Produced by David Widger





THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE

WITH A HISTORY OF HIS LITERARY, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAREER IN
AMERICA FRANCE, AND ENGLAND

By Moncure Daniel Conway

To Which Is Added A Sketch Of Paine By William Çobbett

(Hitherto Unpublished)

Volume II.

1899




THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE.




{1793}




CHAPTER I. "KILL THE KING, BUT NOT THE MAN"

Dumas' hero, Dr. Gilbert (in "Ange Pitou "), an idealization of Paine,
interprets his hopes and horrors on the opening of the fateful year
1793. Dr. Gilbert's pamphlets had helped to found liberty in the New
World, but sees that it may prove the germ of total ruin to the Old
World.

"A new world," repeated Gilbert; "that is to say, a vast open space,
a clear table to work upon,--no laws, but no abuses; no ideas, but no
prejudices. In France, thirty thousand square leagues of territory for
thirty millions of people; that is to say, should the space be equally
divided, scarcely room for a cradle or a grave for each. Out yonder,
in America, two hundred thousand square leagues for three millions of
people; frontiers which are ideal, for they border on the desert, which
is to say, immensity. In those two hundred thousand leagues, navigable
rivers, having a course of a thousand leagues; virgin forests, of which
God alone knows the limits,--that is to say, all the elements of life,
of civilization, and of a brilliant future. Oh, how easy it is, Billot,
when a man is called Lafayette, and is accustomed to wield a sword; when
a man is called Washington, and is accustomed to reflect deeply,--how
easy is it to combat against walls of wood, of earth, of stone, of human
flesh! But when, instead of founding, it is necessary to destroy; when
we see in the old order things that we are obliged to attack,--walls of
bygone, crumbling ideas; and that behind the ruins even of these walls
crowds of people and of interests still take refuge; when, after having
found the idea, we find that in order to make the people adopt it, it
will be necessary perhaps to decimate that people, from the old who
remember to the child who has still to learn; from the recollection
which is the monument to the instinct that is its germ--then, oh then,
Billot, it is a task that will make all shudder who can see beneath the
horizon.... I shall, however, persevere, for although I see obstacles,
I can perceive the end; and that end is splendid, Billot. It is not the
liberty of France alone that I dream of; it is the liberty of the
whole world. It is not the physical equality; it is equality before
the law,--equality of rights. It is not only the fraternity of our own
citizens, but of all nations.... Forward, then, and over the heaps of
our dead bodies may one day march the generations of which this boy here
is in the advanced guard!"

Though Dr. Gilbert has been in the Bastille, though he barely escapes
the bullet of a revolutionist, he tries to unite the throne and the
people. So, as we have seen, did Paine struggle until the King took
flight, and, over his own signature, branded all his pledges as extorted
lies. Henceforth for the King personally he has no respect; yet the
whole purpose of his life is now to save that of the prisoner. Besides
his humane horror of capital punishment, especially in a case which
involves the heads of thousands, Paine foresees Nemesis fashioning her
wheels in every part of Europe, and her rudder across the ocean,--where
America beholds in Louis XVI. her deliverer.

Paine's outlawry, announced by Kersaint in Convention, January 1st,
was more eloquent for wrath than he for clemency. Under such menaces the
majority for sparing Louis shrank with the New Year; French pride arose,
and with Danton was eager to defy despots by tossing to them the head of
a king. Poor Paine found his comrades retreating. What would a knowledge
of the French tongue have been worth to this leading republican of the
world, just then the one man sleeplessly seeking to save a Kings
life! He could not plead with his enraged republicans, who at length
overpowered even Brissot, so far as to draw him into the fatal plan of
voting for the King's death, coupled with submission to the verdict of
the people. Paine saw that there was at the moment no people, but
only an infuriated clan. He was now defending a forlorn hope, but he
struggled with a heroism that would have commanded the homage of Europe
had not its courts been also clans. He hit on a scheme which he hoped
might, in that last extremity, save the real revolution from a suicidal
inhumanity. It was the one statesmanlike proposal of the time: that
the King should be held as a hostage for the peaceful behavior of other
kings, and, when their war on France had ceased, banished to the United
States.

On January 15th, before the vote on the King's punishment was put, Paine
gave his manuscript address to the president: debate closed before
it could be read, and it was printed, He argued that the Assembly, in
bringing back Louis when he had abdicated and fled, was the more guilty;
and against his transgressions it should be remembered that by his aid
the shackles of America were broken.

"Let then those United States be the guard and the asylum of Louis
Capet. There, in the future, remote from the miseries and crimes of
royalty, he may learn from, the constant presence of public prosperity,
that the true system of government consists not in monarchs, but
in fair, equal, and honorable representation. In recalling this
circumstance, and submitting this proposal, I consider myself a citizen
of both countries. I submit it as an American who feels the debt of
gratitude he owes to every Frenchman. I submit it as a man, who, albeit
an adversary of kings, forgets not that they are subject to human
frailties. I support my proposal as a citizen of the French Republic,
because it appears to me the best and 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 people are always just, both in their
intentions and their object; but the true method of attaining such
purpose does not always appear at once. The English nation had groaned
under the Stuart despotism. Hence Charles I. was executed; but Charles
II. was restored to all the powers his father had lost. Forty years
later the same family tried to re-establish their oppression; the nation
banished the whole race from its territories. The remedy was effectual;
the Stuart family sank into obscurity, merged itself in the masses, and
is now extinct."

He reminds the Convention that the king had two brothers out of the
country who might naturally desire his death: the execution of the king
might make them presently plausible pretenders to the throne, around
whom their foreign enemies would rally: while the man recognized by
foreign powers as the rightful monarch of France was living there could
be no such pretender.

"It has already been proposed to abolish the penalty of death, and it
is with infinite satisfaction that I recollect the humane and excellent
oration pronounced by Robespierre on the subject, in the constituent
Assembly. Monarchical governments have trained the human race to
sanguinary punishments, but the people should not follow the examples
of their oppressors in such vengeance. 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."

This was admirable art. Under shelter of Robespierre's appeal against
the death penalty, the "Mountain"* could not at the moment break
the force of Paine's plea by reminding the Convention of his Quaker
sentiments. It will be borne in mind that up to this time Robespierre
was not impressed, nor Marat possessed, by the homicidal demon.
Marat had felt for Paine a sort of contemptuous kindness, and one day
privately said to him: "It is you, then, who believe in a republic; you
have too much sense to believe in such a dream." Robespierre, according
to Lamartine, "affected for the cosmopolitan radicalism of Paine the
respect of a neophite for ideas not understood." Both leaders now
suspected that Paine had gone over to the "Brissotins," as the
Girondists were beginning to be called. However, the Brissotins, though
a majority, had quailed before the ferocity with which the Jacobins had
determined on the king's death. M. Taine declares that the victory of
the minority in this case was the familiar one of reckless violence over
the more civilized--the wild beast over the tame. Louis Blanc denies
that the Convention voted, as one of them said, under poignards; but the
signs of fear are unmistakeable.

     * So called from the high benches on which these members
     sat. The seats of the Girondists on the floor were called
     the "Plain," and after their over-throw the "Marsh."

Vergniaud had declared it an insult for any one to suppose he would vote
for the king's death, but he voted for it. Villette was threatened with
death if he did not vote for that of the king. Sievès, who had attacked
Paine for republicanism, voted death. "What," he afterward said--"what
were the tribute of my glass of wine in that torrent of brandy?" But
Paine did not withhold his cup of cold water. When his name was called
he cried out: "I vote for the detention of Louis till the end of
the war, and after that his perpetual banishment." He spoke his well
prepared vote in French, and may have given courage to others. For even
under poignards--the most formidable being liability to a charge of
royalism--the vote had barely gone in favor of death.*

The fire-breathing Mountain felt now that its supremacy was settled.
It had learned its deadly art of conquering a thinking majority
by recklessness. But suddenly another question was sprung upon the
Convention: Shall the execution be immediate, or shall there be delay?
The Mountain groans and hisses as the question is raised, but the
dictation had not extended to this point, and the question must be
discussed. Here is one more small chance for Paine's poor royal client.
Can the execution only be postponed it will probably never be executed.

     * Upwards of three hundred voted with Paine, who says that
     the majority by which death was carried, unconditionally,
     was twenty-five. As a witness who had watched the case, his
     testimony may correct the estimate of Carlyle:

     "Death by a small majority of Fifty-three. Nay, if we deduct
     from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-
     six who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual
     surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One."
     See also Paine's "Mémoire, etc.. à Monroe."

Unfortunately Marat, whose thirst for the King's blood is almost
cannibalistic, can read on Paine's face his elation. He realizes
that this American, with Washington behind him, has laid before the
Convention a clear and consistent scheme for utilizing the royal
prisoner. The king's neck under a suspended knife, it will rest with
the foreign enemies of France whether it shall fall or not; while
the magnanimity of France and its respect for American gratitude will
prevail. Paine, then, must be dealt with somehow in this new debate
about delay.

He might, indeed, have been dealt with summarily had not the _Moniteur_
done him an opportune service; on January 17th and 18th it printed
Paine's unspoken argument for mercy, along with Erskine's speech at his
trial in London, and the verdict. So on the 19th, when Paine entered the
Convention, it was with the prestige not only of one outlawed by Great
Britain for advocating the Rights of Man, but of a representative of
the best Englishmen and their principles. It would be vain to assail
the author's loyalty to the republic, That he would speak that day was
certain, for on the morrow (20th) the final vote was to be taken. The
Mountain could not use on Paine their weapon against Girondins; they
could not accuse the author of the "Rights of Man" of being royalist
When he had mounted the tribune, and the clerk (Bancal, Franklin's
friend) was beginning to read his speech, Marat cried, "I submit that
Thomas Paine is incompetent to vote on this question; being a Quaker his
religious principles are opposed to the death-penalty." There was
great confusion for a time. The anger of the Jacobins was extreme,
says Guizot, and "they refused to listen to the speech of Paine, the
American, till respect for his courage gained him a hearing."* Demands
for freedom of speech gradually subdued the interruptions, and the
secretary proceeded:

"Very sincerely do I regret the Convention's vote of yesterday for
death. 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 by
experience 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 its 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 dictated by humanity,
than one inspired by a justice too severe. 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. 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.

     * "History of France," vi., p. 136.

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.
"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 happens,
unfortunately, that the person now under discussion is regarded in
America as a deliverer of their country. I can assure you that his
execution will there spread universal sorrow, and it is in your power
not thus 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."

Here were loud murmurs from the "Mountain," answered with demands for
liberty of opinion. Thuriot sprang to his feet crying, "This is not the
language of Thomas Paine." Marat mounted the tribune and asked Paine
some questions, apparently in English, then descending he said to the
Assembly in French: "I denounce the interpreter, and I maintain that
such is not the opinion of Thomas Paine. It is a wicked and faithless
translation."*

     * "Venant d'un démocrate tel que Thomas Paine, d'un homme
     qui avait vécu parmi les Américains, d'un penseur, cette
     déclaration parut si dangereuse à Marat que, pour en
     détruire l'effet, il n'hésita pas à s'écrier: 'Je dénonce
     le truchement. Je soutiens que ce n'est point là l'opinion
     do Thomas Paine. C'est une traduction infidèle.'"--Louis
     Blanc. See also "Histoire Parliamentaire," xxiii., p. 250.

These words, audacious as mendacious, caused a tremendous uproar. Garran
came to the rescue of the frightened clerk, declaring that he had read
the original, and the translation was correct. Paine stood silent and
calm during the storm. The clerk proceeded:

"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, your only ally, have asked you by my vote
to delay the execution.

"Ah, citizens, give not the tyrant of England the triumph of seeing the
man perish on a scaffold who helped my dear brothers of America to break
his chains!"

At the conclusion of this speech Marat "launched himself into the middle
of the hall" and cried out that Paine had "voted against the punishment
of death because he was a Quaker." Paine replied, "I voted against it
both morally and politically."

Had the vote been taken that day perhaps Louis might have escaped.
Brissot, shielded from charges of royalism by Paine's republican fame,
now strongly supported his cause. "A cruel precipitation," he cried,
"may alienate our friends in England, Ireland, America. Take care! The
opinion of European peoples is worth to you armies!" But all this only
brought out the Mountain's particular kind of courage; they were ready
to defy the world--Washington included--in order to prove that a King's
neck was no more than any other man's. Marat's clan--the "Nihilists"
of the time, whose strength was that they stopped at nothing--had
twenty-four hours to work in; they surrounded the Convention next day
with a mob howling for "justice!" Fifty-five members were absent; of
the 690 present a majority of seventy decided that Louis XVI. should die
within twenty-four hours.

A hundred years have passed since that tragedy of poor Louis; graves
have given up their dead; secrets of the hearts that then played their
part are known. The world can now judge between England's Outlaw and
England's King of that day. For it is established, as we have seen,
both by English and French archives, that while Thomas Paine was toiling
night and day to save the life of Louis that life lay in the hand of the
British Ministry. Some writers question the historic truth of the offer
made by Danton, but none can question the refusal of intercession, urged
by Fox and others at a time when (as Count d'Estaing told Morris) the
Convention was ready to give Pitt the whole French West Indies to keep
him quiet. It was no doubt with this knowledge that Paine declared from
the tribune that George III. would triumph in the execution of the King
who helped America to break England's chains. Brissot also knew it when
with weighed words he reported for his Committee (January 12th): "The
grievance of the British Cabinet against France is not that Louis is in
judgment, but that Thomas Paine wrote 'The Rights of Man.'" "The militia
were armed," says Louis Blanc, "in the south-east of England troops
received order to march to London, the meeting of Parliament was
advanced forty days, the Tower was reinforced by a new garrison, in
fine there was unrolled a formidable preparation of war against--Thomas
Paine's book on the Rights of Man!"* Incredible as this may appear the
debates in the House of Commons, on which it is fairly founded, would
be more incredible were they not duly reported in the "Parliamentary
History."** In the debates on the Alien Bill, permitting the King
to order any foreigner out of the country at will, on making
representations to the French Convention in behalf of the life of Louis,
on augmenting the military forces with direct reference to France, the
recent trial of Paine was rehearsed, and it was plainly shown that the
object of the government was to suppress freedom of the press by Terror.
Erskine was denounced for defending Paine and for afterwards attending
a meeting of the "Society of Friends of the Liberty of the Press," to
whose resolutions on Paine's case his name was attached. Erskine found
gallant defenders in the House, among them Fox, who demanded of Pitt:
"Can you not prosecute Paine without an army?" Burke at this time
enacted a dramatic scene. Having stated that three thousand daggers had
been ordered at Birmingham by an Englishman, he drew from his pocket a
dagger, cast it on the floor of the House of Commons, and cried:
"That is what we are to get from an alliance with France!"
Paine--Paine--Paine--was the burden laid on Pitt, who had said to Lady
Hester Stanhope: "Tom Paine is quite right."

     * "Histoire de la Révolution," vol. viii., p. 96.

