement,) happening to the chief of one of the parties,
and that at the first moment of the separation of the Israelites into
two nations, would, if it,. had been true, have been recorded in both
histories. But though men, in later times, have believed all that the
prophets have said unto them, it does appear that those prophets, or
historians, disbelieved each other: they knew each other too well.

A long account also is given in Kings about Elijah. It runs through
several chapters, and concludes with telling, 2 Kings ii. 11, "And it
came to pass, as they (Elijah and Elisha) still went on, and talked,
that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire,
and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is,
makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he
say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book
of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that
this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed
them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over
in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying a
man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it happened that the
dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones
of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." The
story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he
revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these
stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the
present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of
romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.

But, however these two historians may differ from each other with
respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with
respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter
part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is
mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories are
speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and
those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even
their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible chronology,
they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of
them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of
such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests
and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be
accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about
them?

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward,
as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be
proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they
lived before Christ, according to the chronology affixed to the first
chapter of each of the books of the prophets; and also of the number of
years they lived before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:

TABLE of the Prophets, with the time in which they lived before Christ,
and also before the books of Kings and Chronicles were written:

                      Years     Years before
       NAMES.         before     Kings and     Observations.
                      Christ.   Chronicles.

  Isaiah............... 760      172            mentioned.


                                                (mentioned only in
  Jeremiah............. 629       41            the last [two] chapters
                                                of Chronicles.

  Ezekiel.............. 595        7            not mentioned.

  Daniel............... 607       19            not mentioned.

  Hosea................ 785       97            not mentioned.

  Joel................. 800      212            not mentioned.

  Amos................. 789      199            not mentioned.

  Obadiah.............. 789      199            not mentioned.

  Jonah................ 862      274            see the note.

  Micah................ 750      162            not mentioned.

  Nahum................ 713      125            not mentioned.

  Habakkuk............. 620       38            not mentioned.

  Zepbaniah............ 630       42            not mentioned.

Haggai Zechariah all three after the year 588 Medachi [NOTE In 2 Kings
xiv. 25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of
a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor
is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to
Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale.--Author.]

This table is either not very honourable for the Bible historians, or
not very honourable for the Bible prophets; and I leave to priests and
commentators, who are very learned in little things, to settle the point
of etiquette between the two; and to assign a reason, why the authors of
Kings and of Chronicles have treated those prophets, whom, in the former
part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have considered as poets, with as much
degrading silence as any historian of the present day would treat Peter
Pindar.

I have one more observation to make on the book of Chronicles; after
which I shall pass on to review the remaining books of the Bible.

In my observations on the book of Genesis, I have quoted a passage from
xxxvi. 31, which evidently refers to a time, after that kings began to
reign over the children of Israel; and I have shown that as this
verse is verbatim the same as in 1 Chronicles i. 43, where it stands
consistently with the order of history, which in Genesis it does not,
that the verse in Genesis, and a great part of the 36th chapter, have
been taken from Chronicles; and that the book of Genesis, though it is
placed first in the Bible, and ascribed to Moses, has been manufactured
by some unknown person, after the book of Chronicles was written, which
was not until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses.

The evidence I proceed by to substantiate this, is regular, and has in
it but two stages. First, as I have already stated, that the passage in
Genesis refers itself for time to Chronicles; secondly, that the book
of Chronicles, to which this passage refers itself, was not begun to be
written until at least eight hundred and sixty years after the time of
Moses. To prove this, we have only to look into 1 Chronicles iii. 15,
where the writer, in giving the genealogy of the descendants of
David, mentions Zedekiah; and it was in the time of Zedekiah that
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, B.C. 588, and consequently more than
860 years after Moses. Those who have superstitiously boasted of the
antiquity of the Bible, and particularly of the books ascribed to Moses,
have done it without examination, and without any other authority
than that of one credulous man telling it to another: for, so far as
historical and chronological evidence applies, the very first book in
the Bible is not so ancient as the book of Homer, by more than three
hundred years, and is about the same age with AEsop's Fables.

I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think
it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous
notions of honour; and with respect to AEsop, though the moral is in
general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable
does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral
does good to the judgment.

Having now dismissed Kings and Chronicles, I come to the next in course,
the book of Ezra.

As one proof, among others I shall produce to shew the disorder in which
this pretended word of God, the Bible, has been put together, and the
uncertainty of who the authors were, we have only to look at the first
three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind
of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra
should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2
Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not
know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word
of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished,
the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made
a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing,
saying.

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to
build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among
you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up.
***

First Three Verses of Ezra.

Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of
the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred
up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation
throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given
me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an
house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and
let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of
the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the
middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying to what
place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in
different books, show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance
in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compilers of
it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for
believing what they have done. [NOTE I observed, as I passed along,
several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking
them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work;
such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one
year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him
three thousand men," &c. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned
one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor
say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is,
besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very
next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was
impossible not to have reigned one.

Another instance occurs in Joshua v. where the writer tells us a story
of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter
calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and
without any conclusion. The story is as follows:--Ver. 13. "And it came
to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and
looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword
drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou
for us, or for our adversaries?" Verse 14, "And he said, Nay; but as
captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his
face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord
unto his servant?" Verse 15, "And the captain of the Lord's host said
unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon
thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so."--And what then? nothing: for
here the story ends, and the chapter too.

Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told
by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua's pretended mission from
God, and the compilers of the Bible, not perceiving the design of
the story, have told it as a serious matter. As a story of humour and
ridicule it has a great deal of point; for it pompously introduces an
angel in the figure of a man, with a drawn sword in his hand, before
whom Joshua falls on his face to the earth, and worships (which is
contrary to their second commandment;) and then, this most important
embassy from heaven ends in telling Joshua to pull off his shoe. It
might as well have told him to pull up his breeches.

It is certain, however, that the Jews did not credit every thing their
leaders told them, as appears from the cavalier manner in which they
speak of Moses, when he was gone into the mount. As for this Moses, say
they, we wot not what is become of him. Exod. xxxii. 1.--Author.

The only thing that has any appearance of certainty in the book of Ezra
is the time in which it was written, which was immediately after the
return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, about B.C. 536. Ezra
(who, according to the Jewish commentators, is the same person as is
called Esdras in the Apocrypha) was one of the persons who returned, and
who, it is probable, wrote the account of that affair. Nebemiah, whose
book follows next to Ezra, was another of the returned persons; and who,
it is also probable, wrote the account of the same affair, in the book
that bears his name. But those accounts are nothing to us, nor to any
other person, unless it be to the Jews, as a part of the history of
their nation; and there is just as much of the word of God in those
books as there is in any of the histories of France, or Rapin's history
of England, or the history of any other country.

But even in matters of historical record, neither of those writers are
to be depended upon. In Ezra ii., the writer gives a list of the tribes
and families, and of the precise number of souls of each, that returned
from Babylon to Jerusalem; and this enrolment of the persons so returned
appears to have been one of the principal objects for writing the
book; but in this there is an error that destroys the intention of the
undertaking.

The writer begins his enrolment in the following manner (ii. 3): "The
children of Parosh, two thousand one hundred seventy and four." Ver. 4,
"The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two." And in this
manner he proceeds through all the families; and in the 64th verse, he
makes a total, and says, the whole congregation together was forty and
two thousand three hundred and threescore.

But whoever will take the trouble of casting up the several particulars,
will find that the total is but 29,818; so that the error is 12,542.
What certainty then can there be in the Bible for any thing?

[Here Mr. Paine includes the long list of numbers from the Bible of all
the children listed and the total thereof. This can be had directly from
the Bible.]

Nehemiah, in like manner, gives a list of the returned families, and
of the number of each family. He begins as in Ezra, by saying (vii. 8):
"The children of Parosh, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two;"
and so on through all the families. (The list differs in several of the
particulars from that of Ezra.) In ver. 66, Nehemiah makes a total, and
says, as Ezra had said, "The whole congregation together was forty and
two thousand three hundred and threescore." But the particulars of this
list make a total but of 31,089, so that the error here is 11,271. These
writers may do well enough for Bible-makers, but not for any thing where
truth and exactness is necessary.

The next book in course is the book of Esther. If Madam Esther thought
it any honour to offer herself as a kept mistress to Ahasuerus, or as a
rival to Queen Vashti, who had refused to come to a drunken king in the
midst of a drunken company, to be made a show of, (for the account
says, they had been drinking seven days, and were merry,) let Esther and
Mordecai look to that, it is no business of ours, at least it is none of
mine; besides which, the story has a great deal the appearance of being
fabulous, and is also anonymous. I pass on to the book of Job.

The book of Job differs in character from all the books we have hitherto
passed over. Treachery and murder make no part of this book; it is the
meditations of a mind strongly impressed with the vicissitudes of human
life, and by turns sinking under, and struggling against the pressure.
It is a highly wrought composition, between willing submission and
involuntary discontent; and shows man, as he sometimes is, more disposed
to be resigned than he is capable of being. Patience has but a small
share in the character of the person of whom the book treats; on the
contrary, his grief is often impetuous; but he still endeavours to keep
a guard upon it, and seems determined, in the midst of accumulating
ills, to impose upon himself the hard duty of contentment.

I have spoken in a respectful manner of the book of Job in the former
part of the 'Age of Reason,' but without knowing at that time what I
have learned since; which is, that from all the evidence that can be
collected, the book of Job does not belong to the Bible.

I have seen the opinion of two Hebrew commentators, Abenezra and
Spinoza, upon this subject; they both say that the book of Job carries
no internal evidence of being an Hebrew book; that the genius of the
composition, and the drama of the piece, are not Hebrew; that it has
been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that the author
of the book was a Gentile; that the character represented under the name
of Satan (which is the first and only time this name is mentioned in
the Bible) [In a later work Paine notes that in "the Bible" (by which
he always means the Old Testament alone) the word Satan occurs also in 1
Chron. xxi. 1, and remarks that the action there ascribed to Satan is
in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, attributed to Jehovah ("Essay on Dreams"). In these
places, however, and in Ps. cix. 6, Satan means "adversary," and is so
translated (A.S. version) in 2 Sam. xix. 22, and 1 Kings v. 4, xi. 25.
As a proper name, with the article, Satan appears in the Old Testament
only in Job and in Zech. iii. 1, 2. But the authenticity of the passage
in Zechariah has been questioned, and it may be that in finding the
proper name of Satan in Job alone, Paine was following some opinion
met with in one of the authorities whose comments are condensed in his
paragraph.--Editor.] does not correspond to any Hebrew idea; and that
the two convocations which the Deity is supposed to have made of those
whom the poem calls sons of God, and the familiarity which this supposed
Satan is stated to have with the Deity, are in the same case.

It may also be observed, that the book shows itself to be the production
of a mind cultivated in science, which the Jews, so far from being
famous for, were very ignorant of. The allusions to objects of natural
philosophy are frequent and strong, and are of a different cast to any
thing in the books known to be Hebrew. The astronomical names, Pleiades,
Orion, and Arcturus, are Greek and not Hebrew names, and it does not
appear from any thing that is to be found in the Bible that the Jews
knew any thing of astronomy, or that they studied it, they had no
translation of those names into their own language, but adopted the
names as they found them in the poem. [Paine's Jewish critic, David
Levi, fastened on this slip ("Defence of the Old Testament," 1797, p.
152). In the original the names are Ash (Arcturus), Kesil' (Orion),
Kimah' (Pleiades), though the identifications of the constellations in
the A.S.V. have been questioned.--Editor.]