     ** Vol. xxv.

That Thomas Paine and his "Rights of Man" were the actual cause of the
English insults to which their declaration of war replied was so well
understood in the French Convention that its first answer to the menaces
was to appoint Paine and Condorcet to write an address to the English
people.*

It is noticeable that on the question whether the judgment on the King's
fate should be submitted to the people, Paine voted "No." His belief
in the right of all to representation implied distrust of the immediate
voice of the masses. The King had said that if his case were referred to
the people "he should be massacred." Gouverneur Morris had heard this,
and no doubt communicated it to Paine, who was in consultation with him
on his plan of sending Louis to America.** Indeed, it is probable that
popular suffrage would have ratified the decree. Nevertheless, it was a
fair "appeal to the people" which Paine made, after the fatal verdict,
in expressing to the Convention his belief that the people would not
have done so. For after the decree the helplessness of the prisoner
appealed to popular compassion, and on the fatal day the tide had
turned. Four days after the execution the American Minister writes
to Jefferson: "The greatest care was taken to prevent a concourse of
people. This proves a conviction that the majority was not favorable to
that severe measure. In fact the great mass of the people mourned the
fate of their unhappy prince."

     *  "Le Département des Affaires Étrangères pendant la
     Revolution, 1787-1804." Par Frédéric Masson, Bibliothécaire
     da Ministère des Affaires Étrangères.    Paris, 1877, p.
     273.

     ** Morris' "Diary," ii., pp. 19, 27. 32.

To Paine the death of an "unhappy prince" was no more a subject
for mourning than that of the humblest criminal--for, with whatever
extenuating circumstances, a criminal he was to the republic he had
sworn to administer. But the impolicy of the execution, the resentment
uselessly incurred, the loss of prestige in America, were felt by Paine
as a heavy blow to his cause--always the international republic. He was,
however, behind the scenes enough to know that the blame rested
mainly on America's old enemy and his league of foreign courts against
liberated France. The man who, when Franklin said "Where liberty is,
there is my country," answered "Where liberty is not, there is mine,"
would not despair of the infant republic because of its blunders.
Attributing these outbursts to maddening conspiracies around and within
the new-born nation, he did not believe there could be peace in Europe
so long as it was ruled by George III. He therefore set himself to
the struggle, as he had done in 1776. Moreover, Paine has faith in
Providence.*



     *  "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.... 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 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!'"--Paine's address to the Convention (September
     25, 1792) after taking his seat.

At this time, it should be remembered, opposition to capital punishment
was confined to very few outside of the despised sect of Quakers. In the
debate three, besides Paine, gave emphatic expression to that sentiment,
Manuel, Condorcet,--Robespierre! The former, in giving his vote against
death, said: "To Nature belongs the right of death. Despotism has taken
it from her; Liberty will return it" As for Robespierre, his argument
was a very powerful reply to Paine, who had reminded him of the bill
he had introduced into the old National Assembly for the abolition of
capital punishment. He did, indeed, abhor it, he said; it was not his
fault if his views had been disregarded. But why should men who then
opposed him suddenly revive the claims of humanity when the penalty
happened to fall upon a King? Was the penalty good enough for the
people, but not for a King? If there were any exception in favor of such
a punishment, it should be for a royal criminal.

This opinion of Robespierre is held by some humane men. The present
writer heard from Professor Francis W. Newman--second to none in
philanthropy and compassionateness--a suggestion that the death penalty
should be reserved for those placed at the head of affairs who betray
their trust, or set their own above the public interests to the injury
of a Commonwealth.

The real reasons for the execution of the King closely resemble those of
Washington for the execution of Major André, notwithstanding the
sorrow of the country, with which the Commander sympathized. The equal
nationality of the United States, repudiated by Great Britain, was in
question. To hang spies was, however illogically, a conventional usage
among nations. Major André must die, therefore, and must be refused the
soldier's death for which he petitioned. For a like reason Europe
must be shown that the French Convention is peer of their scornful
Parliaments; and its fundamental principle, the equality of men, could
not admit a King's escape from the penalty which would be unhesitatingly
inflicted on a "Citizen." The King had assumed the title of Citizen,
had worn the republican cockade; the apparent concession of royal
inviolability, in the moment of his betrayal of the compromise made with
him, could be justified only on the grounds stated by Paine,--impolicy
of slaying their hostage, creating pretenders, alienating America;
and the honor of exhibiting to the world, by a salient example, the
Republic's magnanimity in contrast with the cruelty of Kings.




CHAPTER II. AN OUTLAWED ENGLISH AMBASSADOR

Soon after Paine had taken his seat in the Convention, Lord Fortescue
wrote to Miles, an English agent in Paris, a letter fairly expressive of
the feelings, fears, and hopes of his class.

"Tom Paine is just where he ought to be--a member of the Convention of
Cannibals. One would have thought it impossible that any society upon
the face of the globe should have been fit for the reception of such a
being until the late deeds of the National Convention have shown them to
be most fully qualified. His vocation will not be complete, nor theirs
either, till his head finds its way to the top of a pike, which will
probably not be long first."*

     * This letter, dated September 26, 1792, appears in the
     Miles Correspondence (London, 1890). There are indications
     that Miles was favorably disposed towards Paine, and on that
     account, perhaps, was subjected to influence by his
     superiors. As an example of the way in which just minds were
     poisoned towards Paine, a note of Miles may be mentioned. He
     says he was "told by Col. Bosville, a declared friend of
     Paine, that his manners and conversation were coarse, and he
     loved the brandy bottle." But just as this Miles
     Correspondence was appearing in London, Dr. Grèce found the
     manuscript diary of Rickman, who had discovered (as two
     entries show) that this "declared friend of Paine," Col.
     Bosville, and professed friend of himself, was going about
     uttering injurious falsehoods concerning him (Rickman),
     seeking to alienate his friends at the moment when he most
     needed them. Rickman was a bookseller engaged in circulating
     Paine's works. There is little doubt that this wealthy Col.
     Bosville was at the time unfriendly to the radicals. He was
     staying in Paris on Paine's political credit, while
     depreciating him.

But if Paine was so fit for such a Convention, why should they behead
him? The letter betrays a real perception that Paine possesses humane
principles, and an English courage, which would bring him into danger.
This undertone of Fortescue's invective represented the profound
confidence of Paine's adherents in England, When tidings came of the
King's trial and execution, whatever glimpses they gained of their
outlawed leader showed him steadfast as a star caught in one wave and
another of that turbid tide. Many, alas, needed apologies, but Paine
required none. That one Englishman, standing on the tribune for justice
and humanity, amid three hundred angry Frenchmen in uproar, was as
sublime a sight as Europe witnessed in those days. To the English
radical the outlawry of Paine was as the tax on light, which was
presently walling up London windows, or extorting from them the means of
war against ideas.* The trial of Paine had elucidated nothing, except
that, like Jupiter, John Bull had the thunderbolts, and Paine the
arguments. Indeed, it is difficult to discover any other Englishman who
at the moment pre-eminently stood for principles now proudly called
English.

     * In a copy of the first edition of "The Rights of Man,"
     which I bought in London, I found, as a sort of book-mark, a
     bill for 1L. 6s. 8d., two quarters' window-tax, due from Mr.
     Williamson, Upper Fitzroy Place. Windows closed with bricks
     are still seen in some of the gloomiest parts of London.
     I have in manuscript a bitter anathema of the time:

     "God made the Light, and saw that it was good: Pitt laid a
     tax on it,--G---- d------ his blood!"

But Paine too presently held thunderbolts. Although his efforts to save
Louis had offended the "Mountain," and momentarily brought him into
the danger Lord Fortescue predicted, that party was not yet in the
ascendant. The Girondists were still in power, and though some of their
leaders had bent before the storm, that they might not be broken, they
had been impressed both by the courage and the tactics of Paine. "The
Girondists consulted Paine," says Lamartine, "and placed him on the
Committee of Surveillance." At this moment many Englishmen were in
France, and at a word from Paine some of their heads might have mounted
on the pike which Lord Fortescue had imaginatively prepared for the head
that wrote "The Rights of Man." There remained, for instance, Mr. Munro,
already mentioned. This gentleman, in a note preserved in the English
Archives, had written to Lord Grenville (September 8, 1792) concerning
Paine: "What must a nation come to that has so little discernment in
the election of their representatives, as to elect such a fellow?"
But having lingered in Paris after England's formal declaration of war
(February 11th), Munro was cast into prison. He owed his release to that
"fellow" Paine, and must be duly credited with having acknowledged it,
and changed his tone for the rest of his life,--which he probably owed
to the English committeeman. Had Paine met with the fate which Lords
Gower and Fortescue hoped, it would have gone hard with another eminent
countryman of theirs,--Captain Grimstone, R.A. This personage, during a
dinner party at the Palais Égalité, got into a controversy with Paine,
and, forgetting that the English Jove could not in Paris safely answer
argument with thunder, called Paine a traitor to his country and struck
him a violent blow. Death was the penalty of striking a deputy, and
Paine's friends were not unwilling to see the penalty inflicted on this
stout young Captain who had struck a man of fifty-six. Paine had much
trouble in obtaining from Barrère, of the Committee of Public Safety,
a passport out of the country for Captain Grimstone, whose travelling
expenses were supplied by the man he had struck.

In a later instance, related by Walter Savage Landor, Paine's generosity
amounted to quixotism. The story is finely told by Landor, who says in a
note: "This anecdote was communicated to me at Florence by Mr. Evans,
a painter of merit, who studied under Lawrence, and who knew personally
(Zachariah) Wilkes and Watt. In religion and politics he differed widely
from Paine."

"Sir," said he, "let me tell you what he did for me. My name is
Zachariah Wilkes. I was arrested in Paris and condemned to die. I had
no friend here; and it was a time when no friend would have served
me: Robespierre ruled. 'I am innocent!' I cried in desperation. 'I am
innocent, so help me God! I am condemned for the offence of another.'
I wrote a statement of my case with a pencil; thinking at first of
addressing it to my judge, then of directing it to the president of the
Convention. The jailer, who had been kind to me, gave me a gazette, and
told me not to mind seeing my name, so many were there before it.

"'O!' said I 'though you would not lend me your ink, do transmit this
paper to the president.'

"'No, my friend!' answered he gaily. 'My head is as good as yours, and
looks as well between the shoulders, to my liking. Why not send it (if
you send it anywhere) to the deputy Paine here?' pointing to a column in
the paper.

"'O God! he must hate and detest the name of Englishman: pelted,
insulted, persecuted, plundered...'

"'I could give it to him,' said the jailer.

"'Do then!' said I wildly. 'One man more shall know my innocence.' He
came within the half hour. I told him my name, that my employers were
Watt and Boulton of Birmingham, that I had papers of the greatest
consequence, that if I failed to transmit them, not only my life was
in question, but my reputation. He replied: 'I know your employers by
report only; there are no two men less favourable to the principles I
profess, but no two upon earth are honester. You have only one great
man among you: it is Watt; for Priestley is gone to America. The
church-and-king men would have japanned him. He left to these
philosophers of the rival school his house to try experiments on; and
you may know, better than I do, how much they found in it of carbon and
calx, of silex and argilla.'

"He examined me closer than my judge had done; he required my proofs.
After a long time I satisfied him. He then said, 'The leaders of the
Convention would rather have my life than yours. If by any means I can
obtain your release on my own security, will you promise me to return
within twenty days?' I answered, 'Sir, the security I can at present
give you, is trifling... I should say a mere nothing.'

"'Then you do not give me your word?' said he.

"'I give it and will redeem it.'

"He went away, and told me I should see him again when he could inform
me whether he had succeeded. He returned in the earlier part of the
evening, looked fixedly upon me, and said, 'Zachariah Wilkes! if you
do not return in twenty-four days (four are added) you will be the most
unhappy of men; for had you not been an honest one, you could not be
the agent of Watt and Boulton. I do not think I have hazarded much in
offering to take your place on your failure: such is the condition.' I
was speechless; he was unmoved. Silence was first broken by the jailer.
'He seems to get fond of the spot now he must leave it.' I had thrown my
arms upon the table towards my liberator, who sat opposite, and I rested
my head and breast upon it too, for my temples ached and tears had not
yet relieved them. He said, 'Zachanah! follow me to the carriage.' The
soldiers paid the respect due to his scarf, presenting arms, and drawing
up in file as we went along. The jailer called for a glass of wine, gave
it me, poured out another, and drank to our next meeting."*

Another instance may be related in Paine's own words, written (March 20,
1806) to a gentleman in New York.

"Sir,--I will inform you of what I know respecting General Miranda, with
whom I first became acquainted at New York, about the year 1783. He is a
man of talents and enterprise, and the whole of his life has been a life
of adventures.

"I went to Europe from New York in April, 1787. Mr. Jefferson was then
Minister from America to France, and Mr. Littlepage, a Virginian
(whom Mr. Jay knows), was agent for the king of Poland, at Paris. Mr.
Littlepage was a young man of extraordinary talents, and I first met
with him at Mr. Jefferson's house at dinner. By his intimacy with
the king of Poland, to whom also he was chamberlain, he became well
acquainted with the plans and projects of the Northern Powers of Europe.
He told me of Miranda's getting himself introduced to the Empress
Catharine of Russia, and obtaining a sum of money from her, four
thousand pounds sterling; but it did not appear to me what the object
was for which the money was given; it appeared a kind of retaining fee.

"After I had published the first part of the 'Rights of Man' in England,
in the year 1791, I met Miranda at the house of Turnbull and Forbes,
merchants, Devonshire Square, London. He had been a little before this
in the employ of Mr. Pitt, with respect to the affair of Nootka Sound,
but I did not at that time know it; and I will, in the course of this
letter, inform you how this connection between Pitt and Miranda ended;
for I know it of my own knowledge.

     * Zachanah Wilkes did not fail to return, or Paine to greet
     him with safety, and the words, "There is yet English blood
     in England." But here Landor passes off into an imaginative
     picture of villages rejoicing at the fall of Robespierre.
     Paine himself had then been in prison seven months; so we
     can only conjecture the means by which Zachariah was
     liberated.--Lander's Works, London, 1853, i., p. 296.

"I published the second part of the 'Rights of Man' in London, in
February, 1792, and I continued in London till I was elected a member of
the French Convention, in September of that year; and went from London
to Paris to take my seat in the Convention, which was to meet the 20th
of that month. I arrived in Paris on the 19th. After the Convention met,
Miranda came to Paris, and was appointed general of the French army,
under General Dumouriez. But as the affairs of that army went wrong in
the beginning of the year 1793, Miranda was suspected, and was brought
under arrest to Paris to take his trial. He summoned me to appear to his
character, and also a Mr. Thomas Christie, connected with the house of
Turnbull and Forbes. I gave my testimony as I believed, which was, that
his leading object was and had been the emancipation of his country,
Mexico, from the bondage of Spain; for I did not at that time know of
his engagements with Pitt Mr. Christie's evidence went to show that
Miranda did not come to France as a necessitous adventurer; but believed
he came from public-spirited motives, and that he had a large sum of
money in the hands of Turnbull and Forbes. The house of Turnbull and
Forbes was then in a contract to supply Paris with flour. Miranda was
acquitted.

"A few days after his acquittal he came to see me, and in a few days
afterwards I returned his visit. He seemed desirous of satisfying me
that he was independent, and that he had money in the hands of Turnbull
and Forbes. He did not tell me of his affair with old Catharine of
Russia, nor did I tell him that I knew of it. But he entered into
conversation with respect to Nootka Sound, and put into my hands several
letters of Mr. Pitt's to him on that subject; amongst which was one
which I believe he gave me by mistake, for when I had opened it, and was
beginning to read it, he put forth his hand and said, 'O, that is not
the letter I intended'; but as the letter was short I soon got through
with it, and then returned it to him without making any remarks upon it.
The dispute with Spain was then compromised; and Pitt compromised with
Miranda for his services by giving him twelve hundred pounds sterling,
for this was the contents of the letter.

"Now if it be true that Miranda brought with him a credit upon certain
persons in New York for sixty thousand pounds sterling, it is not
difficult to suppose from what quarter the money came; for the opening
of any proposals between Pitt and Miranda was already made by the affair
of Nootka Sound. Miranda was in Paris when Mr. Monroe arrived there as
Minister; and as Miranda wanted to get acquainted with him, I cautioned
Mr. Monroe against him, and told him of the affair of Nootka Sound, and
the twelve hundred pounds.

"You are at liberty to make what use you please of this letter, and with
my name to it."

Here we find a paid agent of Pitt calling on outlawed Paine for aid,
by his help liberated from prison; and, when his true character is
accidentally discovered, and he is at the outlaw's mercy, spared,--no
doubt because this true English ambassador, who could not enter England,
saw that at the moment passionate vengeance had taken the place of
justice in Paris. Lord Gower had departed, and Paine must try and shield
even his English enemies and their agents, where, as in Miranda's case,
the agency did not appear to affect France. This was while his friends
in England were hunted down with ferocity.

In the earlier stages of the French Revolution there was much sympathy
with it among literary men and in the universities. Coleridge, Southey,
Wordsworth, were leaders in the revolutionary cult at Oxford and
Cambridge. By 1792, and especially after the institution of Paine's
prosecution, the repression became determined. The memoir of Thomas
Poole, already referred to, gives the experiences of a Somerset
gentleman, a friend of Coleridge. After the publication of Paine's
"Rights of Man" (1791) he became a "political Ishmaelite." "He made
his appearance amongst the wigs and powdered locks of his kinsfolk and
acquaintance, male and female, without any of the customary powder in
his hair, which innocent novelty was a scandal to all beholders, seeing
that it was the outward and visible sign of a love of innovation, a
well-known badge of sympathy with democratic ideas."

Among Poole's friends, at Stowey, was an attorney named Symes, who
lent him Paine's "Rights of Man." After Paine's outlawry Symes met a
cabinet-maker with a copy of the book, snatched it out of his hand, tore
it up, and, having learned that it was lent him by Poole, propagated
about the country that he (Poole) was distributing seditious literature
about the country. Being an influential man, Poole prevented the burning
of Paine in effigy at Stowey. As time goes on this country-gentleman
and scholar finds the government opening his letters, and warning his
friends that he is in danger.

"It was," he writes to a friend, "the boast an Englishman was wont to
make that he could think, speak, and write whatever he thought proper,
provided he violated no law, nor injured any individual. But now an
absolute controul exists, not indeed over the imperceptible operations
of the mind, for those no power of man can controul; but, what is the
same thing, over the effects of those operations, and if among these
effects, that of speaking is to be checked, the soul is as much enslaved
as the body in a cell of the Bastille. The man who once feels, nay
fancies, this, is a slave. It shows as if the suspicious secret
government of an Italian Republic had replaced the open, candid
government of the English laws."

As Thomas Poole well represents the serious and cultured thought of
young England in that time, it is interesting to read his judgment on
the king's execution and the imminent war.

"Many thousands of human beings will be sacrificed in the ensuing
contest, and for what? To support three or four individuals, called
arbitrary kings, in the situation which they have usurped. I consider
every Briton who loses his life in the war us much murdered as the
King of France, and every one who approves the war, as signing the
death-warrant of each soldier or sailor that falls.... The excesses
in France are great; but who are the authors of them? The Emperor of
Germany, the King of Prussia, and Mr. Burke. Had it not been for their
impertinent interference, I firmly believe the King of France would be
at this moment a happy monarch, and that people would be enjoying every
advantage of political liberty.... The slave-trade, you will see, will
not be abolished, because to be humane and honest now is to be a traitor
to the constitution, a lover of sedition and licentiousness! But this
universal depression of the human mind cannot last long."

It was in this spirit that the defence of a free press was undertaken
in England. That thirty years' war was fought and won on the works of
Paine. There were some "Lost Leaders": the kings execution, the reign
of terror, caused reaction in many a fine spirit; but the rank and file
followed their Thomas Paine with a faith that crowned heads might envy.
The London men knew Paine thoroughly. The treasures of the world would
not draw him, nor any terrors drive him, to the side of cruelty
and inhumanity. Their eye was upon him. Had Paine, after the king's
execution, despaired of the republic there might have ensued some
demoralization among his followers in London. But they saw him by the
side of the delivered prisoner of the Bastille, Brissot, an author well
known in England, by the side of Condorcet and others of Franklin's
honored circle, engaged in death-struggle with the fire-breathing dragon
called "The Mountain." That was the same unswerving man they had been
following, and to all accusations against the revolution their answer
was--Paine is still there! A reign of terror in England followed
the outlawry of Paine. Twenty-four men, at one time or another, were
imprisoned, fined, or transported for uttering words concerning abuses
such as now every Englishman would use concerning the same. Some who
sold Paine's works were imprisoned before Paine's trial, while the
seditious character of the books was not yet legally settled. Many were
punished after the trial, by both fine and imprisonment. Newspapers were
punished for printing extracts, and for having printed them before the
trial.* For this kind of work old statutes passed for other purposes
were impressed, new statutes framed, until Fox declared the Bill of
Rights repealed, the constitution cut up by the roots, and the obedience
of the people to such "despotism" no longer "a question of moral
obligation and duty, but of prudence."*

     * The first trial after Paine's, that of Thomas Spence
     (February 26, 1793), for selling "The Rights of Man," failed
     through a flaw in the indictment, but the mistake did not
     occur again. At the same time William Holland was awarded a
     year's imprisonment and £100 fine for selling "Letter to the
     Addressers." H. D. Symonds, for publishing "Rights of Man,"
     £20 fine and two years; f or "Letter to the Addressers,"
     one year,  £100 fine, with sureties in £1,000 for three
     years, and imprisonment till the fine be paid and sureties
     given. April 17, 1793, Richard Phillips, printer, Leicester,
     eighteen months. May 8th, J. Ridgway, London, selling
     "Rights of Man," £100 and one year; "Letter to the
     Addressers," one year, £100 fine; in each case sureties in
     £1,000, with imprisonment until fines paid and sureties
     given. Richard Peart, "Rights" and "Letter," three months.
     William Belcher, "Rights" and "Letter," three months. Daniel
     Holt, £50, four years. Messrs. Robinson, £200. Eaton and
     Thompson, the latter in Birmingham, were acquitted.   Clio
     Rickman escaped punishment by running over to Paris. Dr.
     Currie (1793) writes: "The prosecutions that are commenced
     all over England against printers, publishers, etc., would
     astonish you; and most of these are for offences committed
     many months ago. The printer of the Manchester Herald has
     had seven different indictments preferred against him for
     paragraphs in his paper; and six different indictments for
     selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine,--all
     previous to the trial of Paine. The man was opulent,
     supposed worth ment by running over to Paris. Dr. Currie
     (1793) writes: *' The prosecutions that are commenced all
     over England against printers, publishers, etc., would
     astonish you; and most of these are for offences committed
     many months ago. The printer of the Manchester Herald has
     had seven different indictments preferred against him for
     paragraphs in his paper; and six different indictments for
     selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine,--all
     previous to the trial of Paine. The man was opulent,
     supposed worth ment by running over to Paris. Dr. Currie
     (1793) writes: "The prosecutions that are commenced all
     over England against printers, publishers, etc., would
     astonish you; and most of these are for offences committed
     many months ago. The printer of the Manchester Herald has
     had seven different indictments preferred against him for
     paragraphs in his paper; and six different indictments for
     selling or disposing of six different copies of Paine,--all
     previous to the trial of Paine. The man was opulent,
     supposed worth £20,000; but these different actions will
     ruin him, as they were intended to do."--"Currie's Life,"
     i., p. 185. See Buckle's "History of Civilization," etc.,
     American éd., p. 352. In the cases where "gentlemen" were
     found distributing the works the penalties were ferocious.
     Fische Palmer was sentenced to seven years' transportation.
     Thomas Muir, for advising persons to read "the works of that
     wretched outcast Paine" (the Lord Advocate's words) was
     sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. This sentence
     was hissed. The tipstaff being ordered to take those who
     hissed into custody, replied: "My lord, they 're all
     hissing."

From his safe retreat in Paris bookseller Rickman wrote his impromptu:

     "Hail Briton's land!
     Hail freedom's shore!
     Far happier than of old;
     For in thy blessed realms no more
     The Rights of Man are sold!"

The famous town-crier of Bolton, who reported to his masters that he
had been round that place "and found in it neither the rights of man
nor common sense," made a statement characteristic of the time. The
aristocracy and gentry had indeed lost their humanity and their sense
under a disgraceful panic. Their serfs, unable to read, were fairly
represented by those who, having burned Paine in effigy, asked their
employer if there was "any other gemman he would like burnt, for a glass
o' beer."

     * "Pari. Hist.," xxxii., p. 383.

The White Bear (now replaced by the Criterion Restaurant) no longer knew
its little circle of radicals. A symbol of how they were trampled out
is discoverable in the "T. P." shoe-nails. These nails, with heads so
lettered, were in great request among the gentry, who had only to hold
up their boot-soles to show how they were trampling on Tom Paine and his
principles. This at any rate was accurate. Manufacturers of vases also
devised ceramic anathemas.*

     * There are two Paine pitchers in the Museum at Brighton,
     England. Both were made at Leeds, one probably before
     Paine's trial, since it presents a respectable full-length
     portrait, holding in his hand a book, and beneath, the words:
     "Mr. Thomas Paine, Author of The Rights of Man." The other
     shows a serpent with Paine's head, two sides being adorned
     with the following lines:

     "God save the King, and all his subjects too,
     Likewise his forces and commanders true,
     May he their rights forever hence Maintain
     Against all strife occasioned by Tom Paine."

     "Prithee Tom Paine why wilt thou meddling be
     In others' business which concerns not thee;
     For while thereon thou dost extend thy cares
     Thou dost at home neglect thine own affairs."

     "God save the King!"

     "Observe the wicked and malicious man
     Projecting all the mischief that he can."

In all of this may be read the frantic fears of the King and aristocracy
which were driving the Ministry to make good Paine's aphorism, "There
is no English Constitution." An English Constitution was, however, in
process of formation,--in prisons, in secret conclaves, in lands of
exile, and chiefly in Paine's small room in Paris. Even in that time of
Parisian turbulence and peril the hunted liberals of England found more
security in France than in their native land.* For the eyes of the
English reformer of that period, seeing events from prison or exile,
there was a perspective such as time has now supplied to the historian.
It is still difficult to distribute the burden of shame fairly. Pitt
was unquestionably at first anxious to avoid war. That the King was
determined on the war is certain; he refused to notice Wilberforce when
he appeared at court after his separation from Pitt on that point.

     * When William Pitt died in 1806,--crushed under disclosures
     in the impeachment of Lord Melville,--the verdict of many
     sufferers was expressed in an "Epitaph Impromptu" (MS.)
     found among the papers of Thomas Rickman.    It has some
     historic interest.

     "Reader! with eye indignant view this bier;
     The foe of all the human race lies here.
     With talents small, and those directed, too,
     Virtue and truth and wisdom to subdue,
     He lived to every noble motive blind,
     And died, the execration of mankind.

     "Millions were butchered by his damned plan
     To violate each sacred right of man;
     Exulting he o'er earth each misery hurled,
     And joyed to drench in tears and blood, the world.

     "Myriads of beings wretched he has made
     By desolating war, his favourite trade,
     Who, robbed of friends and dearest ties, are left
     Of every hope and happiness bereft.

     "In private life made up of fuss and pride,
     Not e'en his vices leaned to virtue's side;
     Unsound, corrupt, and rotten at the core,
     His cold and scoundrel heart was black all o'er;
     Nor did one passion ever move his mind
     That bent towards the tender, warm, and kind.

     "Tyrant, and friend to war! we hail the day
     When Death, to bless mankind, made thee his prey,
     And rid the earth of all could earth disgrace,--
     The foulest, bloodiest scourge of man's oppressed race."

But the three attempts on his life, and his mental infirmity, may
be pleaded for George III. Paine, in his letter to Dundas, wrote
"Madjesty"; when Rickman objected, he said: "Let it stand." And it
stands now as the best apology for the King, while it rolls on Pitt's
memory the guilt of a twenty-two years' war for the subjugation of
thought and freedom. In that last struggle of the barbarism surviving
in civilization, it was shown that the madness of a populace was
easily distanced by the cruelty of courts. Robespierre and Marat were
humanitarian beside George and his Ministers; the Reign of Terror,
and all the massacres of the French Revolution put together, were
child's-play compared with the anguish and horrors spread through Europe
by a war whose pretext was an execution England might have prevented.




CHAPTER III. REVOLUTION VS. CONSTITUTION

The French revolutionists have long borne responsibility for the
first declaration of war in 1793. But from December 13, 1792, when the
Painophobia Parliament began its debates, to February 1st, when France
proclaimed itself at war with England, the British government had done
little else than declare war--and prepare war--against France. Pitt,
having to be re-elected, managed to keep away from Parliament for
several days at its opening, and the onslaught was assumed by Burke. He
began by heaping insults on France. On December 15th he boasted that
he had not been cajoled by promise of promotion or pension, though he
presently, on the same evening, took his seat for the first time on the
Treasury bench. In the "Parliamentary History" (vols. xxx. and xxxi.)
may be found Burke's epithets on France,--the "republic of assassins,"
"Cannibal Castle," "nation of murderers," "gang of plunderers,"
"murderous atheists," "miscreants," "scum of the earth." His vocabulary
grew in grossness, of course, after the King's execution and the
declaration of war, but from the first it was ribaldry and abuse. And
this did not come from a private member, but from the Treasury bench. He
was supported by a furious majority which stopped at no injustice.
Thus the Convention was burdened with guilt of the September massacres,
though it was not then in existence. Paine's works being denounced,
Erskine reminded the House of the illegality of so influencing a trial
not yet begun. He was not listened to. Fox and fifty other earnest men
had a serious purpose of trying to save the King's life, and proposed
to negotiate with the Convention. Burke fairly foamed at the motions
to that end, made by Fox and Lord Lansdowne. What, negotiate with such
villains! To whom is our agent to be accredited? Burke draws a comic
picture of the English ambassador entering the Convention, and, when he
announces himself as from "George Third, by the grace of God," denounced
by Paine. "Are we to humble ourselves before Judge Paine?" At this point
Whetstone made a disturbance and was named. There were some who found
Burke's trifling intolerable. Mr. W. Smith reminded the House that
Cromwell's ambassadors had been received by Louis XIV. Fox drew a
parallel between the contemptuous terms used toward the French, and
others about "Hancock and his crew," with whom Burke advised treaty,
and with whom His Majesty did treat. All this was answered by further
insults to France, these corresponding with a series of practical
injuries. Lord Gower had been recalled August 17th, after the formation
of a republic, and all intercourse with the French Minister in London,
Chauvelin, was terminated. In violation of the treaty of 1786, the
agents of France were refused permission to purchase grain and arms
in England, and their vessels loaded with provisions seized. The
circulation of French bonds, issued in 1790, was prohibited in England.
A coalition had been formed with the enemies of France, the Emperor
of Austria and the King of Prussia, Finally, on the execution of Louis
XVI., Chauvelin was ordered (January 24th) to leave England in eight
days. Talleyrand remained, but Chauvelin was kicked out of the country,
so to say, simply because the Convention had recognized him. This
appeared a plain _casus belli_, and was answered by the declaration of
the Convention in that sense (February 1st), which England answered ten
days later.*

     * It was stipulated in the treaty of commerce between
     France and England.