That the Jews did translate the literary productions of the Gentile
nations into the Hebrew language, and mix them with their own, is not a
matter of doubt; Proverbs xxxi. i, is an evidence of this: it is there
said, The word of king Lemuel, the prophecy which his mother taught him.
This verse stands as a preface to the proverbs that follow, and which
are not the proverbs of Solomon, but of Lemuel; and this Lemuel was not
one of the kings of Israel, nor of Judah, but of some other country, and
consequently a Gentile. The Jews however have adopted his proverbs; and
as they cannot give any account who the author of the book of Job was,
nor how they came by the book, and as it differs in character from the
Hebrew writings, and stands totally unconnected with every other
book and chapter in the Bible before it and after it, it has all the
circumstantial evidence of being originally a book of the Gentiles.
[The prayer known by the name of Agur's Prayer, in Proverbs
xxx.,--immediately preceding the proverbs of Lemuel,--and which is the
only sensible, well-conceived, and well-expressed prayer in the Bible,
has much the appearance of being a prayer taken from the Gentiles.
The name of Agur occurs on no other occasion than this; and he is
introduced, together with the prayer ascribed to him, in the same
manner, and nearly in the same words, that Lemuel and his proverbs are
introduced in the chapter that follows. The first verse says, "The words
of Agur, the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy:" here the word prophecy
is used with the same application it has in the following chapter of
Lemuel, unconnected with anything of prediction. The prayer of Agur is
in the 8th and 9th verses, "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give
me neither riches nor poverty, but feed me with food convenient for me;
lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor
and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." This has not any of the
marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when
they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance,
or riches.--Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in
these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised
version.--The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the
officers of Excise, 1772.--Editor.]

The Bible-makers, and those regulators of time, the Bible chronologists,
appear to have been at a loss where to place and how to dispose of
the book of Job; for it contains no one historical circumstance, nor
allusion to any, that might serve to determine its place in the Bible.
But it would not have answered the purpose of these men to have informed
the world of their ignorance; and, therefore, they have affixed it to
the aera of B.C. 1520, which is during the time the Israelites were in
Egypt, and for which they have just as much authority and no more than
I should have for saying it was a thousand years before that period. The
probability however is, that it is older than any book in the Bible; and
it is the only one that can be read without indignation or disgust.

We know nothing of what the ancient Gentile world (as it is called) was
before the time of the Jews, whose practice has been to calumniate and
blacken the character of all other nations; and it is from the Jewish
accounts that we have learned to call them heathens. But, as far as
we know to the contrary, they were a just and moral people, and not
addicted, like the Jews, to cruelty and revenge, but of whose profession
of faith we are unacquainted. It appears to have been their custom
to personify both virtue and vice by statues and images, as is done
now-a-days both by statuary and by painting; but it does not follow from
this that they worshipped them any more than we do.--I pass on to the
book of,

Psalms, of which it is not necessary to make much observation. Some of
them are moral, and others are very revengeful; and the greater part
relates to certain local circumstances of the Jewish nation at the time
they were written, with which we have nothing to do. It is, however,
an error or an imposition to call them the Psalms of David; they are a
collection, as song-books are now-a-days, from different song-writers,
who lived at different times. The 137th Psalm could not have been
written till more than 400 years after the time of David, because it
is written in commemoration of an event, the captivity of the Jews in
Babylon, which did not happen till that distance of time. "By the rivers
of Babylon we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged
our harps upon the willows, in the midst thereof; for there they that
carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, sing us one
of the songs of Zion." As a man would say to an American, or to a
Frenchman, or to an Englishman, sing us one of your American songs, or
your French songs, or your English songs. This remark, with respect to
the time this psalm was written, is of no other use than to show (among
others already mentioned) the general imposition the world has been
under with respect to the authors of the Bible. No regard has been paid
to time, place, and circumstance; and the names of persons have been
affixed to the several books which it was as impossible they should
write, as that a man should walk in procession at his own funeral.

The Book of Proverbs. These, like the Psalms, are a collection, and that
from authors belonging to other nations than those of the Jewish nation,
as I have shewn in the observations upon the book of Job; besides which,
some of the Proverbs ascribed to Solomon did not appear till two hundred
and fifty years after the death of Solomon; for it is said in xxv. i,
"These are also proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, king of
Judah, copied out." It was two hundred and fifty years from the time of
Solomon to the time of Hezekiah. When a man is famous and his name is
abroad he is made the putative father of things he never said or did;
and this, most probably, has been the case with Solomon. It appears to
have been the fashion of that day to make proverbs, as it is now to
make jest-books, and father them upon those who never saw them. [A "Tom
Paine's Jest Book" had appeared in London with little or nothing of
Paine in it.--Editor.]

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon,
and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the
solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who
looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity!
A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most
probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly
pointed in the original. [Those that look out of the window shall
be darkened, is an obscure figure in translation for loss of
sight.--Author.] From what is transmitted to us of the character of
Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy.
He lived fast, and died, tired of the world, at the age of fifty-eight
years.

Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than
none; and, however it may carry with it the appearance of heightened
enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no
point to fix upon; divided love is never happy. This was the case
with Solomon; and if he could not, with all his pretensions to wisdom,
discover it beforehand, he merited, unpitied, the mortification he
afterwards endured. In this point of view, his preaching is unnecessary,
because, to know the consequences, it is only necessary to know the
cause. Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines would have
stood in place of the whole book. It was needless after this to say that
all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive
happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to
objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that
we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is
miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little
better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical
science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of
the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those
things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to
admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,
and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was
ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was
always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease
to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for
death.

Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled
fanaticism has called divine.--The compilers of the Bible have placed
these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have
affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according
to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then
forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and
the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better,
and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less
inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was
then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.

It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did
write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which
he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included
those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he
says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers,
and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical
instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii), "all was vanity and
vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but by
halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us
the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining
part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and
ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations
upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the
last three lived within the time the books of Kings and Chronicles were
written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the history of
those books. I shall begin with those two, reserving, what I have to say
on the general character of the men called prophets to another part of
the work.

Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah,
will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put
together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short
historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or
three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of
extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a
school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff;
it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste
that is properly called prose run mad.

The historical part begins at chapter xxxvi., and is continued to the
end of chapter xxxix. It relates some matters that are said to have
passed during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah, at which time Isaiah
lived. This fragment of history begins and ends abruptly; it has not the
least connection with the chapter that precedes it, nor with that which
follows it, nor with any other in the book. It is probable that
Isaiah wrote this fragment himself, because he was an actor in the
circumstances it treats of; but except this part there are scarcely two
chapters that have any connection with each other. One is entitled, at
the beginning of the first verse, the burden of Babylon; another, the
burden of Moab; another, the burden of Damascus; another, the burden of
Egypt; another, the burden of the Desert of the Sea; another, the burden
of the Valley of Vision: as you would say the story of the Knight of the
Burning Mountain, the story of Cinderella, or the glassen slipper, the
story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, etc., etc.


I have already shown, in the instance of the last two verses of 2
Chronicles, and the first three in Ezra, that the compilers of the Bible
mixed and confounded the writings of different authors with each other;
which alone, were there no other cause, is sufficient to destroy the
authenticity of an compilation, because it is more than presumptive
evidence that the compilers are ignorant who the authors were. A very
glaring instance of this occurs in the book ascribed to Isaiah: the
latter part of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, so far
from having been written by Isaiah, could only have been written by some
person who lived at least an hundred and fifty years after Isaiah was
dead.

These chapters are a compliment to Cyrus, who permitted the Jews to
return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, to rebuild Jerusalem
and the temple, as is stated in Ezra. The last verse of the 44th
chapter, and the beginning of the 45th [Isaiah] are in the following
words: "That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all
my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built; and to
the temple thy foundations shall be laid: thus saith the Lord to his
enointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations
before him, and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the
two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before
thee," etc.

What audacity of church and priestly ignorance it is to impose this book
upon the world as the writing of Isaiah, when Isaiah, according to their
own chronology, died soon after the death of Hezekiah, which was
B.C. 698; and the decree of Cyrus, in favour of the Jews returning to
Jerusalem, was, according to the same chronology, B.C. 536; which is a
distance of time between the two of 162 years. I do not suppose that the
compilers of the Bible made these books, but rather that they picked up
some loose, anonymous essays, and put them together under the names
of such authors as best suited their purpose. They have encouraged the
imposition, which is next to inventing it; for it was impossible but
they must have observed it.

When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making
every part of this romantic book of school-boy's eloquence bend to the
monstrous idea of a Son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a
virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them
of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of
superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they
could have. The head of every chapter, and the top of every page, are
blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church, that the unwary reader
might suck in the error before he began to read.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Isa. vii. I4), has been
interpreted to mean the person called Jesus Christ, and his mother Mary,
and has been echoed through christendom for more than a thousand years;
and such has been the rage of this opinion, that scarcely a spot in
it but has been stained with blood and marked with desolation in
consequence of it. Though it is not my intention to enter into
controversy on subjects of this kind, but to confine myself to show
that the Bible is spurious,--and thus, by taking away the foundation, to
overthrow at once the whole structure of superstition raised thereon,--I
will however stop a moment to expose the fallacious application of this
passage.

Whether Isaiah was playing a trick with Ahaz, king of Judah, to whom
this passage is spoken, is no business of mine; I mean only to show
the misapplication of the passage, and that it has no more reference
to Christ and his mother, than it has to me and my mother. The story is
simply this:

The king of Syria and the king of Israel (I have already mentioned that
the Jews were split into two nations, one of which was called Judah, the
capital of which was Jerusalem, and the other Israel) made war jointly
against Ahaz, king of Judah, and marched their armies towards Jerusalem.
Ahaz and his people became alarmed, and the account says (Is. vii. 2),
Their hearts were moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the
wind.

In this situation of things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and
assures him in the name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the
prophets) that these two kings should not succeed against him; and to
satisfy Ahaz that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign.
This, the account says, Ahaz declined doing; giving as a reason that he
would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker, says,
ver. 14, "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son;" and the 16th verse says, "And
before this child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,
the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest [meaning Syria and the kingdom
of Israel] shall be forsaken of both her kings." Here then was the sign,
and the time limited for the completion of the assurance or promise;
namely, before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the
good.

Isaiah having committed himself thus far, it became necessary to him,
in order to avoid the imputation of being a false prophet, and the
consequences thereof, to take measures to make this sign appear. It
certainly was not a difficult thing, in any time of the world, to find
a girl with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand; for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day were any
more to be trusted than the priests of this: be that, however, as it
may, he says in the next chapter, ver. 2, "And I took unto me faithful
witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of
Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she conceived and bare
a son."

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this
virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the
book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in
later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and
have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus Christ;
begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of
a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a
virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory
which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as
fabulous and as false as God is true. [In Is. vii. 14, it is said that
the child should be called Immanuel; but this name was not given to
either of the children, otherwise than as a character, which the word
signifies. That of the prophetess was called Maher-shalalhash-baz, and
that of Mary was called Jesus.--Author.]

But to show the imposition and falsehood of Isaiah we have only to
attend to the sequel of this story; which, though it is passed over in
silence in the book of Isaiah, is related in 2 Chronicles, xxviii;
and which is, that instead of these two kings failing in their attempt
against Ahaz, king of Judah, as Isaiah had pretended to foretel in the
name of the Lord, they succeeded: Ahaz was defeated and destroyed; an
hundred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jerusalem
was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons and daughters
carried into captivity. Thus much for this lying prophet and imposter
Isaiah, and the book of falsehoods that bears his name. I pass on to the
book of Jeremiah. This prophet, as he is called, lived in the time that
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, in the reign of Zedekiah, the last
king of Judah; and the suspicion was strong against him that he was
a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezzar. Every thing relating to
Jeremiah shows him to have been a man of an equivocal character: in
his metaphor of the potter and the clay, (ch. xviii.) he guards his
prognostications in such a crafty manner as always to leave himself a
door to escape by, in case the event should be contrary to what he had
predicted. In the 7th and 8th verses he makes the Almighty to say,
"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and destroy it, if that nation,
against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent me
of the evil that I thought to do unto them." Here was a proviso against
one side of the case: now for the other side. Verses 9 and 10, "At what
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to
build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not
my voice, then I will repent me of the good wherewith I said I would
benefit them." Here is a proviso against the other side; and, according
to this plan of prophesying, a prophet could never be wrong, however
mistaken the Almighty might be. This sort of absurd subterfuge, and
this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is
consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

As to the authenticity of the book, it is only necessary to read it in
order to decide positively that, though some passages recorded therein
may have been spoken by Jeremiah, he is not the author of the book. The
historical parts, if they can be called by that name, are in the most
confused condition; the same events are several times repeated, and that
in a manner different, and sometimes in contradiction to each other;
and this disorder runs even to the last chapter, where the history, upon
which the greater part of the book has been employed, begins anew, and
ends abruptly. The book has all the appearance of being a medley of
unconnected anecdotes respecting persons and things of that time,
collected together in the same rude manner as if the various and
contradictory accounts that are to be found in a bundle of newspapers,
respecting persons and things of the present day, were put together
without date, order, or explanation. I will give two or three examples
of this kind.