In all this Paine recognized the hand of Burke. While his adherents in
England, as we have seen, were finding in Pitt a successor to Satan,
there is a notable absence from Paine's writings and letters of any such
animosity towards that Minister. He concluded at Paris (1786) 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 (February, 1793)
by the Convention... 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 on Chauvelin's return to France, and in consequence of
it. "Paine's "Address to the People of France" (1797). The words of the
declaration of war, following the list of injuries, are: "La Convention
Nationale déclaré, au nom de la nation Française, qu'attendu les actes
multipliés et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionnés, la république Française
est en guerre avec le roi d'Angleterre." The solemn protest of Lords
Lauderdale, Lansdowne, and Derby, February 1st, against the address
in answer to the royal message, before France had spoken, regards that
address as a demonstration of universal war. The facts and the situation
are carefully set forth by Louis Blanc, "Histoire de la Révolution,"
tome viii., p. 93 seq. regarded Pitt as a victim. "The father of Pitt,"
he once wrote, "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,
like Prometheus, is Britain chained to the barren rock of Hanover,
whilst the imperial eagle preys upon her vitals.'" It is probable that
on the intimations from Pitt, at the close of 1792, of his desire for
private consultations with friendly Frenchmen, Paine entered into the
honorable though unauthorized conspiracy for peace which was terminated
by the expulsion of Chauvelin. In the light of later events, and the
desertion of Dumouriez, these overtures of Pitt made through Talleyrand
(then in London) were regarded by the French leaders, and are still
regarded by French writers, as treacherous. But no sufficient reason
is given for doubting Pitt's good faith in that matter. Writing to
the President (Washington), December 28, 1792, the American Minister,
Gouverneur Morris, states the British proposal to be:

"France shall deliver the royal family to such branch of the Bourbons as
the King may choose, and shall recall her troops from the countries
they now occupy. In this event Britain will send hither a Minister and
acknowledge the Republic, and mediate a peace with the Emperor and King
of Prussia. I have several reasons to believe that this information is
not far from the truth."

It is true that Pitt had no agent in France whom he might not
have disavowed, and that after the fury with which the Painophobia
Parliament, under lead of Burke, inspired by the King, had opened, could
hardly have maintained any peaceful terms. Nevertheless, the friends
of peace in France secretly acted on this information, which Gouverneur
Morris no doubt received from Paine. A grand dinner was given by Paine,
at the Hôtel de Ville, to Dumouriez, where this brilliant General met
Brissot, Condorcet, Santerre, and several eminent English radicals,
among them Sampson Perry. At this time it was proposed to send Dumouriez
secretly to London, to negotiate with Pitt, but this was abandoned.
Maret went, and he found Pitt gracious and pacific. Chauvelin, however,
advised the French government of this illicit negotiation, and Maret
was ordered to return. Such was the situation when Louis was executed.
That execution, as we have seen, might have been prevented had Pitt
provided the money; but it need not be supposed that, with Burke now on
the Treasury bench, the refusal is to be ascribed to anything more
than his inability to cope with his own majority, whom the King was
patronizing. So completely convinced of Pitt's pacific disposition were
Maret and his allies in France that the clandestine ambassador again
departed for London. But on arriving at Dover, he learned that Chauvelin
had been expelled, and at once returned to France.*

     * See Louis Blanc's "Histoire," etc., tome viii.f p. 100,
     for the principal authorities concerning this incident.--
     Annual Register, 1793, ch. vi.; "Mémoires tirés des papiers
     d'un homme d'État.," ii., p. 157; "Mémoires de Dumouriez,"
     t. iii., p. 384.

Paine now held more firmly than ever the first article of his faith as
to practical politics: the chief task of republicanism is to break
the Anglo-German sceptre. France is now committed to war; it must be
elevated to that European aim. Lord North and America reappear in Burke
and France. Meanwhile what is said of Britain in his "Rights of Man" was
now more terribly true of France--it had no Constitution. The Committee
on the Constitution had declared themselves ready to report early in the
winter, but the Mountaineers managed that the matter should be postponed
until after the King's trial. As an American who prized his citizenship,
Paine felt chagrined and compromised at being compelled to act as a
legislator and a judge because of his connection with a Convention
elected for the purpose of framing a legislative and judicial machinery.
He and Con-dorcet continued to add touches to this Constitution, the
Committee approving, and on the first opportunity it was reported again.
This was February 15, 1793. But, says the _Moniteur_, "the struggles
between the Girondins and the Mountain caused the examination and
discussion to be postponed." It was, however, distributed.

Gouverneur Morris, in a letter to Jefferson (March 7th), says this
Constitution "was read to the Convention, but I learnt the next
morning that a Council had been held on it overnight, by which it was
condemned." Here is evidence in our American archives of a meeting or
"Council" condemning the Constitution on the night of its submission.
It must have been secret, for it does not appear in French histories,
so far as I can discover. Durand de Maillane says that "the exclusion of
Robespierre and Couthon from this eminent task [framing a Constitution]
was a new matter for discontent and jealousy against the party of Pétion
"--a leading Girondin,--and that Robespierre and his men desired "to
render their work useless."* No indication of this secret condemnation
of the Paine-Condorcet Constitution, by a conclave appeared on March
1st, when the document was again submitted. The Convention now set April
15th for its discussion, and the Mountaineers fixed that day for the
opening of their attack on the Girondins. The Mayor of Paris appeared
with a petition, adopted by the Communal Council of the thirty-five
sections of Paris, for the arrest of twenty-two members of the
Convention, as slanderers of Paris,--"presenting the Parisians to
Europe as men of blood,"--friends of Roland, accomplices of the traitor
Dumouriez, enemies of the clubs. The deputies named were: Brissot,
Guadet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles,
Biroteau, Pontécoulant, Pétion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Louvet,
Lehardy, Gor-sas, Abbé Fauchet, Lanthenas, Lasource, Valady, Chambon.
Of this list five were members of the Committee on the Constitution, and
two supplementary members.** Besides this, two of the arraigned--Louvet
and Lasource--had been especially active in pressing forward the
Constitution. The Mountaineers turned the discord they thus caused into
a reason for deferring discussion of the Constitution.

     * "Histoire de la Convention Nationale," p. 50. Durand-
     Maillane was "the silent member" of the Convention, but a
     careful observer and well-informed witness. I follow him and
     Louis Blanc in relating the fate of the Paine-Condorcet
     Constitution.

     ** See vol. i., p. 357.

They declared also that important members were absent, levying troops,
and especially that Marat's trial had been ordered. The discussion on
the petition against the Girondins, and whether the Constitution should
be considered, proceeded together for two days, when the Mountaineers
were routed on both issues. The Convention returned the petition to the
Mayor, pronouncing it "calumnious," and it made the Constitution the
order of the day. Robespierre, according to Du-rand-Maillane, showed
much spite at this defeat. He adroitly secured a decision that the
preliminary "Declaration of Rights" should be discussed first, as there
could be endless talk on those generalities.*

     * This Declaration, submitted by Condorcet, April 17th,
     being largely the work of Paine, is here translated: The
     end of all union of men in society being maintenance of
     their natural rights, civil and political, these rights
     should be the basis of the social pact: their recognition
     and their declaration ought to precede the Constitution
     which secures and guarantees them. 1. The natural rights,
     civil and political, of men are liberty, equality, security,
     property, social protection, and resistance to oppression.
     2. Liberty consists in the power to do whatever is not
     contrary to the rights of others; thus, the natural rights
     of each man has no limits other than those which secure to
     other members of society enjoyment of the same rights. 3.
     The preservation of liberty depends on the sovereignty of
     the Law, which is the expression of the general will.
     Nothing unforbidden by law can be impeached, and none may be
     constrained to do what it does not command. 4. Every man is
     free to make known his thought and his opinions. 5. Freedom
     of the press (and every other means of publishing one's
     thoughts) cannot be prohibited, suspended, or limited. 6.
     Every citizen shall be free in the exercise of his worship
     [cultê]. 7. Equality consists in the power of each to enjoy
     the same rights. 8. The Law should be equal for all, whether
     in recompense, punishment, or restraint. 9. All citizens are
     admissible to all public positions, employments, and
     functions. Free peoples can recognise no grounds of
     preference except talents and virtues. 10. Security consists
     in the protection accorded by society to each 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, promote, 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 of
     resistance by force. Every citizen summoned or arrested by
     the authority of law, and in the forms prescribed by it,
     should instantly obey; he renders himself guilty by
     resistance. 14. Every man being presumed innocent until
     declared guilty, should his arrest be judged indispensable,
     all rigor not necessary to secure his person should be
     severely repressed by law. 15. None should be punished save
     in virtue of a law established and promulgated previous to
     the offence, and legally applied. 16. A law that should
     punish offences committed before its existence would be an
     arbitrary Act. Retroactive effect given to any law is a
     crime. 17. Law should award only penalties strictly and
     evidently necessary to the general security; they should be
     proportioned to the offence and useful to society. 18. The
     right of property consists in a man's being master in the
     disposal, at his will, of his goods, capital, income, and
     industry. 19. No kind of work, commerce, or culture can be
     interdicted for 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 may be
     deprived of the least portion of his property without his
     consent, unless because of public necessity, legally
     determined, exacted openly, and under the condition of a
     just indemnity in advance. 22. No tax shall be established
     except for the general utility, and to relieve public needs.
     All citizens have the right to co-operate, personally or by
     their representatives, in the establishment of public
     contributions. 23. Instruction is the need of all, and
     society owes it equally to all its members. 24. Public
     succors are a sacred debt of society, and 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 each citizen has an equal right to
     co-operate in its exercise. 28. No partial assemblage of
     citizens, and no individual may attribute to themselves
     sovereignty, to exercise authority and fill any public
     function, without a formal delegation by the law. 29. Social
     security cannot exist where the limits of public
     administration are not clearly determined by law, and where
     the responsibility of all public functionaries is not
     assured. 30. All citizens are bound to co-operate in this
     guarantee, and to enforce the law when summoned in its name.
     31. Men united in society should have legal means of
     resisting oppression. In every free government the mode of
     resisting different acts of oppression should be regulated
     by the Constitution. 32. It is oppression when a law
     violates the natural rights, civil and political, which it
     should ensure. It is oppression when the law is violated by
     public officials in its application to individual cases. It
     is oppression when arbitrary acts violate the rights of
     citizens against the terms of the law. 33. A people has
     always the right to revise, reform, and change its
     Constitution. One generation has no right to bind future
     generations, and all heredity in offices is absurd and
     tyrannical.

It now appears plain that Robespierre, Marat, and the Mountaineers
generally were resolved that there should be no new government The
difference between them and their opponents was fundamental: to them
the Revolution was an end, to the others a means. The Convention was a
purely revolutionary body. It had arbitrarily absorbed all legislative
and judicial functions, exercising them without responsibility to any
code or constitution. For instance, in State Trials French law required
three fourths of the voices for condemnation; had the rule been followed
Louis XVI. would not have perished. Lanjuinais had pressed the point,
and it was answered that the sentence on Louis was political, for the
interest of the State; _salus populi suprema lex_. This implied that
the Convention, turning aside from its appointed functions, had, in
anticipation of the judicial forms it meant to establish, constituted
itself into a Vigilance Committee to save the State in an emergency. But
it never turned back again to its proper work. Now when the Constitution
was framed, every possible obstruction was placed in the way of its
adoption, which would have relegated most of the Mountaineers to private
life.

Robespierre and Marat were in luck. The Paine-Condorcet Constitution
omitted all mention of a Deity. Here was the immemorial and infallible
recipe for discord, of which Robespierre made the most He took the
"Supreme Being" under his protection; he also took morality under his
protection, insisting that the Paine-Condorcet Constitution gave liberty
even to illicit traffic. While these discussions were going on Marat
gained his triumphant acquittal from the charges made against him by the
Girondins. This damaging blow further demoralized the majority which was
eager for the Constitution. By violence, by appeals against atheism,
by all crafty tactics, the Mountaineers secured recommitment of the
Constitution. To the Committee were added Hérault de Séchelles, Ramel,
Mathieu, Couthon, Saint-Just,--all from the Committee of Public Safety.
The Constitution as committed was the most republican document of the
kind ever drafted, as remade it was a revolutionary instrument; but its
preamble read: "In the presence and under the guidance (_auspices_) of
the Supreme Being, the French People declare," etc.

God was in the Constitution; but when it was reported (June 10th)
the Mountaineers had their opponents _en route_ for the scaffold. The
arraignment of the twenty-two, declared by the Convention "calumnious"
six weeks before, was approved on June 2d. It was therefore easy to pass
such a constitution as the victors desired. Some had suggested, during
the theological debate, that "many crimes had been sanctioned by this
King of kings,"--no doubt with emphasis on the discredited royal
name. Robespierre identified his "Supreme Being" with nature, of whose
ferocities the poor Girondins soon had tragical evidence.*

     * "Les rois, les aristocrates, les tyrants qu'ils soient,
     sont des esclaves révoltas contre le souverain de la terre,
     qui est le genre humain, et contre le législateur de
     l'univers, qui est la nature."--Robespierre's final article
     of "Rights," adopted by the Jacobins, April 21,1793.  Should
     not slaves revolt?

The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on June 25th; it was
ratified by the Communes August 10th. When it was proposed to organize a
government under it, and dissolve the Convention, Robespierre remarked:
_That sounds like a suggestion of Pitt!_ Thereupon the Constitution
was suspended until universal peace, and the Revolution superseded the
Republic as end and aim of France.*

     * "I observed in the french revolutions that they always
     proceeded by stages, and made each stage a stepping stone to
     another. The Convention, to amuse the people, voted a
     constitution, and then voted to suspend the practical
     establishment of it till after the war, and in the meantime
     to carry on a revolutionary government. When Robespierre
     fell they proposed bringing forward the suspended
     Constitution, and apparently for this purpose appointed a
     committee to frame what they called organic laws, and these
     organic laws turned out to be a new Constitution (the
     Directory Constitution which was in general a good one).
     When Bonaparte overthrew this Constitution he got himself
     appointed first Consul for ten years, then for life, and now
     Emperor with an hereditary succession."--Paine to Jefferson.
     MS. (Dec. 27, 1804). The Paine-Condorcet Constitution is
     printed in uvres Completes de Condorcet, vol. xviii. That
     which superseded it may be read (the Declaration of Rights
     omitted) in the "Constitutional History of France. By Henry
     C. Lockwood." (New York, 1890). It is, inter alia, a
     sufficient reason for describing the latter as
     revolutionary, that it provides that a Convention, elected
     by a majority of the departments, and a tenth part of the
     primaries, to revise or alter the Constitution, shall be
     "formed in like manner as the legislatures, and unite in
     itself the highest power." In other words, instead of being
     limited to constitutional revision, may exercise all
     legislative and other functions, just as the existing
     Convention was doing.

Some have ascribed to Robespierre a phrase he borrowed, on one occasion,
from Voltaire, _Si Dieu n' existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer_.
Robespierre's originality was that he did invent a god, made in his own
image, and to that idol offered human sacrifices,--beginning with his
own humanity. That he was genuinely superstitious is suggested by the
plausibility with which his enemies connected him with the "prophetess,"
Catharine Théot, who pronounced him the reincarnate "Word of God,"
Certain it is that he revived the old forces of fanaticism, and largely
by their aid crushed the Girondins, who were rationalists. Condorcet had
said that in preparing a Constitution for France they had not consulted
Numa's nymph or the pigeon of Mahomet; they had found human reason
sufficient. Corruption of best is worst. In the proportion that a humane
deity would be a potent sanction for righteous laws, an inhuman deity is
the sanction of inhuman laws. He who summoned a nature-god to the French
Convention let loose the scourge on France. Nature inflicts on
mankind, every day, a hundred-fold the agonies of the Reign of Terror.
Robespierre had projected into nature a sentimental conception of his
own, but he had no power to master the force he had evoked. That had to
take the shape of the nature-gods of all time, and straightway dragged
the Convention down to the savage plane where discussion becomes an
exchange of thunder-stones. Such relapses are not very difficult to
effect in revolutionary times. By killing off sceptical variations, and
cultivating conformity, a cerebral evolution proceeded for ages by which
kind-hearted people were led to worship jealous and cruel gods, who,
should they appear in human form, would be dealt with as criminals.
Unfortunately, however, the nature-god does not so appear; it is
represented in euphemisms, while at the same time it coerces the social
and human standard. Since the nature-god punishes hereditarily, kills
every man at last, and so tortures millions that the suggestion of hell
seems only too probable to those sufferers, a political system formed
under the legitimacy of such a superstition must subordinate crimes
to sins, regard atheism as worse than theft, acknowledge the arbitrary
principle, and confuse retaliation with justice. From the time that
the shekinah of the nature-god settled on the Mountain, offences
were measured, not by their injury to man, but as insults to the
Mountain-god, or to his anointed. In the mysterious counsels of the
Committee of Public Safety the rewards are as little harmonious with the
human standard as in the ages when sabbath-breaking and murder met the
same doom. Under the paralyzing splendor of a divine authority, any
such considerations as the suffering or death of men become petty. The
average Mountaineer was unable to imagine that those who tried to save
Louis had other than royalist motives. In this Armageddon the Girondins
were far above their opponents in humanity and intelligence, but the
conditions did not admit of an entire adherence to their honorable
weapons of argument and eloquence. They too often used deadly threats,
without meaning them; the Mountaineers, who did mean them, took such
phrases seriously, and believed the struggle to be one of life and
death. Such phenomena of bloodshed, connected with absurdly inadequate
causes, are known in history only where gods mingle in the fray. Reign
of Terror? What is the ancient reign of the god of battles, jealous,
angry every day, with everlasting tortures of fire prepared for the
unorthodox, however upright, even more than for the immoral? In France
too it was a suspicion of unorthodoxy in the revolutionary creed that
plunged most of the sufferers into the lake of fire and brimstone.

From the time of Paine's speeches on the King's fate he was
conscious that Marat's evil eye was on him. The American's inflexible
republicanism had inspired the vigilance of the powerful journals of
Brissot and Bonneville, which barred the way to any dictatorship. Paine
was even propagating a doctrine against presidency, thus marring the
example of the United States, on which ambitious Frenchmen, from Marat
to the Napoleons, have depended for their stepping-stone to despotism.
Marat could not have any doubt of Paine's devotion to the Republic,
but knew well his weariness of the Revolution. In the simplicity of his
republican faith Paine had made a great point of the near adoption
of the Constitution, and dissolution of the Convention in five or
six months, little dreaming that the Mountaineers were concentrating
themselves on the aim of becoming masters of the existing Convention
and then rendering it permanent. Marat regarded Paine's influence as
dangerous to revolutionary government, and, as he afterwards admitted,
desired to crush him. The proposed victim had several vulnerable points:
he had been intimate with Gouverneur Morris, whose hostility to France
was known; he had been intimate with Dumouriez, declared a traitor;
and he had no connection with any of the Clubs, in which so many
found asylum. He might have joined one of them had he known the French
language, and perhaps it would have been prudent to unite himself with
the "Cordeliers," in whose _esprit de corps_ some of his friends found
refuge.

However, the time of intimidation did not come for two months after the
King's death, and Paine was busy with Condorcet on the task assigned
them, of preparing an Address to the People of England concerning the
war of their government against France. This work, if ever completed,
does not appear to have been published. It was entrusted (February 1st)
to Barrère, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber. As Frédéric Masson, the
learned librarian and historian of the Office of Foreign Affairs, has
found some trace of its being assigned to Paine and Condorcet, it may be
that further research will bring to light the Address. It could hardly
have been completed before the warfare broke out between the Mountain
and the Girondins, when anything emanating from Condorcet and Paine
would have been delayed, if not suppressed. There are one or two brief
essays in Condorcet's works--notably "The French Republic to Free
Men"--which suggest collaboration with Paine, and may be fragments of
their Address.*

     * "uvres Complètes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p.
     16: "La République Françoise aux homines libres." In 1794,
     when Paine was in prison, a pamphlet was issued by the
     revolutionary government, entitled: "An Answer to the
     Declaration of the King of England, respecting his Motives
     for Carrying on the Present War, and his Conduct towards
     France." This anonymous pamphlet, which is in English,
     replies to the royal proclamation of October 29th, and bears
     evidence of being written while the English still occupied
     Toulon or early in November, 1793. There are passages in it
     that suggest the hand of Paine, along with others which he
     could not have written. It is possible that some composition
     of his, in pursuance of the task assigned him and Condorcet,
     was utilized by the Committee of Public Safety in its answer
     to George III.

At this time the long friendship between Paine and Condorcet, and
the Marchioness too, had become very intimate. The two men had acted
together on the King's trial at every step, and their speeches on
bringing Louis to trial suggest previous consultations between them.

Early in April Paine was made aware of Marat's hostility to him. General
Thomas Ward reported to him a conversation in which Marat had said:
"Frenchmen are mad to allow foreigners to live among them. They should
cut off their ears, let them bleed a few days, and then cut off their
heads." "But you yourself are a foreigner," Ward had replied, in
allusion to Marat's Swiss birth.* The answer is not reported. At length
a tragical incident occurred, just before the trial of Marat (April
13th), which brought Paine face to face with this enemy. A wealthy young
Englishman, named Johnson, with whom Paine had been intimate in London,
had followed him to Paris, where he lived in the same house with his
friend. His love of Paine amounted to worship. Having heard of Marat's
intention to have Paine's life taken, such was the young enthusiast's
despair, and so terrible the wreck of his republican dreams, that he
resolved on suicide. He made a will bequeathing his property to Paine,
and stabbed himself. Fortunately he was saved by some one who entered
just as he was about to give himself the third blow. It may have been
Paine himself who then saved his friend's life; at any rate, he did so
eventually.

     * "Englishmen in the French Revolution."   By John G. Alger.
     London, 1889, p. 176.   (A book of many blunders.)

The decree for Marat's trial was made amid galleries crowded with his
adherents, male and female ("Dames de la Fraternité"), who hurled cries
of wrath on every one who said a word against him. All were armed,
the women ostentatious of their poignards. The trial before the
Revolutionary Tribunal was already going in Marat's favor, when it was
determined by the Girondins to bring forward this affair of Johnson.
Paine was not, apparently, a party to this move, though he had enjoined
no secrecy in telling his friend Brissot of the incident, which occurred
before Marat was accused. On April 16th there appeared in Bris-sot's
journal _Le Patriote Français_, the following paragraph:

"A sad incident has occurred to apprise the anarchists of the mournful
fruits of their frightful teaching. An Englishman, whose name I reserve,
had abjured his country because of his detestation of kings; he came to
France hoping to find there liberty; he saw only its mask on the hideous
visage of anarchy. Heart-broken by this spectacle, he determined on
self-destruction. Before dying, he wrote the following words, which we
have read, as written by his own trembling hand, on a paper which is in
the possession of a distinguished foreigner:--'I had come to France to
enjoy Liberty, but Marat has assassinated it. Anarchy is even more
cruel than despotism. I am unable to endure this grievous sight, of the
triumph of imbecility and inhumanity over talent and virtue.'"

The acting editor of _Le Patriote Français_, Girey-Dupré, was summoned
before the Tribunal, where Marat was on trial, and testified that the
note published had been handed to him by Brissot, who assured him that
it was from the original, in the hands of Thomas Paine. Paine deposed
that he had been unacquainted with Marat before the Convention
assembled; that he had not supposed Johnson's note to have any
connection with the accusations against Marat.

President.--Did you give a copy of the note to Brissot?

Paine.--I showed him the original.

President.--Did you send it to him as it is printed?

Paine.--Brissot could only have written this note after what I read to
him, and told him. I would observe to the tribunal that Johnson gave
himself two blows with the knife after he had understood that Marat
would denounce him.

Marat.--Not because I would denounce the youth who stabbed himself, but
because I wish to denounce Thomas Paine.*

Paine (continuing).--Johnson had for some time suffered mental anguish.
As for Marat, I never spoke to him but once. In the lobby of the
Convention he said to me that the English people are free and happy; I
replied, they groan under a double despotism.**

     * It would appear that Paine had not been informed until
     Marat declared it, and was confirmed by the testimony of
     Choppin, that the attempted suicide was on his account.

     ** Moniteur, April 24,1793.

No doubt it had been resolved to keep secret the fact that young Johnson
was still alive. The moment was critical; a discovery that Brissot
had written or printed "avant de mourir" of one still alive might have
precipitated matters.

It came out in the trial that Marat, addressing a club ("Friends of
Liberty and Equality"), had asked them to register a vow to recall from
the Convention "all of those faithless members who had betrayed
their duties in trying to save a tyrant's life," such deputies being
"traitors, royalists, or fools."

Meanwhile the Constitution was undergoing discussion in the Convention,
and to that Paine now gave his entire attention. On April 20th the
Convention, about midnight, when the Moderates had retired and the
Mountaineers found themselves masters of the field, voted to entertain
the petition of the Parisian sections against the Girondins. Paine saw
the star the Republic sinking. On "April 20th, 2d year of the Republic,"
he wrote as follows to Jefferson:

"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 sett 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 powers 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 expense, 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 that 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 to 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 N. Rochelle are burnt down. I
assure you I shall not bring money enough to build another."

Four days after this letter was written Marat, triumphant, was crowned
with oak leaves. Fou-frede in his speech (April 16th) had said: "Marat
has formally demanded dictatorship." This was the mob's reply: _Bos
locutus est_.

With Danton, Paine had been on friendly terms, though he described as
"rose water" the author's pleadings against the guillotine. On May 6th,
Paine wrote to Danton a letter brought to light by Taine, who says:
"Compared with the speeches and writings of the time, it produces the
strangest effect by its practical good sense."* Dr. Robinet also finds
here evidence of "a lucid and wise intellect."**

     * "La Revolution," ii., pp. 382, 413, 414.

     ** "Danton Emigre," p. 177.


"Paris, May 6th, and year of the Republic (1793).

"Citoyen Danton:

"As you read English, I write this letter to you without parsing 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 is 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.

"I observe that the confederated powers have not yet recognised
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 those 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 clearness 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
(farine) 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 from 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
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."

It is to be hoped that Paine's letter to Marat may be discovered in
France; it is shown by the Cob-bett papers, printed in the Appendix,
that he kept a copy, which there is reason to fear perished with
General Bonneville's library in St. Louis. Whatever may be the letter's
contents, there is no indication that thereafter Marat troubled Paine.
Possibly Danton and Marat compared their letters, and the latter got it
into his head that hostility to this American, anxious only to cross the
ocean, could be of no advantage to him. Or perhaps he remembered that if
a hue and cry were raised against "foreigners" it could not stop short
of his own leaf-crowned Neufchatel head. He had shown some sensitiveness
about that at his trial. Samson-Pegnet had testified that, at
conversations in Paine's house, Marat had been reported as saying that
it was necessary to massacre all the foreigners, especially the English.
This Marat pronounced an "atrocious calumny, a device of the statesmen
[his epithet for Girondins] to render me odious." Whatever his motives,
there is reason to believe that Marat no longer included Paine in his
proscribed list. Had it been otherwise a fair opportunity of striking
down Paine presented itself on the occasion, already alluded to, when
Paine gave his testimony in favor of General Miranda. Miranda was tried
before the Revolutionary Tribunal on May 12th, and three days following.
He had served under Dumouriez, was defeated, and was suspected of
connivance with his treacherous commander. Paine was known to have been
friendly with Dumouriez, and his testimony in favor of Miranda might
naturally have been used against both men. Miranda was, however,
acquitted, and that did not make Marat better disposed towards that
adventurer's friends, all Girondins, or, like Paine, who belonged to no
party, hostile to Jacobinism. Yet when, on June 2d, the doomed Girondins
were arrested, there were surprising exceptions: Paine and his literary
collaborateur, Condorcet. Moreover, though the translator of Paine's
works, Lanthenas, was among the proscribed, his name was erased on
Marat's motion.

On June 7th Robespierre demanded a more stringent law against
foreigners, and one was soon after passed ordering their imprisonment.
It was understood that this could not apply to the two foreigners in the
Convention--Paine and Anacharsis Clootz,--though it was regarded as a
kind of warning to them. I have seen it stated, but without authority,
that Paine had been admonished by Danton to stay away from the
Convention on June 2d, and from that day there could not be the
slightest utility in his attendance. The Mountaineers had it all their
own way. For simply criticising the Constitution they brought forward
in place of that of the first committee, Condorcet had to fly from
prosecution. Others also fled, among them Brissot and Duchatel. What
with the arrestations and flights Paine found himself, in June, almost
alone. In the Convention he was sometimes the solitary figure left on
the Plain, where but now sat the brilliant statesmen of France. They,
his beloved friends, have started in procession towards the guillotine,
for even flight must end there; daily others are pressed into their
ranks; his own summons, he feels, is only a question of a few weeks
or days. How Paine loved those men--Brissot, Condorcet, Lasource,
Ducha-tel, Vergniaud, Gensonné! Never was man more devoted to his
intellectual comrades. Even across a century one may realize what it
meant to him, that march of some of his best friends to the scaffold,
while others were hunted through France, and the agony of their
families, most of whom he well knew.