It appears, from the account of chapter xxxvii. that the army of
Nebuchadnezzer, which is called the army of the Chaldeans, had besieged
Jerusalem some time; and on their hearing that the army of Pharaoh of
Egypt was marching against them, they raised the siege and retreated for
a time. It may here be proper to mention, in order to understand this
confused history, that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged and taken Jerusalem
during the reign of Jehoakim, the redecessor of Zedekiah; and that it
was Nebuchadnezzar who had make Zedekiah king, or rather viceroy; and
that this second siege, of which the book of Jeremiah treats, was in
consequence of the revolt of Zedekiah against Nebuchadnezzar. This
will in some measure account for the suspicion that affixes
itself to Jeremiah of being a traitor, and in the interest of
Nebuchadnezzar,--whom Jeremiah calls, xliii. 10, the servant of God.

Chapter xxxvii. 11-13, says, "And it came to pass, that, when the army
of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem, for fear of Pharaoh's
army, that Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem, to go (as this account
states) into the land of Benjamin, to separate himself thence in the
midst of the people; and when he was in the gate of Benjamin a captain
of the ward was there, whose name was Irijah... and he took Jeremiah the
prophet, saying, Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans; then Jeremiah said,
It is false; I fall not away to the Chaldeans." Jeremiah being thus
stopt and accused, was, after being examined, committed to prison, on
suspicion of being a traitor, where he remained, as is stated in the
last verse of this chapter.

But the next chapter gives an account of the imprisonment of Jeremiah,
which has no connection with this account, but ascribes his imprisonment
to another circumstance, and for which we must go back to chapter
xxi. It is there stated, ver. 1, that Zedekiah sent Pashur the son of
Malchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah the priest, to Jeremiah,
to enquire of him concerning Nebuchadnezzar, whose army was then before
Jerusalem; and Jeremiah said to them, ver. 8, "Thus saith the Lord,
Behold I set before you the way of life, and the way of death; he that
abideth in this city shall die by the sword and by the famine, and by
the pestilence; but he that goeth out and falleth to the Chaldeans that
besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey."

This interview and conference breaks off abruptly at the end of the 10th
verse of chapter xxi.; and such is the disorder of this book that we
have to pass over sixteen chapters upon various subjects, in order to
come at the continuation and event of this conference; and this brings
us to the first verse of chapter xxxviii., as I have just mentioned. The
chapter opens with saying, "Then Shaphatiah, the son of Mattan, Gedaliah
the son of Pashur, and Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashur the son of
Malchiah, (here are more persons mentioned than in chapter xxi.) heard
the words that Jeremiah spoke unto all the people, saying, Thus saith
the Lord, He that remaineth in this city, shall die by the sword, by
famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldeans
shall live; for he shall have his life for a prey, and shall live";
[which are the words of the conference;] therefore, (say they to
Zedekiah,) "We beseech thee, let this man be put to death, for thus he
weakeneth the hands of the men of war that remain in this city, and the
hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto them; for this man
seeketh not the welfare of the people, but the hurt:" and at the 6th
verse it is said, "Then they took Jeremiah, and put him into the dungeon
of Malchiah."

These two accounts are different and contradictory. The one ascribes his
imprisonment to his attempt to escape out of the city; the other to his
preaching and prophesying in the city; the one to his being seized by
the guard at the gate; the other to his being accused before Zedekiah
by the conferees. [I observed two chapters in I Samuel (xvi. and xvii.)
that contradict each other with respect to David, and the manner he
became acquainted with Saul; as Jeremiah xxxvii. and xxxviii. contradict
each other with respect to the cause of Jeremiah's imprisonment.

In 1 Samuel, xvi., it is said, that an evil spirit of God troubled Saul,
and that his servants advised him (as a remedy) "to seek out a man who
was a cunning player upon the harp." And Saul said, ver. 17, "Provide me
now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one
of his servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse, the
Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty man, and a man of
war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with
him; wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David,
thy son. And (verse 21) David came to Saul, and stood before him, and
he loved him greatly, and he became his armour-bearer; and when the
evil spirit from God was upon Saul, (verse 23) David took his harp, and
played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and was well."

But the next chapter (xvii.) gives an account, all different to this, of
the manner that Saul and David became acquainted. Here it is ascribed
to David's encounter with Goliah, when David was sent by his father to
carry provision to his brethren in the camp. In the 55th verse of
this chapter it is said, "And when Saul saw David go forth against the
Philistine (Goliah) he said to Abner, the captain of the host, Abner,
whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, 0 king, I
cannot tell. And the king said, Enquire thou whose son the stripling is.
And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took
him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his
hand; and Saul said unto him, Whose son art thou, thou young man? And
David answered, I am the son of thy servant, Jesse, the Betblehemite,"
These two accounts belie each other, because each of them supposes Saul
and David not to have known each other before. This book, the Bible, is
too ridiculous for criticism.--Author.]

In the next chapter (Jer. xxxix.) we have another instance of the
disordered state of this book; for notwithstanding the siege of the
city by Nebuchadnezzar has been the subject of several of the preceding
chapters, particularly xxxvii. and xxxviii., chapter xxxix. begins as
if not a word had been said upon the subject, and as if the reader was
still to be informed of every particular respecting it; for it begins
with saying, ver. 1, "In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in
the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army,
against Jerusalem, and besieged it," etc.

But the instance in the last chapter (lii.) is still more glaring; for
though the story has been told over and over again, this chapter still
supposes the reader not to know anything of it, for it begins by saying,
ver. i, "Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign,
and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was
Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (Ver. 4,) "And it came
to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, that
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against
Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built forts against it," etc.

It is not possible that any one man, and more particularly Jeremiah,
could have been the writer of this book. The errors are such as could
not have been committed by any person sitting down to compose a work.
Were I, or any other man, to write in such a disordered manner, no
body would read what was written, and every body would suppose that the
writer was in a state of insanity. The only way, therefore, to
account for the disorder is, that the book is a medley of detached
unauthenticated anecdotes, put together by some stupid book-maker, under
the name of Jeremiah; because many of them refer to him, and to the
circumstances of the times he lived in.

Of the duplicity, and of the false predictions of Jeremiah, I shall
mention two instances, and then proceed to review the remainder of the
Bible.

It appears from chapter xxxviii. that when Jeremiah was in prison,
Zedekiah sent for him, and at this interview, which was private,
Jeremiah pressed it strongly on Zedekiah to surrender himself to the
enemy. "If," says he, (ver. 17,) "thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the
king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live," etc. Zedekiah was
apprehensive that what passed at this conference should be known; and
he said to Jeremiah, (ver. 25,) "If the princes [meaning those of Judah]
hear that I have talked with thee, and they come unto thee, and say unto
thee, Declare unto us now what thou hast said unto the king; hide it not
from us, and we will not put thee to death; and also what the king said
unto thee; then thou shalt say unto them, I presented my supplication
before the king that he would not cause me to return to Jonathan's
house, to die there. Then came all the princes unto Jeremiah, and
asked him, and "he told them according to all the words the king had
commanded." Thus, this man of God, as he is called, could tell a lie, or
very strongly prevaricate, when he supposed it would answer his purpose;
for certainly he did not go to Zedekiah to make this supplication,
neither did he make it; he went because he was sent for, and he
employed that opportunity to advise Zedekiah to surrender himself to
Nebuchadnezzar.

In chapter xxxiv. 2-5, is a prophecy of Jeremiah to Zedekiah in these
words: "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I will give this city into the hand
of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire; and thou
shalt not escape out of his hand, but thou shalt surely be taken, and
delivered into his hand; and thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the
king of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou
shalt go to Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord; O Zedekiah, king,
of Judah, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not die by the sword, but thou
shalt die in Peace; and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former
kings that were before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee, and
they will lament thee, saying, Ah, Lord! for I have pronounced the word,
saith the Lord."

Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the king of Babylon,
and speaking with him mouth to mouth, and dying in peace, and with the
burning of odours, as at the funeral of his fathers, (as Jeremiah had
declared the Lord himself had pronounced,) the reverse, according to
chapter Iii., 10, 11 was the case; it is there said, that the king of
Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes: then he put out the
eyes of Zedekiah, and bound him in chains, and carried him to Babylon,
and put him in prison till the day of his death.

What then can we say of these prophets, but that they are impostors and
liars?

As for Jeremiah, he experienced none of those evils. He was taken into
favour by Nebuchadnezzar, who gave him in charge to the captain of the
guard (xxxix, 12), "Take him (said he) and look well to him, and do
him no harm; but do unto him even as he shall say unto thee." Jeremiah
joined himself afterwards to Nebuchadnezzar, and went about prophesying
for him against the Egyptians, who had marched to the relief of
Jerusalem while it was besieged. Thus much for another of the lying
prophets, and the book that bears his name.

I have been the more particular in treating of the books ascribed to
Isaiah and Jeremiah, because those two are spoken of in the books of
Kings and Chronicles, which the others are not. The remainder of the
books ascribed to the men called prophets I shall not trouble myself
much about; but take them collectively into the observations I shall
offer on the character of the men styled prophets.

In the former part of the 'Age of Reason,' I have said that the word
prophet was the Bible-word for poet, and that the flights and metaphors
of Jewish poets have been foolishly erected into what are now called
prophecies. I am sufficiently justified in this opinion, not only
because the books called the prophecies are written in poetical
language, but because there is no word in the Bible, except it be the
word prophet, that describes what we mean by a poet. I have also said,
that the word signified a performer upon musical instruments, of which
I have given some instances; such as that of a company of prophets,
prophesying with psalteries, with tabrets, with pipes, with harps, etc.,
and that Saul prophesied with them, 1 Sam. x., 5. It appears from this
passage, and from other parts in the book of Samuel, that the word
prophet was confined to signify poetry and music; for the person who was
supposed to have a visionary insight into concealed things, was not a
prophet but a seer, [I know not what is the Hebrew word that corresponds
to the word seer in English; but I observe it is translated into French
by Le Voyant, from the verb voir to see, and which means the person who
sees, or the seer.--Author.]

[The Hebrew word for Seer, in 1 Samuel ix., transliterated, is
chozeh, the gazer, it is translated in Is. xlvii. 13, "the
stargazers."--Editor.] (i Sam, ix. 9;) and it was not till after the
word seer went out of use (which most probably was when Saul banished
those he called wizards) that the profession of the seer, or the art of
seeing, became incorporated into the word prophet.

According to the modern meaning of the word prophet and prophesying, it
signifies foretelling events to a great distance of time; and it became
necessary to the inventors of the gospel to give it this latitude of
meaning, in order to apply or to stretch what they call the prophecies
of the Old Testament, to the times of the New. But according to the Old
Testament, the prophesying of the seer, and afterwards of the prophet,
so far as the meaning of the word "seer" was incorporated into that of
prophet, had reference only to things of the time then passing, or very
closely connected with it; such as the event of a battle they were going
to engage in, or of a journey, or of any enterprise they were going to
undertake, or of any circumstance then pending, or of any difficulty
they were then in; all of which had immediate reference to themselves
(as in the case already mentioned of Ahaz and Isaiah with respect to the
expression, Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son,) and not
to any distant future time. It was that kind of prophesying that
corresponds to what we call fortune-telling; such as casting nativities,
predicting riches, fortunate or unfortunate marriages, conjuring for
lost goods, etc.; and it is the fraud of the Christian church, not that
of the Jews, and the ignorance and the superstition of modern, not that
of ancient times, that elevated those poetical, musical, conjuring,
dreaming, strolling gentry, into the rank they have since had.

But, besides this general character of all the prophets, they had also
a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for
or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and
political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they
associate with against the other.

After the Jews were divided into two nations, that of Judah and that of
Israel, each party had its prophets, who abused and accused each other
of being false prophets, lying prophets, impostors, etc.