Alas, even this is not the worst! For what were the personal fate of
himself or any compared with the fearful fact that the harvest is past
and the republic not saved! Thus had ended all his labors, and his
visions of the Commonwealth of Man. The time had come when many besides
poor Johnson sought peace in annihilation. Paine, heartbroken,
sought oblivion in brandy. Recourse to such anaesthetic, of which any
affectionate man might fairly avail himself under such incredible agony
as the ruin of his hopes and the approaching murder of his dearest
friends, was hitherto unknown in Paine's life. He drank freely, as was
the custom of his time; but with the exception of the evidence of an
enemy at his trial in England, that he once saw him under the influence
of wine after a dinner party (1792), which he admitted was "unusual," no
intimation of excess is discoverable in any contemporary record of Paine
until this his fifty-seventh year. He afterwards told his friend Rickman
that, "borne down by public and private affliction, he had been driven
to excesses in Paris"; and, as it was about this time that Gouverneur
Morris and Colonel Bosville, who had reasons for disparaging Paine,
reported stories of his drunkenness (growing ever since), we may assign
the excesses mainly to June. It will be seen by comparison of the dates
of events and documents presently mentioned that Paine could not have
remained long in this pardonable refuge of mental misery. Charlotte
Corday's poignard cut a rift in the black cloud. After that tremendous
July 13th there is positive evidence not only of sobriety, but of life
and work on Paine's part that make the year memorable.

Marat dead, hope springs up for the arrested Girondins. They are not
yet in prison, but under "arrestation in their homes"; death seemed
inevitable while Marat lived, but Charlotte Corday has summoned a
new leader. Why may Paine's imperilled comrades not come forth again?
Certainly they will if the new chieftain is Danton, who under his
radical rage hides a heart. Or if Marat's mantle falls on Robespierre,
would not that scholarly lawyer, who would have abolished capital
punishment, reverse Marat's cruel decrees? Robespierre had agreed to the
new Constitution (reported by Paine's friend, Hérault de Séchelles) and
when even that dubious instrument returns with the popular sanction, all
may be well. The Convention, which is doing everything except what it
was elected to do, will then dissolve, and the happy Republic remember
it only as a nightmare. So Paine takes heart again, abandons the bowl of
forgetfulness, and becomes a republican Socrates instructing disciples
in an old French garden.




CHAPTER IV. A GARDEN IN THE FAUBOURG ST. DENIS

Sir George Trevelyan has written a pregnant passage, reminding the world
of the moral burden which radicals in England had to bear a hundred
years ago.

"When to speak or write one's mind on politics is to obtain the
reputation, and render one's self liable to the punishment of a
criminal, social discredit, with all its attendant moral dangers,
soon attaches itself to the more humble opponents of a ministry. To be
outside the law as a publisher or a pamphleteer is only less trying to
conscience and conduct than to be outside the law as a smuggler or a
poacher; and those who, ninety years ago, placed themselves within the
grasp of the penal statutes as they were administered in England and
barbarously perverted in Scotland were certain to be very bold men,
and pretty sure to be unconventional up to the uttermost verge of
respectability. As an Italian Liberal was sometimes half a bravo, and
a Spanish patriot often more than half a brigand, so a British Radical
under George the Third had generally, it must be confessed, a dash of
the Bohemian. Such, in a more or less mitigated form, were Paine and
Cob-bett, Hunt, Hone, and Holcroft; while the same causes in part
account for the elfish vagaries of Shelley and the grim improprieties of
Godwin. But when we recollect how these, and the like of these, gave
up every hope of worldly prosperity, and set their life and liberty in
continual hazard for the sake of that personal and political freedom
which we now exercise as unconsciously as we breathe the air, it would
be too exacting to require that each and all of them should have lived
as decorously as Perceval, and died as solvent as Bishop Tomline."*

To this right verdict it may be added that, even at the earlier period
when it was most applicable, the radicals could only produce one rival
in profligacy (John Wilkes) to their aristocratic oppressors. It may
also be noted as a species of homage that the slightest failings of
eminent reformers become historic. The vices of Burke and Fox are
forgotten. Who remembers that the younger Pitt was brought to an
early grave by the bottle? But every fault of those who resisted his
oppression is placed under a solar microscope. Although, as Sir George
affirms, the oppressors largely caused the faults, this homage to the
higher moral standard of the reformers may be accepted.**

      * "Early History of Charles James Fox," American éd., p. 44a

      ** The following document was found among the papers of Mr.
      John Han, originally of Leicester, England, and has been
      forwarded to me by his descendant, J. Dutton Steele, Jr., of
      Philadelphia.

     "A Copy of a Letter from the chairman of a meeting of the
     Gentry and Qergy at Atherstone, written in consequence of an
     envious schoolmaster and two or three others who informed
     the meeting that the Excise Officers of Polesworth were
     employed in distributing the Rights of Man; but which was
     Very false.

     "Sir: I should think it unnecessary to inform you, that the
     purport of his Majesty's proclamation in the Month of May
     last, and the numerous meetings which are daily taking place
     both in Town and Country, are for the avowed purpose of
     suppressing treasonable and seditious writings amongst which

     Mr. Payne's Rights of Man ranks most conspicuous. Were I not
     informed you have taken some pains in spreading that
     publication, I write to say If you don't from this time
     adopt a different kind of conduct you will be taken notice
     of in such way as may prove very disagreeable.

     "The Eyes of the Country are upon you and you will do well
     in future to shew yourself faithful to the Master who
     employs you.

     "I remain,

     "Your Hble servant,

     "(Signed) Jos. Boultbee. Baxterby, 15th Deer., '92.

     "N. B. The letter was written the next morning after the
     Meeting where most of the Loyal souls got drunk to an
     uncommon degree. They drank his Majesty's health so often
     the reckoning amounted to 7s. 6d. each. One of the informers
     threw down a shilling and ran away."

It was, indeed, a hard time for reformers in England. Among them were
many refined gentlemen who felt that it was no country for a thinker and
scholar to live in. Among the pathetic pictures of the time was that of
the twelve scholars, headed by Coleridge and Southey, and twelve ladies,
who found the atmosphere of England too impure for any but slaves
to breathe, and proposed to seek in America some retreat where their
pastoral "pantisocrasy" might be realized. Lack of funds prevented
the fulfilment of this dream, but that it should have been an object of
concert and endeavor, in that refined circle at Bristol, is a memorable
sign of that dreadful time. In the absence of means to form such
communities, preserving the culture and charm of a society evolved out
of barbarism, apart from the walls of a remaining political barbarism
threatening it with their ruins, some scholars were compelled, like
Coleridge, to rejoin the feudalists, and help them to buttress the
crumbling castle. They secured themselves from the social deterioration
of living on wild "honey-dew" in a wilderness, at cost of wearing
intellectual masks. Some fled to America, like Cobbett. But others fixed
their abode in Paris, where radicalism was fashionable and invested with
the charm of the _salon_ and the theatre.

Before the declaration of war Paine had been on friendly terms with some
eminent Englishmen in Paris: he dined every week with Lord Lauderdale,
Dr. John Moore, an author, and others in some restaurant. After most of
these had followed Lord Gower to England he had to be more guarded.
A British agent, Major Semple, approached him under the name of Major
Lisle. He professed to be an Irish patriot, wore the green cockade, and
desired introduction to the Minister of War. Paine fortunately knew too
many Irishmen to fall into this snare.* But General Miranda, as we have
seen, fared better. Paine was, indeed, so overrun with visitors and
adventurers that he appropriated two mornings of each week at the
Philadelphia House for levees. These, however, became insufficient to
stem the constant stream of visitors, including spies and lion-hunters,
so that he had little time for consultation with the men and women
whose co-operation he needed in public affairs. He therefore leased an
out-of-the-way house, reserving knowledge of it for particular friends,
while still retaining his address at the Philadelphia Hotel, where the
levees were continued.

     * Rickman, p. 129.

The irony of fate had brought an old mansion of Madame de Pompadour
to become the residence of Thomas Paine and his half dozen English
disciples. It was then, and still is, No. 63 Faubourg St. Denis. Here,
where a King's mistress held her merry fêtes, and issued the decrees
of her reign--sometimes of terror,--the little band of English
humanitarians read and conversed, and sported in the garden. In a little
essay on "Forgetfulness," addressed to his friend, Lady Smith, Paine
described these lodgings.

"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 tranquillity 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 parlor 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 greengage 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.

"My apartments consisted of three rooms; the first for wood, water,
etc.; the next was the bedroom; 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 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.

"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."

The "we" included young Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Christie, Mr. Choppin,
probably Mr. Shapworth, an American, and M. Laborde, a scientific
friend of Paine. These appear to have entered with Paine into
co-operative housekeeping, though taking their chief meals at the
restaurants. In the evenings they were joined by others,--the Brissots
(before the arrest), Nicholas Bonneville, Joel Barlow, Captain Imlay,
Mary Wollstonecraft, the Rolands. Mystical Madame Roland dreaded Paine's
power, which she considered more adapted to pull down than to build,
but has left a vivid impression of "the boldness of his conceptions,
the originality of his style, the striking truths he throws out bravely
among those whom they offend." The Mr. Shapworth alluded to is mentioned
in a manuscript journal of Daniel Constable, sent me by his nephew,
Clair J. Grèce, LL.D. This English gentleman visited Baton Rouge and
Shapworth's plantation in 1822. "Mr. S.," he says, "has a daughter
married to the Governor [Robinson], has travelled in Europe, married a
French lady. He is a warm friend of Thomas Paine, as is his son-in-law.
He lived with Paine many months at Paris. He [Paine] was then a sober,
correct gentleman in appearance and manner." The English refugees,
persecuted for selling the "Rights of Man," were, of course, always
welcomed by Paine, and poor Rickman was his guest during this summer of
1793.* The following reminiscence of Paine, at a time when Gouverneur
Morris was (for reasons that presently appear) reporting him to his
American friends as generally drunk, was written by Rickman:

     * Rickman appears to have escaped from England in 1792,
     according to the following sonnet sent me by Dr. Grèce. It
     is headed: "Sonnet to my Little Girl, 1793. Written at
     Calais, on being pursued by cruel prosecution and
     persecution."

     "Farewell, sweet babe! and mayst thou never know,
     Like me, the pressure of exceeding woe.
     Some griefs (for they are human nature's right)
     On life's eventful stage will be thy lot;
     Some generous cares to clear thy mental sight,
     Some pains, in happiest hours, perhaps, begot;
     But mayst thou ne'er be, like thy father, driven
     From a loved partner, family, and home,
     Snatched from each heart-felt bliss, domestic heaven!
     From native shores, and all that's valued, roam.
     Oh, may bad governments, the source of human woe,
     Ere thou becom'st mature, receive their deadly blow;
     Then mankind's greatest curse thou ne'et wilt know."

"He usually rose about seven. After breakfast he usually strayed an
hour or two in the garden, where he one morning pointed out the kind of
spider whose web furnished him with the first idea of constructing his
iron bridge; a fine model of which, in mahogany, is preserved in Paris.
The little happy circle who lived with him will ever remember those
days with delight: with these select friends he would talk of his boyish
days, played at chess, whist, piquet, or cribbage, and enliven the
moments by many interesting anecdotes: with these he would play at
marbles, scotch hops, battledores, etc.: on the broad and fine gravel
walk at the upper end of the garden, and then retire to his boudoir,
where he was up to his knees in letters and papers of various
descriptions. Here he remained till dinner time; and unless he visited
Brissot's family, or some particular friend, in the evening, which was
his frequent custom, he joined again the society of his favorites
and fellow-boarders, with whom his conversation was often witty and
cheerful, always acute and improving, but never frivolous. Incorrupt,
straightforward, and sincere, he pursued his political course in France,
as everywhere else, let the government or clamor or faction of the day
be what it might, with firmness, with clearness, and without a shadow of
turning."

In the spring of 1890 the present writer visited the spot. The lower
front of the old mansion is divided into shops,--a Fruiterer
being appropriately next the gateway, which now opens into a wide
thoroughfare. Above the rooms once occupied by Paine was the sign
"Ecrivain Publique,"--placed there by a Mademoiselle who wrote letters
and advertisements for humble neighbors not expert in penmanship. At the
end of what was once the garden is a Printer's office, in which was a
large lithograph portrait of Victor Hugo. The printer, his wife, and
little daughter were folding publications of the "Extreme Left." Near
the door remains a veritable survival of the garden and its living
tenants which amused Paine and his friends. There were two ancient
fruit trees, of which one was dying, but the other budding in the spring
sunshine. There were ancient coops with ducks, and pigeon-houses with
pigeons, also rabbits, and some flowers. This little nook, of perhaps
forty square feet, and its animals, had been there--so an old inhabitant
told me--time out of mind. They belonged to nobody in particular; the
pigeons were fed by the people around; the fowls were probably kept
there by some poultryman. There were eager groups attending every stage
of the investigation. The exceptional antiquity of the mansion had been
recognized by its occupants,--several families,--but without curiosity,
and perhaps with regret. Comparatively few had heard of Paine.

Shortly before I had visited the garden near Florence which Boccaccio's
immortal tales have kept in perennial beauty through five centuries. It
may be that in the far future some brother of Boccace will bequeath to
Paris as sweet a legend of the garden where beside the plague of blood
the prophet of the universal Republic realized his dream in microcosm.
Here gathered sympathetic spirits from America, England, France,
Germany, Holland, Switzerland, freed from prejudices of race, rank, or
nationality, striving to be mutually helpful, amusing themselves with
Arcadian sports, studying nature, enriching each other by exchange of
experiences. It is certain that in all the world there was no group of
men and women more disinterestedly absorbed in the work of benefiting
their fellow-beings. They could not, however, like Boccaccio's ladies
and gentlemen "kill Death" by their witty tales; for presently beloved
faces disappeared from their circle, and the cruel axe was gleaming over
them.

And now the old hotel became the republican capitol of Europe. There sat
an international Premier with his Cabinet, concentrated on the work of
saving the Girondins. He was indeed treated by the Executive government
as a Minister. It was supposed by Paine and believed by his adherents
that Robespierre had for him some dislike. Paine in later years wrote
of Robespierre as a "hypocrite," and the epithet may have a significance
not recognized by his readers. It is to me probable that Paine
considered himself deceived by Robespierre with professions of respect,
if not of friendliness before being cast into prison; a conclusion
naturally based on requests from the Ministers for opinions on public
affairs. The archives of the Revolution contain various evidences of
this, and several papers by Paine evidently in reply to questions. We
may feel certain that every subject propounded was carefully discussed
in Paine's little cosmopolitan Cabinet before his opinion was
transmitted to the revolutionary Cabinet of Committees. In reading the
subjoined documents it must be borne in mind that Robespierre had not
yet been suspected of the cruelty presently associated with his name.
The Queen and the Girondist leaders were yet alive. Of these leaders
Paine was known to be the friend, and it was of the utmost importance
that he should be suavely loyal to the government that had inherited
these prisoners from Marat's time.