The prophets of the party of Judah prophesied against the prophets of
the party of Israel; and those of the party of Israel against those
of Judah. This party prophesying showed itself immediately on the
separation under the first two rival kings, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. The
prophet that cursed, or prophesied against the altar that Jeroboam had
built in Bethel, was of the party of Judah, where Rehoboam was king; and
he was way-laid on his return home by a prophet of the party of Israel,
who said unto him (i Kings xiii.) "Art thou the man of God that came
from Judah? and he said, I am." Then the prophet of the party of Israel
said to him "I am a prophet also, as thou art, [signifying of Judah,]
and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him
back with thee unto thine house, that he may eat bread and drink
water; but (says the 18th verse) he lied unto him." The event, however,
according to the story, is, that the prophet of Judah never got back
to Judah; for he was found dead on the road by the contrivance of the
prophet of Israel, who no doubt was called a true prophet by his own
party, and the prophet of Judah a lying prophet.

In 2 Kings, iii., a story is related of prophesying or conjuring that
shews, in several particulars, the character of a prophet. Jehoshaphat
king of Judah, and Joram king of Israel, had for a while ceased their
party animosity, and entered into an alliance; and these two, together
with the king of Edom, engaged in a war against the king of Moab. After
uniting and marching their armies, the story says, they were in great
distress for water, upon which Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here a
prophet of the Lord, that we may enquire of the Lord by him? and one of
the servants of the king of Israel said here is Elisha. [Elisha was of
the party of Judah.] And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah said, The word of
the Lord is with him." The story then says, that these three kings went
down to Elisha; and when Elisha [who, as I have said, was a Judahmite
prophet] saw the King of Israel, he said unto him, "What have I to do
with thee, get thee to the prophets of thy father and the prophets of
thy mother. Nay but, said the king of Israel, the Lord hath called these
three kings together, to deliver them into the hands of the king of
Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon
which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand,
surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king
of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all
the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the
performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass,
when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here
is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said,
[singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord,
Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what
every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce,
that the way to get water was to dig for it.

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither
were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have
spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing.
Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of
prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name
of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. We are to suppose
that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those who will
curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story
of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley,
of whom it is said:

     Poor children three devoured be,
     That could not with him grapple;
     And at one sup he eat them up,
     As a man would eat an apple.

There was another description of men called prophets, that amused
themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day
we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but little
mischievous. Of this class are,

EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all
the others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel
and Daniel?

Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more
inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for
this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain
internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel,
as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were
not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.

Secondly, Because they were not written till after the Babylonish
captivity began; and there is good reason to believe that not any book
in the bible was written before that period; at least it is proveable,
from the books themselves, as I have already shown, that they were not
written till after the commencement of the Jewish monarchy.

Thirdly, Because the manner in which the books ascribed to Ezekiel and
Daniel are written, agrees with the condition these men were in at the
time of writing them.

Had the numerous commentators and priests, who have foolishly employed
or wasted their time in pretending to expound and unriddle those books,
been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly
have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode
of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention,
as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that
themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write,
respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their
country, in a concealed manner, as those men have done.

These two books differ from all the rest; for it is only these that are
filled with accounts of dreams and visions: and this difference arose
from the situation the writers were in as prisoners of war, or prisoners
of state, in a foreign country, which obliged them to convey even
the most trifling information to each other, and all their political
projects or opinions, in obscure and metaphorical terms. They pretend to
have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, because it was unsafe for them to
speak facts or plain language. We ought, however, to suppose, that the
persons to whom they wrote understood what they meant, and that it
was not intended anybody else should. But these busy commentators
and priests have been puzzling their wits to find out what it was not
intended they should know, and with which they have nothing to do.

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried prisoners to Babylon, under the first
captivity, in the time of Jehoiakim, nine years before the second
captivity in the time of Zedekiah. The Jews were then still numerous,
and had considerable force at Jerusalem; and as it is natural to suppose
that men in the situation of Ezekiel and Daniel would be meditating the
recovery of their country, and their own deliverance, it is reasonable
to suppose that the accounts of dreams and visions with which these
books are filled, are no other than a disguised mode of correspondence
to facilitate those objects: it served them as a cypher, or secret
alphabet. If they are not this, they are tales, reveries, and nonsense;
or at least a fanciful way of wearing off the wearisomeness of
captivity; but the presumption is, they are the former.

Ezekiel begins his book by speaking of a vision of cherubims, and of a
wheel within a wheel, which he says he saw by the river Chebar, in
the land of his captivity. Is it not reasonable to suppose that by the
cherubims he meant the temple at Jerusalem, where they had figures of
cherubims? and by a wheel within a wheel (which as a figure has always
been understood to signify political contrivance) the project or means
of recovering Jerusalem? In the latter part of his book he supposes
himself transported to Jerusalem, and into the temple; and he refers
back to the vision on the river Chebar, and says, (xliii- 3,) that this
last vision was like the vision on the river Chebar; which indicates
that those pretended dreams and visions had for their object the
recovery of Jerusalem, and nothing further.

As to the romantic interpretations and applications, wild as the dreams
and visions they undertake to explain, which commentators and priests
have made of those books, that of converting them into things which they
call prophecies, and making them bend to times and circumstances as far
remote even as the present day, it shows the fraud or the extreme folly
to which credulity or priestcraft can go.

Scarcely anything can be more absurd than to suppose that men situated
as Ezekiel and Daniel were, whose country was over-run, and in the
possession of the enemy, all their friends and relations in captivity
abroad, or in slavery at home, or massacred, or in continual danger of
it; scarcely any thing, I say, can be more absurd than to suppose that
such men should find nothing to do but that of employing their time and
their thoughts about what was to happen to other nations a thousand or
two thousand years after they were dead; at the same time nothing more
natural than that they should meditate the recovery of Jerusalem, and
their own deliverance; and that this was the sole object of all the
obscure and apparently frantic writing contained in those books.

In this sense the mode of writing used in those two books being forced
by necessity, and not adopted by choice, is not irrational; but, if we
are to use the books as prophecies, they are false. In Ezekiel xxix.
11., speaking of Egypt, it is said, "No foot of man shall pass through
it, nor foot of beast pass through it; neither shall it be inhabited for
forty years." This is what never came to pass, and consequently it is
false, as all the books I have already reviewed are.--I here close this
part of the subject.

In the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of Jonah, and
of the story of him and the whale.--A fit story for ridicule, if it was
written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what
credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it
could swallow anything.

But, as is already shown in the observations on the book of Job and of
Proverbs, it is not always certain which of the books in the Bible are
originally Hebrew, or only translations from the books of the Gentiles
into Hebrew; and, as the book of Jonah, so far from treating of
the affairs of the Jews, says nothing upon that subject, but treats
altogether of the Gentiles, it is more probable that it is a book of
the Gentiles than of the Jews, [I have read in an ancient Persian poem
(Saadi, I believe, but have mislaid the reference) this phrase: "And now
the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set."--Editor.] and that it has been
written as a fable to expose the nonsense, and satyrize the vicious and
malignant character, of a Bible-prophet, or a predicting priest.

Jonah is represented, first as a disobedient prophet, running away from
his mission, and taking shelter aboard a vessel of the Gentiles, bound
from Joppa to Tarshish; as if he ignorantly supposed, by such a paltry
contrivance, he could hide himself where God could not find him. The
vessel is overtaken by a storm at sea; and the mariners, all of whom are
Gentiles, believing it to be a judgement on account of some one on board
who had committed a crime, agreed to cast lots to discover the offender;
and the lot fell upon Jonah. But before this they had cast all their
wares and merchandise over-board to lighten the vessel, while Jonah,
like a stupid fellow, was fast asleep in the hold.

After the lot had designated Jonah to be the offender, they questioned
him to know who and what he was? and he told them he was an Hebrew;
and the story implies that he confessed himself to be guilty. But these
Gentiles, instead of sacrificing him at once without pity or mercy, as a
company of Bible-prophets or priests would have done by a Gentile in the
same case, and as it is related Samuel had done by Agag, and Moses by
the women and children, they endeavoured to save him, though at the risk
of their own lives: for the account says, "Nevertheless [that is, though
Jonah was a Jew and a foreigner, and the cause of all their misfortunes,
and the loss of their cargo] the men rowed hard to bring the boat
to land, but they could not, for the sea wrought and was tempestuous
against them." Still however they were unwilling to put the fate of the
lot into execution; and they cried, says the account, unto the Lord,
saying, "We beseech thee, O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life,
and lay not upon us innocent blood; for thou, O Lord, hast done as it
pleased thee." Meaning thereby, that they did not presume to judge Jonah
guilty, since that he might be innocent; but that they considered the
lot that had fallen upon him as a decree of God, or as it pleased
God. The address of this prayer shows that the Gentiles worshipped one
Supreme Being, and that they were not idolaters as the Jews represented
them to be. But the storm still continuing, and the danger encreasing,
they put the fate of the lot into execution, and cast Jonah in the sea;
where, according to the story, a great fish swallowed him up whole and
alive!

We have now to consider Jonah securely housed from the storm in the
fish's belly. Here we are told that he prayed; but the prayer is
a made-up prayer, taken from various parts of the Psalms, without
connection or consistency, and adapted to the distress, but not at all
to the condition that Jonah was in. It is such a prayer as a Gentile,
who might know something of the Psalms, could copy out for him. This
circumstance alone, were there no other, is sufficient to indicate that
the whole is a made-up story. The prayer, however, is supposed to have
answered the purpose, and the story goes on, (taking-off at the same
time the cant language of a Bible-prophet,) saying, "The Lord spake unto
the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon dry land."

Jonah then received a second mission to Nineveh, with which he sets
out; and we have now to consider him as a preacher. The distress he is
represented to have suffered, the remembrance of his own disobedience as
the cause of it, and the miraculous escape he is supposed to have had,
were sufficient, one would conceive, to have impressed him with sympathy
and benevolence in the execution of his mission; but, instead of this,
he enters the city with denunciation and malediction in his mouth,
crying, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown."

We have now to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his
mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible-prophet,
or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character
that men ascribe to the being they call the devil.

Having published his predictions, he withdrew, says the story, to the
east side of the city.--But for what? not to contemplate in retirement
the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with
malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass,
however, as the story relates, that the Ninevites reformed, and that
God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said
he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of
the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry.
His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed,
and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his
prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet
still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him
an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he
is retired; and the next morning it dies.

Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to
destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for me to die than to live."
This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the
prophet; in which the former says, "Doest thou well to be angry for the
gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then
said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast
not laboured, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and
perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern
between their right hand and their left?"

Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable.
As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible-prophets,
and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and
children, with which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as
Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
extirpation of the Canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with
child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes
also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for
another.

As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for
as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The
pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last
he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the
accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.--This book ends
with the same kind of strong and well-directed point against prophets,
prophecies and indiscriminate judgements, as the chapter that Benjamin
Franklin made for the Bible, about Abraham and the stranger, ends
against the intolerant spirit of religious persecutions--Thus much for
the book Jonah. [The story of Abraham and the Fire-worshipper, ascribed
to Franklin, is from Saadi. (See my "Sacred Anthology," p. 61.) Paine
has often been called a "mere scoffer," but he seems to have been among
the first to treat with dignity the book of Jonah, so especially liable
to the ridicule of superficial readers, and discern in it the highest
conception of Deity known to the Old Testament.--Editor.]

Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have
spoken in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' and already in this,
where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bible-word for Poet,
and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have
become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances,
have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and
applied to purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes
any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and
imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the
writer. The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the
priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well
do they agree in their explanations.

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser
prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors,
it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let
them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be
forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with
an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests,
if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the
ground, but they will never make them grow.--I pass on to the books of
the New Testament.



CHAPTER II - THE NEW TESTAMENT

THE New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the
Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before
she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be
executed, even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that such a
woman as Mary, and such a man as Joseph, and Jesus, existed; their mere
existence is a matter of indifference, about which there is no ground
either to believe or to disbelieve, and which comes under the common
head of, It may be so, and what then? The probability however is that
there were such persons, or at least such as resembled them in part
of the circumstances, because almost all romantic stories have been
suggested by some actual circumstance; as the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe, not a word of which is true, were suggested by the case of
Alexander Selkirk.