The first of these papers is erroneously endorsed "January 1793. Thorn.
Payne. Copie," in the French State Archives.* Its reference to the
defeat of the Duke of York at Dunkirk assigns its date to the late
summer. It is headed, "Observations on the situation of the Powers
joined against France."

     * États Unis. Vol. 37. Document 39.

"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 desired we should do, and it
happens, by the fact, but against our intentions, that we work for him.

"It appears at first sight that the coalition against France is not of
the nature of those which form themselves by a treaty. It has been the
work of circumstances. It is a heterogeneous mass, the parts of which
dash against each other, and often neutralise themselves. They have but
one single point of reunion, the re-establishment of the monarchical
government in France. Two means can conduct them to the execution of
this plan. The first is, to re-establish the Bourbons, and with them the
Monarchy; the second, to make a division similar to that which they
have made in Poland, and to reign themselves in France. The political
questions to be solved are, then, to know on which of these two plans it
is most probable, the united Powers will act; and which are the points
of these plans on which they will agree or disagree.

"Supposing their aim to be the re-establishment of the Bourbons, the
difficulty which will present itself, will be, to know who will be their
Allies?

"Will England consent to the re-establishment of the compact of family
in the person of the Bourbons, against whom she has machinated and
fought since her existence? Will Prussia consent to re-establish the
alliance which subsisted between France and Austria, or will Austria
wish to re-establish the ancient alliance between France and Prussia,
which was directed against her? Will Spain, or any other maritime Power,
allow France and her Marine to ally themselves to England? In fine, will
any of these Powers consent to furnish forces which could be directed
against herself? However, all these cases present themselves in the
hypothesis of the restoration of the Bourbons.

"If we suppose that their plan be the dismemberment of France,
difficulties will present themselves under another form, but not of
the same nature. It will no longer be question, in this case, of the
Bourbons, as their position will be worse; for if their preservation
is a part of their first plan, their destruction ought to enter in the
second; because it is necessary for the success of the dismembering that
not a single prétendant to the Crown of France should exist.

"As one must think of all the probabilities in political calculations,
it is not unlikely that some of the united Powers, having in view the
first of these plans, and others the second,--that this may be one
of the causes of their disagreement It is to be remembered that Russia
recognised a Regency from the beginning of Spring; not one of the other
Powers followed her example. The distance of Russia from France, and the
different countries by which she is separated from her, leave no doubt
as to her dispositions with regard to the plan of division; and as much
as one can form an opinion on the circumstances, it is not her scheme.

"The coalition directed against France, is composed of two kinds of
Powers. The Maritime Powers, not having the same interest as the others,
will be divided, as to the execution of the project of division.

"I do not hesitate to believe that the politic of the English Government
is to foment the scheme of dismembering, and the entire destruction of
the Bourbon family.

"The difficulty which must arise, in this last hypothesis, be* tween the
united Maritime Powers proceeds from their views being entirely opposed.

"The trading vessels of the Northern Nations, from Holland to Russia,
must pass through the narrow Channel, which lies between Dunkirk and
the coasts of England; and consequently not one of them, will allow this
latter Power to have forts on both sides of this Strait. The audacity
with which she has seized the neutral vessels ought to demonstrate to
all Nations how much her schemes increase their danger, and menace the
security of their present and future commerce.

"Supposing then that the other Nations oppose the plans of England, she
will be forced to cease the war with us; or, if she continues it, the
Northern Nations will become interested in the safety of France.

"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 manufacture. 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's
army, at Dunkirk. The intermedial party, because they hope that this
defeat will finish the war. The Antiministerial party, because they hope
it will overthrow the Ministry. And all the three because they hate the
Duke of York. Such is the state of the different parties in England.

"Signed: Thomas Paine."

In the same volume of the State Archives (Paris) is the following note
by Paine, with its translation:

"You mentioned to me that saltpetre was becoming scarce. I communicate
to you a project of the late Captain Paul Jones, which, if successfully
put in practice, will furnish you with that article.

"All the English East India ships put into St. Helena, off the coast
of Africa, on their return from India to England. A great part of their
ballast is saltpetre. Captain Jones, who had been at St. Helena, says
that the place can be very easily taken. His proposal was to send off
a small squadron for that purpose, to keep the English flag flying at
port. The English vessels will continue coming in as usual. By this
means it will be a long time before the Government of England can have
any knowledge of what has happened. The success of this depends so much
upon secrecy that I wish you would translate this yourself, and give it
to Barrère."

In the next volume (38) of the French Archives, marked "États Unis,
1793," is a remarkable document (No. 39), entitled "A Citizen of America
to the Citizens of Europe." The name of Paine is only pencilled on it,
and it was probably written by him; but it purports to have been written
in America, and is dated "Philadelphia, July 28, 1793; 18th Year of
Independence." It is a clerk's copy, so that it cannot now be known
whether the ruse of its origin in Philadelphia was due to Paine or to
the government It is an extended paper, and repeats to some extent,
though not literally, what is said in the "Observations" quoted above.
Possibly the government, on receiving that paper (Document 39 also),
desired Paine to write it out as an address to the "Citizens of Europe."
It does not appear to have been published. The first four paragraphs of
this paper, combined with the "Observations," will suffice to show its
character.

"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 every thing 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."

In each of these papers a plea for the imperilled Girondins is audible.
Each is a reminder that he, Thomas Paine, friend of the Brissotins,
is continuing their anxious and loyal vigilance for the Republic. And
during all this summer Paine had good reason to believe that his friends
were safe. Robespierre was eloquently deprecating useless effusion
of blood. As for Paine himself, he was not only consulted on public
questions, but trusted in practical affairs. He was still able to help
Americans and Englishmen who invoked his aid. Writing to Lady Smith
concerning two applications of that kind, he says:

"I went into my chamber 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 who 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 street with me."

There appeared no reason to suppose this a domiciliary visit, or that it
had any relation to anything except the two Englishmen. Samson was not
a detective. It soon turned out, however, that there was a serpent
creeping into Paine's little garden in the Faubourg St Denis. He and his
guests knew it not, however, until all their hopes fell with the leaves
and blossoms amid which they had passed a summer to which Paine, from
his prison, looked back with fond recollection.




CHAPTER V. A CONSPIRACY

"He suffered under Pontius Pilate." Pilate's gallant struggle to save
Jesus from lynchers survives in no kindly memorial save among the
peasants of Oberammergau. It is said that the impression once made
in England by the Miracle Play has left its relic in the miserable
puppet-play Punch and Judy (_Pontius cum Judis_); but meanwhile the
Church repeats, throughout Christendom, "He suffered under Pontius
Pilatè." It is almost normal in history that the brand of infamy
falls on the wrong man. This is the penalty of personal eminence, and
especially of eloquence. In the opening years of the French Revolution
the two men in Europe who seemed omnipotent were Pitt and Robespierre.
By reason of their eloquence, their ingenious defences, their fame, the
columns of credit and discredit were begun in their names, and have so
continued. English liberalism, remembering the imprisoned and flying
writers, still repeats, "They suffered under William Pitt." French
republics transmit their legend of Condorcet, Camille Desmoulins,
Brissot, Malesherbes, "They suffered under Robespierre." The friends,
disciples, biographers, of Thomas Paine have it in their creed that he
suffered under both Pitt and Robespierre, It is certain that neither
Pitt nor Robespierre was so strong as he appeared. Their hands cannot
be cleansed, but they are historic scapegoats of innumerable sins they
never committed.

Unfortunately for Robespierre's memory, in England and America
especially, those who for a century might have been the most ready to
vindicate a slandered revolutionist have been confronted by the long
imprisonment of the author of the "Rights of Man," and by the discovery
of his virtual death-sentence in Robespierre's handwriting. Louis Blanc,
Robespierre's great vindicator, could not, we may assume, explain this
ugly fact, which he passes by in silence, He has proved, conclusively as
I think, that Robespierre was among the revolutionists least guilty
of the Terror; that he was murdered by a conspiracy of those whose
cruelties he was trying to restrain; that, when no longer alive to
answer, they burdened him with their crimes, as the only means of saving
their heads. Robespierre's doom was sealed when he had real power, and
used it to prevent any organization of the constitutional government
which might have checked revolutionary excesses. He then, because of
a superstitious faith in the auspices of the Supreme Being, threw the
reins upon the neck of the revolution he afterwards vainly tried to
curb. Others, who did not wish to restrain it, seized the reins and when
the precipice was reached took care that Robespierre should be hurled
over it.

Many allegations against Robespierre have been disproved He tried to
save Danton and Camille Desmoulins, and did save seventy-three deputies
whose death the potentates of the Committee of Public Safety had
planned. But against him still lies that terrible sentence found in his
Note Book, and reported by a Committee to the Convention: "Demand that
Thomas Payne be decreed of accusation for the interests of America as
much as of France."*

     * "Demander que Thomas Payne soit décrété d'accusation pour
     les intérets de l'Amérique autant que de la France."

The Committee on Robespierre's papers, and especially Courtois its
Chairman, suppressed some things favorable to him (published long
after), and it can never be known whether they found anything further
about Paine. They made a strong point of the sentence found, and added:
"Why Thomas Payne more than another? Because he helped to establish the
liberty of both worlds."

An essay by Paine on Robespierre has been lost, and his opinion of the
man can be gathered only from occasional remarks. After the Courtois
report he had to accept the theory of Robespierre's malevolence and
hypocrisy. He then, for the first time, suspected the same hand in a
previous act of hostility towards him. In August, 1793, an address had
been sent to the Convention from Arras, a town in his constituency,
saying that they had lost confidence in Paine. This failed of success
because a counter-address came from St. Omer. Robespierre being a native
of Arras, it now seemed clear that he had instigated the address. It
was, however, almost certainly the work of Joseph Le-bon, who, as Paine
once wrote, "made the streets of Arras run with blood" Lebon was his
_suppléant_, and could not sit in the Convention until Paine left it.

But although Paine would appear to have ascribed his misfortunes to
Robespierre at the time, he was evidently mystified by the whole thing.
No word against him had ever fallen from Robespierre's lips, and if that
leader had been hostile to him why should he have excepted him from the
accusations of his associates, have consulted him through the summer,
and even after imprisonment, kept him unharmed for months? There is a
notable sentence in Paine's letter (from prison) to Monroe, elsewhere
considered, showing that while there he had connected his trouble rather
with the Committee of Public Safety than with Robespierre.

"However discordant the late American Minister Gouvernoeur Morris, and
the late French Committee of Public Safety, were, it suited the purposes
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 that Committee continued, I had
no expectation of liberty. I speak here of the Committee of which
Robespierre was a member."

Paine wrote this letter on September 10, 1794. Robespierre, three
months before that, had ceased to attend the Committee, disavowing
responsibility for its actions: Paine was not released. Robespierre,
when the letter to Monroe was written, had been dead more than six
months: Paine was not released The prisoner had therefore good reason to
look behind Robespierre for his enemies; and although the fatal sentence
found in the Note Book, and a private assurance of Barrère, caused him
to ascribe his wrongs to Robespierre, farther reflection convinced him
that hands more hidden had also been at work. He knew that Robespierre
was a man of measured words, and pondered the sentence that he should
"be decreed of accusation for the interests of America as much as of
France." In a letter written in 1802, Paine said: "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." Robespierre, he remarks, assigned no reason
for his imprisonment.

The secret for which Paine groped has remained hidden for a hundred
years. It is painful to reveal it now, but historic justice, not only to
the memory of Paine, but to that of some eminent contemporaries of his,
demands that the facts be brought to light.

The appointment of Gouverneur Morris to be Minister to France, in 1792,
passed the Senate by 16 to 11 votes. The President did not fail to
advise him of this reluctance, and admonish him to be more cautious in
his conduct. In the same year Paine took his seat in the Convention.
Thus the royalist and republican tendencies, whose struggles made
chronic war in Washington's Cabinet, had their counterpart in Paris,
where our Minister Morris wrote royalist, and Paine republican,
manifestoes. It will have been seen, by quotations from his diary
already given, that Gouverneur Morris harbored a secret hostility
towards Paine; and it is here assumed that those entries and incidents
are borne in mind. The Diary shows an appearance of friendly terms
between the two; Morris dines Paine and receives information from him.
The royalism of Morris and humanity of Paine brought them into a common
desire to save the life of Louis.

But about the same time the American Minister's own position became a
subject of anxiety to him. He informs Washington (December 28, 1792)
that Genet's appointment as Minister to the United States had not been
announced to him (Morris). "Perhaps the Ministry think it is a trait of
republicanism to omit those forms which were anciently used to express
good will." His disposition towards Paine was not improved by finding
that it was to him Genêt had reported. "I have not yet seen M. Genêt,"
writes Morris again, "but Mr. Paine is to introduce him to me." Soon
after this Morris became aware that the French Ministry had asked
his recall, and had Paine also known this the event might have been
different The Minister's suspicion that Paine had instigated the recall
gave deadliness to his resentment when the inevitable break came between
them.

The occasion of this arose early in the spring. When war had broken out
between England and France, Morris, whose sympathies were with England,
was eager to rid America of its treaty obligations to France. He so
wrote repeatedly to Jefferson, Secretary of State. An opportunity
presently occurred for acting on this idea. In reprisal for the seizure
by British cruisers of American ships conveying provisions to France,
French cruisers were ordered to do the like, and there were presently
ninety-two captured American vessels at Bordeaux. They were not allowed
to reload and go to sea lest their cargoes should be captured by
England. Morris pointed out to the French Government this violation of
the treaty with America, but wrote to Jefferson that he would leave
it to them in Philadelphia to insist on the treaty's observance, or to
accept the "unfettered" condition in which its violation by France left
them. Consultation with Philadelphia was a slow business, however,
and the troubles of the American vessels were urgent The captains, not
suspecting that the American Minister was satisfied with the treaty's
violation, were angry at his indifference about their relief, and
applied to Paine. Unable to move Morris, Paine asked him "if he did not
feel ashamed to take the money of the country and do nothing for it" It
was, of course, a part of Morris' scheme for ending the treaty to point
out its violation and the hardships resulting, and this he did; but
it would defeat his scheme to obtain the practical relief from those
hardships which the un-theoretical captains demanded. On August 20th,
the captains were angrily repulsed by the American Minister, who,
however, after they had gone, must have reflected that he had gone too
far, and was in an untenable position; for on the same day he wrote to
the French Minister a statement of the complaint.

"I do not [he adds] pretend to interfere in the internal concerns of the
French Republic, and I am persuaded that the Convention has had weighty
reasons for laying upon Americans the restriction of which the American
captains complain. The result will nevertheless be that this prohibition
will severely aggrieve the parties interested, and put an end to the
commerce between France and the United States."