It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that
I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in
the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon,
against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is
blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged
to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain
language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i.
35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards
marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the
ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when
told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own
it. [Mary, the supposed virgin, mother of Jesus, had several other
children, sons and daughters. See Matt. xiii. 55, 56.--Author.]

Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of
fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God,
that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into
ludicrous interpretations. This story is, upon the face of it, the same
kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any
of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews, as is already stated
in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' that the Christian faith is
built upon the heathen Mythology.

As the historical parts of the New Testament, so far as concerns Jesus
Christ, are confined to a very short space of time, less than two
years, and all within the same country, and nearly to the same spot, the
discordance of time, place, and circumstance, which detects the fallacy
of the books of the Old Testament, and proves them to be impositions,
cannot be expected to be found here in the same abundance. The New
Testament compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act, in which
there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities. There
are, however, some glaring contradictions, which, exclusive of the
fallacy of the pretended prophecies, are sufficient to show the story of
Jesus Christ to be false.

I lay it down as a position which cannot be controverted, first, that
the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story
to be true, because the parts may agree, and the whole may be false;
secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole
cannot be true. The agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement
proves falsehood positively.

The history of Jesus Christ is contained in the four books ascribed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.--The first chapter of Matthew begins with
giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke
there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it
would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless
be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular,
it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks
falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood: and as
there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no
authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even
in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not
entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an
uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit
it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the
men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have
been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in
the Old Testament.

The book of Matthew gives (i. 6), a genealogy by name from David, up,
through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be
twent eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by
name from Christ, through Joseph the husband of Mary, down to David, and
makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there is only
the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists.--I
here insert both genealogical lists, and for the sake of perspicuity and
comparison, have placed them both in the same direction, that is, from
Joseph down to David.

   Genealogy, according to            Genealogy, according to
        Matthew.                                Luke.

        Christ                                  Christ
      2 Joseph                                2 Joseph
      3 Jacob                                 3 Heli
      4 Matthan                               4 Matthat
      5 Eleazer                               5 Levi
      6 Eliud                                 6 Melchl
      7 Achim                                 7 Janna
      8 Sadoc                                 8 Joseph
      9 Azor                                  9 Mattathias
     10 Eliakim                              10 Amos
     11 Abiud                                11 Naum
     12 Zorobabel                            12 Esli
     13 Salathiel                            13 Nagge
     14 Jechonias                            14 Maath
     15 Josias                               15 Mattathias
     16 Amon                                 16 Semei
     17 Manasses                             17 Joseph
     18 Ezekias                              18 Juda
     19 Achaz                                19 Joanna
     20 Joatham                              20 Rhesa
     21 Ozias                                21 Zorobabel
     22 Joram                                22 Salathiel
     23 Josaphat                             23 Neri
     24 Asa                                  24 Melchi
     25 Abia                                 25 Addi
     26 Roboam                               26 Cosam
     27 Solomon                              27 Elmodam
     28 David *                              28 Er
                                             29 Jose
                                             30 Eliezer
                                             31 Jorim
                                             32 Matthat
                                             33 Levi
                                             34 Simeon
                                             35 Juda
                                             36 Joseph
                                             37 Jonan
                                             38 Eliakim
                                             39 Melea
                                             40 Menan
                                             41 Mattatha
                                             42 Nathan
                                             43 David

[NOTE: * From the birth of David to the birth of Christ is upwards of
1080 years; and as the life-time of Christ is not included, there are
but 27 full generations. To find therefore the average age of each
person mentioned in the list, at the time his first son was born, it
is only necessary to divide 1080 by 27, which gives 40 years for each
person. As the life-time of man was then but of the same extent it is
now, it is an absurdity to suppose, that 27 following generations should
all be old bachelors, before they married; and the more so, when we are
told that Solomon, the next in succession to David, had a house full of
wives and mistresses before he was twenty-one years of age. So far from
this genealogy being a solemn truth, it is not even a reasonable lie.
The list of Luke gives about twenty-six years for the average age, and
this is too much.--Author.]

Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between
them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of
their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what
authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the
strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in
their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when
they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that
an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one
genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural
genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to
suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the
whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future
happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant
to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of
falsehood? Is it not more safe that we stop ourselves at the plain,
pure, and unmixed belief of one God, which is deism, than that we
commit ourselves on an ocean of improbable, irrational, indecent, and
contradictory tales?

The first question, however, upon the books of the New Testament, as
upon those of the Old, is, Are they genuine? were they written by the
persons to whom they are ascribed? For it is upon this ground only that
the strange things related therein have been credited. Upon this point,
there is no direct proof for or against; and all that this state of a
case proves is doubtfulness; and doubtfulness is the opposite of belief.
The state, therefore, that the books are in, proves against themselves
as far as this kind of proof can go.

But, exclusive of this, the presumption is that the books called the
Evangelists, and ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were not
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and that they are impositions.
The disordered state of the history in these four books, the silence of
one book upon matters related in the other, and the disagreement that
is to be found among them, implies that they are the productions of some
unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to
relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men
living intimately together, as the men called apostles are supposed to
have done: in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books of
the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names
they bear.

The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate
conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark,
and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former
says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary;
but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been
thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and
not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say,
and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and
that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would
not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we
never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange
and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken
the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for
believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute
impossibility and imposture.

The story of Herod destroying all the children under two years old,
belongs altogether to the book of Matthew; not one of the rest mentions
anything about it. Had such a circumstance been true, the universality
of it must have made it known to all the writers, and the thing would
have been too striking to have been omitted by any. This writer tell us,
that Jesus escaped this slaughter, because Joseph and Mary were warned
by an angel to flee with him into Egypt; but he forgot to make provision
for John [the Baptist], who was then under two years of age. John,
however, who staid behind, fared as well as Jesus, who fled; and
therefore the story circumstantially belies itself.

Not any two of these writers agree in reciting, exactly in the same
words, the written inscription, short as it is, which they tell us was
put over Christ when he was crucified; and besides this, Mark says, He
was crucified at the third hour, (nine in the morning;) and John says it
was the sixth hour, (twelve at noon.) [According to John, (xix. 14)
the sentence was not passed till about the sixth hour (noon,) and
consequently the execution could not be till the afternoon; but Mark
(xv. 25) Says expressly that he was crucified at the third hour, (nine
in the morning,)--Author.]

The inscription is thus stated in those books:

Matthew--This is Jesus the king of the Jews. Mark--The king of the Jews.
Luke--This is the king of the Jews. John--Jesus of Nazareth the king of
the Jews.

We may infer from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those
writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were
not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles who
appears to have been near to the spot was Peter, and when he was accused
of being one of Jesus's followers, it is said, (Matthew xxvi. 74,) "Then
Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man:" yet
we are now called to believe the same Peter, convicted, by their own
account, of perjury. For what reason, or on what authority, should we do
this?

The accounts that are given of the circumstances, that they tell us
attended the crucifixion, are differently related in those four books.

The book ascribed to Matthew says 'there was darkness over all the land
from the sixth hour unto the ninth hour--that the veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom--that there was an
earthquake--that the rocks rent--that the graves opened, that the bodies
of many of the saints that slept arose and came out of their graves
after the resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto
many.' Such is the account which this dashing writer of the book of
Matthew gives, but in which he is not supported by the writers of the
other books.

The writer of the book ascribed to Mark, in detailing the circumstances
of the crucifixion, makes no mention of any earthquake, nor of the rocks
rending, nor of the graves opening, nor of the dead men walking out. The
writer of the book of Luke is silent also upon the same points. And
as to the writer of the book of John, though he details all the
circumstances of the crucifixion down to the burial of Christ, he
says nothing about either the darkness--the veil of the temple--the
earthquake--the rocks--the graves--nor the dead men.

Now if it had been true that these things had happened, and if the
writers of these books had lived at the time they did happen, and
had been the persons they are said to be--namely, the four men called
apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,--it was not possible for them,
as true historians, even without the aid of inspiration, not to have
recorded them. The things, supposing them to have been facts, were of
too much notoriety not to have been known, and of too much importance
not to have been told. All these supposed apostles must have been
witnesses of the earthquake, if there had been any, for it was not
possible for them to have been absent from it: the opening of the graves
and resurrection of the dead men, and their walking about the city, is
of still greater importance than the earthquake. An earthquake is always
possible, and natural, and proves nothing; but this opening of the
graves is supernatural, and directly in point to their doctrine, their
cause, and their apostleship. Had it been true, it would have filled
up whole chapters of those books, and been the chosen theme and general
chorus of all the writers; but instead of this, little and trivial
things, and mere prattling conversation of 'he said this and she said
that' are often tediously detailed, while this most important of all,
had it been true, is passed off in a slovenly manner by a single dash
of the pen, and that by one writer only, and not so much as hinted at by
the rest.

It is an easy thing to tell a lie, but it is difficult to support the
lie after it is told. The writer of the book of Matthew should have told
us who the saints were that came to life again, and went into the city,
and what became of them afterwards, and who it was that saw them; for he
is not hardy enough to say that he saw them himself;--whether they came
out naked, and all in natural buff, he-saints and she-saints, or whether
they came full dressed, and where they got their dresses; whether they
went to their former habitations, and reclaimed their wives, their
husbands, and their property, and how they were received; whether they
entered ejectments for the recovery of their possessions, or brought
actions of crim. con. against the rival interlopers; whether they
remained on earth, and followed their former occupation of preaching or
working; or whether they died again, or went back to their graves alive,
and buried themselves.

Strange indeed, that an army of saints should retum to life, and nobody
know who they were, nor who it was that saw them, and that not a word
more should be said upon the subject, nor these saints have any thing
to tell us! Had it been the prophets who (as we are told) had formerly
prophesied of these things, they must have had a great deal to say.
They could have told us everything, and we should have had posthumous
prophecies, with notes and commentaries upon the first, a little better
at least than we have now. Had it been Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and
Samuel, and David, not an unconverted Jew had remained in all Jerusalem.
Had it been John the Baptist, and the saints of the times then present,
everybody would have known them, and they would have out-preached and
out-famed all the other apostles. But, instead of this, these saints are
made to pop up, like Jonah's gourd in the night, for no purpose at all
but to wither in the morning.--Thus much for this part of the story.

The tale of the resurrection follows that of the crucifixion; and in
this as well as in that, the writers, whoever they were, disagree so
much as to make it evident that none of them were there.

The book of Matthew states, that when Christ was put in the sepulchre
the Jews applied to Pilate for a watch or a guard to be placed over the
septilchre, to prevent the body being stolen by the disciples; and that
in consequence of this request the sepulchre was made sure, sealing the
stone that covered the mouth, and setting a watch. But the other books
say nothing about this application, nor about the sealing, nor the
guard, nor the watch; and according to their accounts, there were none.
Matthew, however, follows up this part of the story of the guard or the
watch with a second part, that I shall notice in the conclusion, as it
serves to detect the fallacy of those books.

The book of Matthew continues its account, and says, (xxviii. 1,) that
at the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of
the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.
Mark says it was sun-rising, and John says it was dark. Luke says it
was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other
women, that came to the sepulchre; and John states that Mary Magdalene
came alone. So well do they agree about their first evidence! They all,
however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene; she was a woman
of large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might
be upon the stroll. [The Bishop of Llandaff, in his famous "Apology,"
censured Paine severely for this insinuation against Mary Magdalene, but
the censure really falls on our English version, which, by a
chapter-heading (Luke vii.), has unwarrantably identified her as the
sinful woman who anointed Jesus, and irrevocably branded her.--Editor.]

The book of Matthew goes on to say (ver. 2): "And behold there was a
great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and
came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it" But
the other books say nothing about any earthquake, nor about the angel
rolling back the stone, and sitting upon it and, according to their
account, there was no angel sitting there. Mark says the angel [Mark
says "a young man," and Luke "two men."--Editor.] was within the
sepulchre, sitting on the right side. Luke says there were two, and they
were both standing up; and John says they were both sitting down, one at
the head and the other at the feet.

Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on the
outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was risen, and
that the women went away quickly. Mark says, that the women, upon seeing
the stone rolled away, and wondering at it, went into the sepulchre, and
that it was the angel that was sitting within on the right side, that
told them so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were Standing
up; and John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary
Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only stooped
down and looked in.

Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice
to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is
here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by
supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same
contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger
of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved
it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been
imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the
unchangeable word of God.

The writer of the book of Matthew, after giving this account, relates
a story that is not to be found in any of the other books, and which is
the same I have just before alluded to. "Now," says he, [that is, after
the conversation the women had had with the angel sitting upon the
stone,] "behold some of the watch [meaning the watch that he had said
had been placed over the sepulchre] came into the city, and shawed unto
the chief priests all the things that were done; and when they were
assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money
unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, that his disciples came by night, and
stole him away while we slept; and if this come to the governor's ears,
we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as
they were taught; and this saying [that his disciples stole him away] is
commonly reported among the Jews until this day."

The expression, until this day, is an evidence that the book ascribed
to Matthew was not written by Matthew, and that it has been manufactured
long after the times and things of which it pretends to treat; for
the expression implies a great length of intervening time. It would be
inconsistent in us to speak in this manner of any thing happening in our
own time. To give, therefore, intelligible meaning to the expression,
we must suppose a lapse of some generations at least, for this manner of
speaking carries the mind back to ancient time.

The absurdity also of the story is worth noticing; for it shows the
writer of the book of Matthew to have been an exceeding weak and foolish
man. He tells a story that contradicts itself in point of possibility;
for though the guard, if there were any, might be made to say that the
body was taken away while they were asleep, and to give that as a
reason for their not having prevented it, that same sleep must also have
prevented their knowing how, and by whom, it was done; and yet they are
made to say that it was the disciples who did it. Were a man to tender
his evidence of something that he should say was done, and of the manner
of doing it, and of the person who did it, while he was asleep, and
could know nothing of the matter, such evidence could not be received:
it will do well enough for Testament evidence, but not for any thing
where truth is concerned.

I come now to that part of the evidence in those books, that respects
the pretended appearance of Christ after this pretended resurrection.

The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was
sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulchre, said to the two
Marys (xxviii. 7), "Behold Christ is gone before you into Galilee, there
ye shall see him; lo, I have told you." And the same writer at the next
two verses (8, 9,) makes Christ himself to speak to the same purpose to
these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that
they ran quickly to tell it to the disciples; and it is said (ver. 16),
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where
Jesus had appointed them; and, when they saw him, they worshipped him."

But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different to
this; for he says (xx. 19) "Then the same day at evening, being the
first day of the week, [that is, the same day that Christ is said
to have risen,] when the doors were shut, where the disciples were
assembled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst of
them."

According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee, to meet Jesus
in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when, according
to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by
appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews.

The writer of the book of Luke xxiv. 13, 33-36, contradicts that of
Matthew more pointedly than John does; for he says expressly, that the
meeting was in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he (Christ)
rose, and that the eleven were there.

Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed disciples the
right of wilful lying, that the writers of these books could be any of
the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according to Matthew,
the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own
appointment, on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and
John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says
expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day,
in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke
and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew
must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a
mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books
destroy each other.

The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in
Galilee; but he says (xvi. 12) that Christ, after his resurrection,
appeared in another form to two of them, as they walked into the
country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would not
believe them. [This belongs to the late addition to Mark, which
originally ended with xvi. 8.--Editor.] Luke also tells a story, in
which he keeps Christ employed the whole of the day of this pretended
resurrection, until the evening, and which totally invalidates the
account of going to the mountain in Galilee. He says, that two of them,
without saying which two, went that same day to a village called Emmaus,
three score furlongs (seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and
that Christ in disguise went with them, and stayed with them unto the
evening, and supped with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and
reappeared that same evening, at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.

This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this pretended
reappearance of Christ is stated: the only point in which the writers
agree, is the skulking privacy of that reappearance; for whether it
was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in a shut-up house in
Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause then are we to assign
this skulking? On the one hand, it is directly repugnant to the supposed
or pretended end, that of convincing the world that Christ was risen;
and, on the other hand, to have asserted the publicity of it would have
exposed the writers of those books to public detection; and, therefore,
they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair.

As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred at
once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say it
for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and that
too of a man, who did not, according to the same account, believe a
word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have happened.
His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of Corinthians xv.,
where this account is given, is like that of a man who comes into a
court of justice to swear that what he had sworn before was false. A man
may often see reason, and he has too always the right of changing his
opinion; but this liberty does not extend to matters of fact.

I now come to the last scene, that of the ascension into heaven.--Here
all fear of the Jews, and of every thing else, must necessarily have
been out of the question: it was that which, if true, was to seal the
whole; and upon which the reality of the future mission of the disciples
was to rest for proof. Words, whether declarations or promises, that
passed in private, either in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or in
a shut-up house in Jerusalem, even supposing them to have been spoken,
could not be evidence in public; it was therefore necessary that this
last scene should preclude the possibility of denial and dispute; and
that it should be, as I have stated in the former part of 'The Age of
Reason,' as public and as visible as the sun at noon-day; at least it
ought to have been as public as the crucifixion is reported to have
been.--But to come to the point.

In the first place, the writer of the book of Matthew does not say a
syllable about it; neither does the writer of the book of John. This
being the case, is it possible to suppose that those writers, who affect
to be even minute in other matters, would have been silent upon this,
had it been true? The writer of the book of Mark passes it off in a
careless, slovenly manner, with a single dash of the pen, as if he was
tired of romancing, or ashamed of the story. So also does the writer of
Luke. And even between these two, there is not an apparent agreement,
as to the place where this final parting is said to have been. [The last
nine verses of Mark being ungenuine, the story of the ascension
rests exclusively on the words in Luke xxiv. 51, "was carried up into
heaven,"--words omitted by several ancient authorities.--Editor.]

The book of Mark says that Christ appeared to the eleven as they sat at
meat, alluding to the meeting of the eleven at Jerusalem: he then states
the conversation that he says passed at that meeting; and immediately
after says (as a school-boy would finish a dull story,) "So then, after
the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and
sat on the right hand of God." But the writer of Luke says, that the
ascension was from Bethany; that he (Christ) led them out as far as
Bethany, and was parted from them there, and was carried up into heaven.
So also was Mahomet: and, as to Moses, the apostle Jude says, ver. 9.
That 'Michael and the devil disputed about his body.' While we believe
such fables as these, or either of them, we believe unworthily of the
Almighty.

I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the whole
space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is
but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the
circumstances are reported to have happened nearly about the same spot,
Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record
so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as
are in those books. They are more numerous and striking than I had any
expectation of finding, when I began this examination, and far more
so than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of 'The Age of
Reason.' I had then neither Bible nor Testament to refer to, nor could I
procure any. My own situation, even as to existence, was becoming every
day more precarious; and as I was willing to leave something behind me
upon the subject, I was obliged to be quick and concise. The quotations
I then made were from memory only, but they are correct; and the
opinions I have advanced in that work are the effect of the most clear
and long-established conviction,--that the Bible and the Testament are
impositions upon the world;--that the fall of man, the account of Jesus
Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath
of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous
inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;--that
the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean
the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the
practice of what are called moral virtues;--and that it was upon this
only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of
happiness hereafter. So say I now--and so help me God.

But to retum to the subject.--Though it is impossible, at this distance
of time, to ascertain as a fact who were the writers of those four books
(and this alone is sufficient to hold them in doubt, and where we doubt
we do not believe) it is not difficult to ascertain negatively that
they were not written by the persons to whom they are ascribed. The
contradictions in those books demonstrate two things:

First, that the writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses
of the matters they relate, or they would have related them without
those contradictions; and, consequently that the books have not been
written by the persons called apostles, who are supposed to have been
witnesses of this kind.

Secondly, that the writers, whoever they were, have not acted in
concerted imposition, but each writer separately and individually for
himself, and without the knowledge of the other.

The same evidence that applies to prove the one, applies equally to
prove both cases; that is, that the books were not written by the men
called apostles, and also that they are not a concerted imposition. As
to inspiration, it is altogether out of the question; we may as well
attempt to unite truth and falsehood, as inspiration and contradiction.

If four men are eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses to a scene, they will
without any concert between them, agree as to time and place, when and
where that scene happened. Their individual knowledge of the thing, each
one knowing it for himself, renders concert totally unnecessary; the
one will not say it was in a mountain in the country, and the other at
a house in town; the one will not say it was at sunrise, and the other
that it was dark. For in whatever place it was and whatever time it was,
they know it equally alike.

And on the other hand, if four men concert a story, they will make their
separate relations of that story agree and corroborate with each other
to support the whole. That concert supplies the want of fact in the one
case, as the knowledge of the fact supersedes, in the other case, the
necessity of a concert. The same contradictions, therefore, that
prove there has been no concert, prove also that the reporters had no
knowledge of the fact, (or rather of that which they relate as a fact,)
and detect also the falsehood of their reports. Those books, therefore,
have neither been written by the men called apostles, nor by imposters
in concert.--How then have they been written?

I am not one of those who are fond of believing there is much of that
which is called wilful lying, or lying originally, except in the case of
men setting up to be prophets, as in the Old Testament; for prophesying
is lying professionally. In almost all other cases it is not difficult
to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid
of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a
fact; and whenever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this
kind, we ought not to indulge a severe one.

The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an
apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision,
and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the
assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally
have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent
persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and
benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little
farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and
credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its
appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as
many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as
there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.

The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange
mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale
from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when
the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again,
as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is
hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell
stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here:
they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind
him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear
in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended;
whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case of
Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle;
how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have
not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind,
we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamander's wool.

Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may
suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since
the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed
to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is
historically otherwise; there was no such book as the New Testament till
more than three hundred years after the time that Christ is said to have
lived.

At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began
to appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least
shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what
time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the
names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now
called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian
Church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they
pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses,
are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no
possibility of proving the hand-writing in either case. At the time
those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently
there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which
any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can
we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit
himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that
it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We
cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass
that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily
as words of man. [The former part of the 'Age of Reason' has not been
published two years, and there is already an expression in it that is
not mine. The expression is: The book of Luke was carried by a majority
of one voice only. It may be true, but it is not I that have said it.
Some person who might know of that circumstance, has added it in a note
at the bottom of the page of some of the editions, printed either in
England or in America; and the printers, after that, have erected it
into the body of the work, and made me the author of it. If this has
happened within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of
printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually, what may
not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write could make a written copy and
call it an original by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John?--Author.]

[The spurious addition to Paine's work alluded to in his footnote drew on
him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical
Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in
his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added
by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added:
"Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley omits. In a modern
American edition I notice four verbal alterations introduced into the
above footnote.--Editor.]

About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is
said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were
scattered in the hands of divers individuals; and as the church had
begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with
temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as
we now see them, called 'The New Testament.' They decided by vote, as I
have before said in the former part of the Age of Reason, which of those
writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of
God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote,
upon the books of the Bible before.

As the object of the church, as is the case in all national
establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the
means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and
wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of
being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in
the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.

Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves
Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the
authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St.
Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, "The books
called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times of the
apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not
give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be
informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and
which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is
neither agreement nor connection between them."

And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those
books, as being the word of God, he says, "It is thus that your
predecessors have inserted in the scriptures of our Lord many things
which, though they carry his name, agree not with his doctrine." This is
not surprising, since that we have often proved that these things have
not been written by himself, nor by his apostles, but that for the
greatest part they are founded upon tales, upon vague reports, and put
together by I know not what half-Jews, with but little agreement between
them; and which they have nevertheless published under the name of the
apostles of our Lord, and have thus attributed to them their own errors
and their lies. [I have taken these two extracts from Boulanger's Life
of Paul, written in French; Boulanger has quoted them from the writings
of Augustine against Fauste, to which he refers.--Author.]

This Bishop Faustus is usually styled "The Manichaeum," Augustine having
entitled his book, Contra Frustum Manichaeum Libri xxxiii., in which
nearly the whole of Faustus' very able work is quoted.--Editor.]

The reader will see by those extracts that the authenticity of the
books of the New Testament was denied, and the books treated as tales,
forgeries, and lies, at the time they were voted to be the word of God.
But the interest of the church, with the assistance of the faggot, bore
down the opposition, and at last suppressed all investigation. Miracles
followed upon miracles, if we will believe them, and men were taught to
say they believed whether they believed or not. But (by way of throwing
in a thought) the French Revolution has excommunicated the church
from the power of working miracles; she has not been able, with the
assistance of all her saints, to work one miracle since the revolution
began; and as she never stood in greater need than now, we may, without
the aid of divination, conclude that all her former miracles are
tricks and lies. [Boulanger in his life of Paul, has collected from the
ecclesiastical histories, and the writings of the fathers as they are
called, several matters which show the opinions that prevailed among the
different sects of Christians, at the time the Testament, as we now see
it, was voted to be the word of God. The following extracts are from the
second chapter of that work:

[The Marcionists (a Christian sect) asserted that the evangelists were
filled with falsities. The Manichaeans, who formed a very numerous
sect at the commencement of Christianity, rejected as false all the New
Testament, and showed other writings quite different that they gave for
authentic. The Corinthians, like the Marcionists, admitted not the Acts
of the Apostles. The Encratites and the Sevenians adopted neither the
Acts, nor the Epistles of Paul. Chrysostom, in a homily which he made
upon the Acts of the Apostles, says that in his time, about the year
400, many people knew nothing either of the author or of the book. St.
Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like
several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being
filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or
Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of
Paul, and regarded him as an impostor. They report, among other things,
that he was originally a Pagan; that he came to Jerusalem, where he
lived some time; and that having a mind to marry the daughter of the
high priest, he had himself been circumcised; but that not being able to
obtain her, he quarrelled with the Jews and wrote against circumcision,
and against the observation of the Sabbath, and against all the legal
ordinances.--Author.] [Much abridged from the Exam. Crit. de la Vie de
St. Paul, by N.A. Boulanger, 1770.--Editor.]

When we consider the lapse of more than three hundred years intervening
between the time that Christ is said to have lived and the time the
New Testament was formed into a book, we must see, even without the
assistance of historical evidence, the exceeding uncertainty there is
of its authenticity. The authenticity of the book of Homer, so far as
regards the authorship, is much better established than that of the New
Testament, though Homer is a thousand years the most ancient. It was
only an exceeding good poet that could have written the book of Homer,
and, therefore, few men only could have attempted it; and a man capable
of doing it would not have thrown away his own fame by giving it to
another. In like manner, there were but few that could have composed
Euclid's Elements, because none but an exceeding good geometrician could
have been the author of that work.

But with respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such
parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person
who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could
have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told. The chance,
therefore, of forgery in the Testament is millions to one greater than
in the case of Homer or Euclid. Of the numerous priests or parsons of
the present day, bishops and all, every one of them can make a sermon,
or translate a scrap of Latin, especially if it has been translated
a thousand times before; but is there any amongst them that can write
poetry like Homer, or science like Euclid? The sum total of a parson's
learning, with very few exceptions, is a, b, ab, and hic, haec, hoc;
and their knowledge of science is, three times one is three; and this is
more than sufficient to have enabled them, had they lived at the time,
to have written all the books of the New Testament.

As the opportunities of forgery were greater, so also was the
inducement. A man could gain no advantage by writing under the name of
Homer or Euclid; if he could write equal to them, it would be better
that he wrote under his own name; if inferior, he could not succeed.
Pride would prevent the former, and impossibility the latter. But with
respect to such books as compose the New Testament, all the inducements
were on the side of forgery. The best imagined history that could have
been made, at the distance of two or three hundred years after the time,
could not have passed for an original under the name of the real
writer; the only chance of success lay in forgery; for the church wanted
pretence for its new doctrine, and truth and talents were out of the
question.

But as it is not uncommon (as before observed) to relate stories of
persons walking after they are dead, and of ghosts and apparitions of
such as have fallen by some violent or extraordinary means; and as the
people of that day were in the habit of believing such things, and of
the appearance of angels, and also of devils, and of their getting into
people's insides, and shaking them like a fit of an ague, and of their
being cast out again as if by an emetic--(Mary Magdalene, the book of
Mark tells us had brought up, or been brought to bed of seven devils;)
it was nothing extraordinary that some story of this kind should get
abroad of the person called Jesus Christ, and become afterwards the
foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Each writer told a tale as he heard it, or thereabouts, and gave to his
book the name of the saint or the apostle whom tradition had given as
the eye-witness. It is only upon this ground that the contradictions in
those books can be accounted for; and if this be not the case, they are
downright impositions, lies, and forgeries, without even the apology of
credulity.

That they have been written by a sort of half Jews, as the foregoing
quotations mention, is discernible enough. The frequent references
made to that chief assassin and impostor Moses, and to the men called
prophets, establishes this point; and, on the other hand, the church
has complimented the fraud, by admitting the Bible and the Testament
to reply to each other. Between the Christian-Jew and the
Christian-Gentile, the thing called a prophecy, and the thing prophesied
of, the type and the thing typified, the sign and the thing signified,
have been industriously rummaged up, and fitted together like old locks
and pick-lock keys. The story foolishly enough told of Eve and the
serpent, and naturally enough as to the enmity between men and serpents
(for the serpent always bites about the heel, because it cannot reach
higher, and the man always knocks the serpent about the head, as the
most effectual way to prevent its biting;) ["It shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. iii. 15.--Author.] this foolish
story, I say, has been made into a prophecy, a type, and a promise to
begin with; and the lying imposition of Isaiah to Ahaz, 'That a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,' as a sign that Ahaz should conquer,
when the event was that he was defeated (as already noticed in the
observations on the book of Isaiah), has been perverted, and made to
serve as a winder up.

Jonah and the whale are also made into a sign and type. Jonah is Jesus,
and the whale is the grave; for it is said, (and they have made Christ
to say it of himself, Matt. xii. 40), "For as Jonah was three days and
three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days
and three nights in the heart of the earth." But it happens, awkwardly
enough, that Christ, according to their own account, was but one day
and two nights in the grave; about 36 hours instead of 72; that is, the
Friday night, the Saturday, and the Saturday night; for they say he was
up on the Sunday morning by sunrise, or before. But as this fits quite
as well as the bite and the kick in Genesis, or the virgin and her son
in Isaiah, it will pass in the lump of orthodox things.--Thus much for
the historical part of the Testament and its evidences.

Epistles of Paul--The epistles ascribed to Paul, being fourteen in
number, almost fill up the remaining part of the Testament. Whether
those epistles were written by the person to whom they are ascribed is
a matter of no great importance, since that the writer, whoever he was,
attempts to prove his doctrine by argument. He does not pretend to
have been witness to any of the scenes told of the resurrection and the
ascension; and he declares that he had not believed them.

The story of his being struck to the ground as he was journeying to
Damascus, has nothing in it miraculous or extraordinary; he escaped with
life, and that is more than many others have done, who have been struck
with lightning; and that he should lose his sight for three days, and be
unable to eat or drink during that time, is nothing more than is common
in such conditions. His companions that were with him appear not to have
suffered in the same manner, for they were well enough to lead him the
remainder of the journey; neither did they pretend to have seen any
vision.

The character of the person called Paul, according to the accounts
given of him, has in it a great deal of violence and fanaticism; he had
persecuted with as much heat as he preached afterwards; the stroke
he had received had changed his thinking, without altering his
constitution; and either as a Jew or a Christian he was the same zealot.
Such men are never good moral evidences of any doctrine they preach.
They are always in extremes, as well of action as of belief.

The doctrine he sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of
the same body: and he advances this as an evidence of immortality.
But so much will men differ in their manner of thinking, and in the
conclusions they draw from the same premises, that this doctrine of
the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of
immortality, appears to me to be an evidence against it; for if I have
already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which
I have died, it is presumptive evidence that I shall die again. That
resurrection no more secures me against the repetition of dying, than an
ague-fit, when past, secures me against another. To believe therefore in
immortality, I must have a more elevated idea than is contained in the
gloomy doctrine of the resurrection.

Besides, as a matter of choice, as well as of hope, I had rather have a
better body and a more convenient form than the present. Every animal
in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without
mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space with greater ease
in a few minutes than man can in an hour. The glide of the smallest
fish, in proportion to its bulk, exceeds us in motion almost beyond
comparison, and without weariness. Even the sluggish snail can ascend
from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that ability,
would perish; and a spider can launch itself from the top, as a playful
amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy
frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is
nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too
little for the magnitude of the scene, too mean for the sublimity of the
subject.

But all other arguments apart, the consciousness of existence is the
only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance
of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or
the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form,
nor to the same matter, even in this life.

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter,
that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are
conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up
almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of
existence. These may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness
of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other
appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of
existence. In short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our
composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates
in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the
pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the
kernel.

Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a
thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought
when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable
of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that
capacity.

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation
of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more
than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint
a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind,
carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally
and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of
unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially
distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know
of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity
of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced
it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can
be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first
connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first
appeared in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the
other; and we can see that one is true.

That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form
or the same matter, is demonstrated to our senses in the works of
the creation, as far as our senses are capable of receiving that
demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to
us, far better than Paul, the belief of a life hereafter. Their little
life resembles an earth and a heaven, a present and a future state; and
comprises, if it may be so expressed, immortality in miniature.

The most beautiful parts of the creation to our eye are the winged
insects, and they are not so originally. They acquire that form and
that inimitable brilliancy by progressive changes. The slow and creeping
caterpillar worm of to day, passes in a few days to a torpid figure, and
a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the
miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of
the former creature remains; every thing is changed; all his powers
are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot conceive that the
consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal
as before; why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same
body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence
hereafter?

In the former part of 'The Agee of Reason.' I have called the creation
the true and only real word of God; and this instance, or this text, in
the book of creation, not only shows to us that this thing may be so,
but that it is so; and that the belief of a future state is a rational
belief, founded upon facts visible in the creation: for it is not more
difficult to believe that we shall exist hereafter in a better state and
form than at present, than that a worm should become a butterfly, and
quit the dunghill for the atmosphere, if we did not know it as a fact.

As to the doubtful jargon ascribed to Paul in 1 Corinthians xv., which
makes part of the burial service of some Christian sectaries, it is
as destitute of meaning as the tolling of a bell at the funeral; it
explains nothing to the understanding, it illustrates nothing to the
imagination, but leaves the reader to find any meaning if he can. "All
flesh," says he, "is not the same flesh. There is one flesh of men,
another of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." And what
then? nothing. A cook could have said as much. "There are also," says
he, "bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial
is one and the glory of the terrestrial is the other." And what then?
nothing. And what is the difference? nothing that he has told. "There
is," says he, "one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and
another glory of the stars." And what then? nothing; except that he says
that one star differeth from another star in glory, instead of distance;
and he might as well have told us that the moon did not shine so bright
as the sun. All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror,
who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous
people who come to have their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of
the same trade.

Sometimes Paul affects to be a naturalist, and to prove his system of
resurrection from the principles of vegetation. "Thou fool" says he,
"that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." To which one
might reply in his own language, and say, Thou fool, Paul, that which
thou sowest is not quickened except it die not; for the grain that dies
in the ground never does, nor can vegetate. It is only the living grains
that produce the next crop. But the metaphor, in any point of view, is
no simile. It is succession, and [not] resurrection.

The progress of an animal from one state of being to another, as from a
worm to a butterfly, applies to the case; but this of a grain does not,
and shows Paul to have been what he says of others, a fool.

Whether the fourteen epistles ascribed to Paul were written by him
or not, is a matter of indifference; they are either argumentative or
dogmatical; and as the argument is defective, and the dogmatical part is
merely presumptive, it signifies not who wrote them. And the same may
be said for the remaining parts of the Testament. It is not upon the
Epistles, but upon what is called the Gospel, contained in the four
books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and upon the pretended
prophecies, that the theory of the church, calling itself the Christian
Church, is founded. The Epistles are dependant upon those, and must
follow their fate; for if the story of Jesus Christ be fabulous, all
reasoning founded upon it, as a supposed truth, must fall with it.

We know from history, that one of the principal leaders of this church,
Athanasius, lived at the time the New Testament was formed; [Athanasius
died, according to the Church chronology, in the year 371--Author.] and
we know also, from the absurd jargon he has left us under the name of
a creed, the character of the men who formed the New Testament; and we
know also from the same history that the authenticity of the books of
which it is composed was denied at the time. It was upon the vote of
such as Athanasius that the Testament was decreed to be the word of God;
and nothing can present to us a more strange idea than that of decreeing
the word of God by vote. Those who rest their faith upon such authority
put man in the place of God, and have no true foundation for future
happiness. Credulity, however, is not a crime, but it becomes criminal
by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience
the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief
upon ourselves in any thing.

I here close the subject on the Old Testament and the New. The evidence
I have produced to prove them forgeries, is extracted from the books
themselves, and acts, like a two-edge sword, either way. If the evidence
be denied, the authenticity of the Scriptures is denied with it, for it
is Scripture evidence: and if the evidence be admitted, the authenticity
of the books is disproved. The contradictory impossibilities, contained
in the Old Testament and the New, put them in the case of a man who
swears for and against. Either evidence convicts him of perjury, and
equally destroys reputation.

Should the Bible and the Testament hereafter fall, it is not that I
have done it. I have done no more than extracted the evidence from
the confused mass of matters with which it is mixed, and arranged that
evidence in a point of light to be clearly seen and easily comprehended;
and, having done this, I leave the reader to judge for himself, as I
have judged for myself.



CHAPTER III - CONCLUSION

IN the former part of 'The Age of Reason' I have spoken of the three
frauds, mystery, miracle, and Prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in
any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what I have
there said upon those subjects, I shall not encumber this Second Part
with additions that are not necessary.

I have spoken also in the same work upon what is celled revelation, and
have shown the absurd misapplication of that term to the books of
the Old Testament and the New; for certainly revelation is out of the
question in reciting any thing of which man has been the actor or the
witness. That which man has done or seen, needs no revelation to tell
him he has done it, or seen it--for he knows it already--nor to enable
him to tell it or to write it. It is ignorance, or imposition, to apply
the term revelation in such cases; yet the Bible and Testament are
classed under this fraudulent description of being all revelation.

Revelation then, so far as the term has relation between God and man,
can only be applied to something which God reveals of his will to man;
but though the power of the Almighty to make such a communication is
necessarily admitted, because to that power all things are possible,
yet, the thing so revealed (if any thing ever was revealed, and which,
by the bye, it is impossible to prove) is revelation to the person only
to whom it is made. His account of it to another is not revelation; and
whoever puts faith in that account, puts it in the man from whom the
account comes; and that man may have been deceived, or may have dreamed
it; or he may be an impostor and may lie. There is no possible criterion
whereby to judge of the truth of what he tells; for even the morality of
it would be no proof of revelation. In all such cases, the proper
answer should be, "When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be
revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe
it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the
word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God." This
is the manner in which I have spoken of revelation in the former part of
The Age of Reason; and which, whilst it reverentially admits revelation
as a possible thing, because, as before said, to the Almighty all things
are possible, it prevents the imposition of one man upon another, and
precludes the wicked use of pretended revelation.

But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of
revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate
any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind
of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable
of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the
works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to
bad actions, and disposition to good ones. [A fair parallel of the then
unknown aphorism of Kant: "Two things fill the soul with wonder and
reverence, increasing evermore as I meditate more closely upon them:
the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." (Kritik
derpraktischen Vernunfe, 1788). Kant's religious utterances at the
beginning of the French Revolution brought on him a royal mandate
of silence, because he had worked out from "the moral law within" a
principle of human equality precisely similar to that which Paine had
derived from his Quaker doctrine of the "inner light" of every man.
About the same time Paine's writings were suppressed in England. Paine
did not understand German, but Kant, though always independent in
the formation of his opinions, was evidently well acquainted with the
literature of the Revolution, in America, England, and France.--Editor.]

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the
greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their
origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It
has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the
divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness
of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better,
far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to
roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there
were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster
as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the
pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men,
women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody
persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since
that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but
from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous
belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the
cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament [of] the other.

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the
sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that
twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no
sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to
employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and
Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off
the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would
cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides
this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible,
and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the
worst use of it--not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made
no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New]
Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read
both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing
called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that
Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only
reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than
Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they
call the scriptures a dead letter. [This is an interesting and correct
testimony as to the beliefs of the earlier Quakers, one of whom was
Paine's father.--Editor.] Had they called them by a worse name, they had
been nearer the truth.

It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the
Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries,
and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind,
to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an
impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing
called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every
thing that is dishonourable to his Maker. What is it the Bible teaches
us?--repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches
us?--to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman
engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called
faith.

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly
scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing,
revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the
bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot
exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies.
The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it
attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. The doctrine of not
retaliating injuries is much better expressed in Proverbs, which is
a collection as well from the Gentiles as the Jews, than it is in the
Testament. It is there said, (Xxv. 2 I) "If thine enemy be hungry,
give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:"
[According to what is called Christ's sermon on the mount, in the book
of Matthew, where, among some other [and] good things, a great deal of
this feigned morality is introduced, it is there expressly said, that
the doctrine of forbearance, or of not retaliating injuries, was not
any part of the doctrine of the Jews; but as this doctrine is found in
"Proverbs," it must, according to that statement, have been copied from
the Gentiles, from whom Christ had learned it. Those men whom Jewish and
Christian idolators have abusively called heathen, had much better and
clearer ideas of justice and morality than are to be found in the Old
Testament, so far as it is Jewish, or in the New. The answer of Solon on
the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never
been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of
political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury done to
the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole
constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ.--Author.] but
when it is said, as in the Testament, "If a man smite thee on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also," it is assassinating the dignity of
forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.

Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides
no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not
revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for
there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls
it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be
done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies
is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought
always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy
of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious
opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy
at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and
it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best
construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous
motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say
that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and
physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first
place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be
productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim
of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine
of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime
or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general
the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the
doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act
the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine,
and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not
exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men,
either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that
I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on
man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil;
and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It
is also absurd to suppose that such doctrine can make any part of a
revealed religion. We imitate the moral character of the Creator by
forbearing with each other, for he forbears with all; but this doctrine
would imply that he loved man, not in proportion as he was good, but as
he was bad.

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there is
no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we want
to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the
existence of an Almighty power, that governs and regulates the whole?
And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our senses
infinitely stronger than any thing we can read in a book, that any
imposter might make and call the word of God? As for morality, the
knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty power is sufficiently
demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible we
should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot conceive how
we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that we are here.
We must know also, that the power that called us into being, can if he
please, and when he pleases, call us to account for the manner in which
we have lived here; and therefore without seeking any other motive
for the belief, it is rational to believe that he will, for we know
beforehand that he can. The probability or even possibility of the thing
is all that we ought to know; for if we knew it as a fact, we should be
the mere slaves of terror; our belief would have no merit, and our best
actions no virtue.

Deism then teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all
that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is the Bible of
the deist. He there reads, in the hand-writing of the Creator himself,
the certainty of his existence, and the immutability of his power; and
all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries. The probability
that we may be called to account hereafter, will, to reflecting minds,
have the influence of belief; for it is not our belief or disbelief that
can make or unmake the fact. As this is the state we are in, and which
it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and
not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if
there were no God.

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange
fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in
the Bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that
the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in
a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe
all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But the belief of a God is
a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded
with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of
one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and
in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form instead of fact; of
notion instead of principle: morality is banished to make room for
an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a
supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of a God; an execution is
an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood,
like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives
them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then
praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing
it.

A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together,
confounds the God of the Creation with the imagined God of the
Christians, and lives as if there were none.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none
more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant
to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called
Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too
inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only
atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of
despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so
far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or
hereafter.

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every
evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have
been the first and will probably be the last that man believes. But pure
and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments.
They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine but by mixing it with
human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it
answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their
functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the
system. It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of
church and state; the church human, and the state tyrannic.

Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the
belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of
belief; he would stand in awe of God, and of himself, and would not do
the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief
the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This
is deism.

But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God
is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy Ghost,
by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to
such wild conceits. [The book called the book of Matthew, says, (iii.
16,) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as
well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one
is as much a nonsensical lie as the other. Acts, ii. 2, 3, says, that
it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the shape of cloven tongues:
perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff is fit only for tales of
witches and wizards.--Author.]

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other
invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator,
as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights.
The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are
calculated for mutual support. The study of theology as it stands in
Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing;
it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no
data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any
thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the
principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with
Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

Instead then of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and
Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted, and the
authenticity of which is disproved, it is necessary that we refer to the
Bible of the creation. The principles we discover there are eternal, and
of divine origin: they are the foundation of all the science that exists
in the world, and must be the foundation of theology.

We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of
any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it.
We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of
comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his
wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The
principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is
the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see
God, as it were, face to face.

Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with power of vision
to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the structure of
the universe, to mark the movements of the several planets, the cause
of their varying appearances, the unerring order in which they revolve,
even to the remotest comet, their connection and dependence on each
other, and to know the system of laws established by the Creator, that
governs and regulates the whole; he would then conceive, far beyond what
any church theology can teach him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness,
the munificence of the Creator. He would then see that all the knowledge
man has of science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders
his situation comfortable here, are derived from that source: his mind,
exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in
gratitude as it increased in knowledge: his religion or his worship
would become united with his improvement as a man: any employment he
followed that had connection with the principles of the creation,--as
everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts,
has,--would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to
him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects
inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but
the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are
fit only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual scene I
have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has knowledge of the
principles upon which the creation is constructed. We know that the
greatest works can be represented in model, and that the universe can be
represented by the same means. The same principles by which we measure
an inch or an acre of ground will measure to millions in extent. A
circle of an inch diameter has the same geometrical properties as a
circle that would circumscribe the universe. The same properties of a
triangle that will demonstrate upon paper the course of a ship, will
do it on the ocean; and, when applied to what are called the heavenly
bodies, will ascertain to a minute the time of an eclipse, though those
bodies are millions of miles distant from us. This knowledge is of
divine origin; and it is from the Bible of the creation that man has
learned it, and not from the stupid Bible of the church, that teaches
man nothing. [The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first
chapter of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this they
have demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have
been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before there
was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the
cause of day and night--and what is called his rising and setting that
of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to
suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light." It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and
balls, Presto, be gone--and most probably has been taken from it,
as Moses and his rod is a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule the conjurer is sublime
too; for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the
same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how
nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like
some parts of Edmund Burke's sublime and beautiful, is like a windmill
just visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying
mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.--Author.]

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of
which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without
which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition
from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the
universe. The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors
upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are
supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this
knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus
Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great
mechanic of the creation, the first philosopher, and original teacher of
all science. Let us then learn to reverence our master, and not forget
the labours of our ancestors.

Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it possible
that man could have a view, as I have before described, of the structure
and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive the idea of
constructing some at least of the mechanical works we now have; and the
idea so conceived would progressively advance in practice. Or could a
model of the universe, such as is called an orrery, be presented before
him and put in motion, his mind would arrive at the same idea. Such an
object and such a subject would, whilst it improved him in knowledge
useful to himself as a man and a member of society, as well as
entertaining, afford far better matter for impressing him with a
knowledge of, and a belief in the Creator, and of the reverence and
gratitude that man owes to him, than the stupid texts of the Bible and
the Testament, from which, be the talents of the preacher; what they
may, only stupid sermons can be preached. If man must preach, let him
preach something that is edifying, and from the texts that are known to
be true.

The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of
science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with
the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of
inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy--for
gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if
such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher
ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly, and every house of devotion a
school of science.

It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and the
light of reason, and setting up an invented thing called "revealed
religion," that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have been formed
of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human
species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have
made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion
to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and
admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his
wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the
will is the imperfection of the judgement. The philosopher knows that
the laws of the Creator have never changed, with respect either to the
principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be
supposed they have changed with respect to man?

I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing parts of
this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries;
and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted,
if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the
conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as
I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or
religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.


END OF PART II