The note is half-hearted, but had the captains known it was written
they might have been more patient Morris owed his subsequent humiliation
partly to his bad manners. The captains went off to Paine, and proposed
to draw up a public protest against the American Minister. Paine advised
against this, and recommended a petition to the Convention. This was
offered on August 22d. In this the captains said: "We, who know your
political situation, do not come to you to demand the rigorous execution
of the treaties of alliance which unite us to you. We confine ourselves
to asking for the present, to carry provisions to your colonies." To
this the Convention promptly and favorably responded.

It was a double humiliation to Morris that the first important benefit
gained by Americans since his appointment should be secured without his
help, and that it should come through Paine. And it was a damaging blow
to his scheme of transferring to England our alliance with France. A
"violation" of the treaty excused by the only sufferers could not be
cited as "releasing" the United States. A cruel circumstance for
Morris was that the French Minister wrote (October 14th): "You must be
satisfied, sir, with the manner in which the request presented by the
American captains from Bordeaux, has been received"--and so forth. Four
days before, Morris had written to Jefferson, speaking of the thing
as mere "mischief," and belittling the success, which "only served
an ambition so contemptible that I shall draw over it the veil of
oblivion."

The "contemptible ambition" thus veiled from Paine's friend, Jefferson,
was revealed by Morris to others. Some time before (June 25th), he had
written to Robert Morris:

"I suspected that Paine was intriguing against me, although he put on a
face of attachment. Since that period I am confirmed in the idea, for
he came to my house with Col. Oswald, and being a little more drunk than
usual, behaved extremely ill, and through his insolence I discovered
clearly his vain ambition."

This was probably written after Paine's rebuke already quoted. It is not
likely that Colonel Oswald would have taken a tipsy man eight leagues
out to Morris' retreat, Sainport, on business, or that the tipsy man
would remember the words of his rebuke two years after, when Paine
records them in his letter to Washington. At any rate, if Morris saw
no deeper into Paine's physical than into his mental condition, the
"insolent" words were those of soberness. For Paine's private letters
prove him ignorant of any intrigue against Morris, and under an
impression that the Minister had himself asked for recall; also that,
instead of being ambitious to succeed Morris, he was eager to get out
of France and back to America. The first expression of French
dissatisfaction with Morris had been made through De Ternant, (February
20th, 1793,) whom he had himself been the means of sending as Minister
to the United States. The positive recall was made through Genêt.*

     * On September I, 1792, Morris answered a request of the
     executive of the   republic that he could not comply until
     he had received "orders from his   Court," (les ordres de ma
     cour).    The representatives of the new-born republic were
     scandalized by such an expression from an American Minister,
     and   also by his intimacy with Lord and Lady Gower.    They
     may have suspected what Morris' "Diary" now suggests, that
     he (Morris) owed his appointment to this English Ambassador
     and his wife.    On August 17, 1792, Lord Gower was
     recalled, in hostility to the republic, but during the
     further weeks of his stay in Paris the American Minister
     frequented their house.    From the recall   Morris was
     saved for a year by the intervention of Edmund Randolph.
     (See my "Omitted Chapters of History," etc, p. 149.)
     Randolph met with a Morrisian reward.    Morris ("Diary,"
     ii., p. 98) records an accusation of Randolph, to which he
     listened in the office of Lord Grenville, Secretary of!
     State, which plainly meant his (Randolph's) ruin, which
     followed.    He   I knew it to be untrue, but no defence is
     mentioned.

It would appear that Morris must have had sore need of a scapegoat to
fix on poor Paine, when his intrigues with the King's agents, his
trust of the King's money, his plot for a second attempt of the King to
escape, his concealment of royalist leaders in his house, had been his
main ministerial performances for some time after his appointment. Had
the French known half as much as is now revealed in Morris' Diary, not
even his office could have shielded him from arrest. That the executive
there knew much of it, appears in the revolutionary archives. There is
reason to believe that Paine, instead of intriguing against Morris,
had, in ignorance of his intrigues, brought suspicion on himself by
continuing his intercourse with the Minister. The following letter of
Paine to Barrère, chief Committeeman of Public Safety, dated September
5th, shows him protecting Morris while he is trying to do something for
the American captains.

"I send you the papers you asked me for.

"The idea you have to send Commissioners to Congress, and of which you
spoke to me yesterday, is excellent, and very necessary at this moment.
Mr. Jefferson, formerly Minister of the United States in France, and
actually Minister for Foreign Affairs at Congress, is an ardent defender
of the interests of France. Gouverneur Morris, who is here now, is
badly disposed towards you. I believe he has expressed the wish to be
recalled. The reports which he will make on his arrival will not be to
the advantage of France. This event necessitates the sending direct of
Commissioners from the Convention. Morris is not popular in America. He
has set the Americans who are here against him, as also the Captains of
that Nation who have come from Bordeaux, by his negligence with regard
to the affair they had to treat about with the Convention. _Between us_
[sic] he told them: 'That they had thrown themselves into the lion's
mouth, and it was for them to get out of it as best they could.' I shall
return to America on one of the vessels which will start from Bordeaux
in the month of October. This was the project I had formed, should
the rupture not take place between America and England; but now it is
necessary for me to be there as soon as possible. The Congress will
require a great deal of information, independently of this. It will soon
be seven years that I have been absent from America, and my affairs in
that country have suffered considerably through my absence. My house and
farm buildings have been entirely destroyed through an accidental fire.

"Morris has many relations in America, who are excellent patriots. I
enclose you a letter which I received from his brother, General Louis
Morris, who was a member of the Congress at the time of the Declaration
of Independence. You will see by it that he writes like a good patriot.
I only mention this so that you may know the true state of things. It
will be fit to have respect for Gouverneur Morris, on account of his
relations, who, as I said above, are excellent patriots.

"There are about 45 American vessels at Bordeaux, at the present moment.
If the English Government wished to take revenge on the Americans, these
vessels would be very much exposed during their passage. The American
Captains left Paris yesterday. I advised them, on leaving, to demand a
convoy of the Convention, in case they heard it said that the English
had begun reprisals against the Americans, if only to conduct as far as
the Bay of Biscay, at the expense of the American Government. But if the
Convention determines to send Commissioners to Congress, they will be
sent in a ship of the line. But it would be better for the Commissioners
to go in one of the best American sailing vessels, and for the ship of
the line to serve as a convoy; it could also serve to convoy the ships
that will return to France charged with flour. I am sorry that we cannot
converse together, but if you could give me a rendezvous, where I could
see Mr. Otto, I shall be happy and ready to be there. If events force
the American captains to demand a convoy, it will be to me that they
will write on the subject, and not to Morris, against whom they have
grave reasons of complaint Your friend, etc. Thomas Paine."*

     * State Archives, Paris. États Unis, Vol. 38, No. 93.
     Endorsed: "No. 6. Translation of a letter from Thomas
     Payne to Citizen Barrère." It may be noted that Paine and
     Barrère, though they could read each other's language, could
     converse only in their own tongue.

This is the only letter written by Paine to any one in France about
Gouverneur Morris, so far as I can discover, and not knowing French he
could only communicate in writing. The American Archives are equally
without anything to justify the Minister's suspicion that Paine was
intriguing against him, even after his outrageous conduct about the
captains. Morris had laid aside the functions of a Minister to exercise
those of a treaty-making government. During this excursion into
presidential and senatorial power, for the injury of the country to
which he was commissioned, his own countrymen in France were without an
official Minister, and in their distress imposed ministerial duties on
Paine. But so far from wishing to supersede Morris, Paine, in the above
letter to Barrère, gives an argument for his retention, namely, that
if he goes home he will make reports disadvantageous to France. He
also asks respect for Morris on account of his relations, "excellent
patriots." Barrère, to whom Paine's letter is written, was chief of the
Committee of Public Safety, and had held that powerful position since
its establishment, April 6, 1793. To this all-powerful Committee of Nine
Robespierre was added July 27th. On the day that Paine wrote the letter,
September 5th, Barrère opened the Terror by presenting a report in which
it is said, "Let us make terror the order of the day!" This Barrère was
a sensualist, a crafty orator, a sort of eel which in danger turned into
a snake. His "supple genius," as Louis Blanc expresses it, was probably
appreciated by Morris, who was kept well informed as to the secrets
of the Committee of Public Safety. This omnipotent Committee had
supervision of foreign affairs and appointments. At this time the
Minister of Foreign Affairs was Deforgues, whose secretary was the
M. Otto alluded to in Paine's letter to Barrère. Otto spoke English
fluently; he had been in the American Legation. Deforgues became
Minister June 5th, on the arrest of his predecessor (Lebrun), and was
anxious lest he should follow Lebrun to prison also,--as he ultimately
did. Deforgues and his secretary, Otto, confided to Morris their strong
desire to be appointed to America, Genêt having been recalled.*

Despite the fact that Morris' hostility to France was well known, he had
become an object of awe. So long as his removal was daily expected in
reply to a request twice sent for his recall, Morris was weak, and even
insulted. But when ship after ship came in without such recall, and at
length even with the news that the President had refused the Senate's
demand for Morris' entire correspondence, everything was changed.**

     * Morris'  letter to Washington, Oct. 18, 1793.   The
     passage is omitted from the letter as quoted in his "Diary
     and Letters" ii., p. 53.

     ** See my "Life of Edmund Randolph," p. 214.

"So long," writes Morris to Washington, "as they believed in the success
of their demand, they treated my representations with indifference
and contempt; but at last, hearing nothing from their minister on that
subject, or, indeed, on any other, they took it into their heads that I
was immovable, and made overtures for conciliation." It must be borne in
mind that at this time America was the only ally of France; that already
there were fears that Washington was feeling his way towards a treaty
with England. Soon after the overthrow of the monarchy Morris had hinted
that the treaty between the United States and France, having been made
with the King, might be represented by the English Ministry in America
as void under the revolution; and that "it would be well to evince a
degree of good will to America." When Robespierre first became a leader
he had particular charge of diplomatic affairs. It is stated by Frédéric
Masson that Robespierre was very anxious to recover for the republic the
initiative of the alliance with the United States, which was 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."*

     * "Le Département des Affaires Étrangères pendant la
     Révolution," P-295.

Such were the circumstances which, when Washington seemed determined
to force Morris on France, made this Minister a power. Lebrun, the
ministerial predecessor of Deforgues, may indeed have been immolated to
placate Morris, who having been, under his administration, subjected to
a domiciliary visit, had gone to reside in the country. That was when
Morris' removal was supposed near; but now his turn came for a little
reign of terror on his own account In addition to Deforgues' fear of
Lebrun's fate, should he anger Washington's immovable representative, he
knew that his hope of succeeding Genêt in America must depend on Morris.
The terrors and schemes of Deforgues and Otto brought them to the feet
of Morris. About the time when the chief of the Committee of Public
Safety, Barrère, was consulting Paine about sending Commissioners
to America, Deforgues was consulting Morris on the same point. The
interview was held shortly after the humiliation which Morris had
suffered, in the matter of the captains, and the defeat of his scheme
for utilizing their grievance to release the United States from their
alliance. The American captains had appointed Paine their Minister, and
he had been successful. Paine and his clients had not stood in awe of
Morris; but he now had the strength of a giant, and proceeded to use it
like a giant.

The interview with Deforgues was not reported by Morris to the Secretary
of State (Paine's friend, Jefferson), but in a confidential letter to
Washington,--so far as was prudent.

"I have insinuated [he writes] the advantages which might result from
an early declaration on the part of the new minister that, as France has
announced the determination not to meddle with the interior affairs of
other nations, he can know only the _government_ of America. In union
with this idea, I told the minister that I had observed an overruling
influence in their affairs which seemed to come from the other side of
the channel, and at the same time had traced the intention to excite a
seditious spirit in America; that it was impossible to be on a friendly
footing with such persons, but that at present a different spirit seemed
to prevail, etc. This declaration produced the effect I intended."*

     * Letter to Washington, Oct. 18, 1793.

In thus requiring that the new minister to America shall recognize only
the "government" (and not negotiate with Kentucky, as Genêt had done),
notice is also served on Deforgues that the Convention must in future
deal only with the American Minister, and not with Paine or sea-captains
in matters affecting his countrymen. The reference to an influence from
the other side of the channel could only refer to Paine, as there were
then no Englishmen in Paris outside his garden in the Faubourg St.
Denis. By this ingenious phrase Morris already disclaims jurisdiction
over Paine, and suggests that he is an Englishman worrying Washington
through Genêt This was a clever hint in another way. Genêt, now
recalled, evidently for the guillotine, had been introduced to Morris
by Paine, who no doubt had given him letters to eminent Americans. Paine
had sympathized warmly with the project of the Kentuckians to expel the
Spanish from the Mississippi, and this was patriotic American doctrine
even after Kentucky was admitted into the Union (June 1, 1792). He had
corresponded with Dr. O'Fallon, a leading Kentuckian on the subject But
things had changed, and when Genêt went out with his blank commissions
he found himself confronted with a proclamation of neutrality which
turned his use of them to sedition. Paine's acquaintance with Genêt, and
his introductions, could now be plausibly used by Morris to involve him.
The French Minister is shown an easy way of relieving his country from
responsibility for Genêt, by placing it on the deputy from "the other
side of the channel."

"This declaration produced the effect I intended," wrote Morris. The
effect was indeed swift On October 3d, Amar, after the doors of the
Convention were locked, read the memorable accusation against the
Girondins, four weeks before their execution. In that paper he denounced
Brissot for his effort to save the King, for his intimacy with the
English, for injuring the colonies by his labors for negro emancipation!
In this denunciation Paine had the honor to be included.

"At that same time the Englishman Thomas Paine, called by the faction
[Girondin] to the honor of representing the French nation, dishonored
himself by supporting the opinion of Brissot, and by promising us in his
fable the dissatisfaction of the United States of America, our natural
allies, which he did not blush to depict for us as full of veneration
and gratitude for the tyrant of France."

On October 19th the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deforgues, writes to
Morris:

"I shall give the Council an account of the punishable conduct of their
agent in the United States [Genêt], and I can assure you beforehand that
they will regard the strange abuse of their confidence by this agent, as
I do, with the liveliest indignation. The President of the United States
has done justice to our sentiments in attributing the deviations of the
citizen Genêt to causes entirely foreign to his instructions, and we
hope that the measures to be taken will more and more convince the head
and members of your Government that so far from having authorized the
proceedings and manuvres of Citizen Genêt our only aim has been to
maintain between the two nations the most perfect harmony."

One of "the measures to be taken" was the imprisonment of Paine, for
which Amar's denunciation had prepared the way. But this was not so
easy. For Robespierre had successfully attacked Amar's report for
extending its accusations beyond the Girondins. How then could an
accusation be made against Paine, against whom no charge could be
brought, except that he had introduced a French minister to his friends
in America! A deputy must be formally accused by the Convention before
he could be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. An indirect route must
be taken to reach the deputy secretly accused by the American Minister,
and the latter had pointed it out by alluding to Paine as an influence
"from across the channel." There was a law passed in June for the
imprisonment of foreigners belonging to countries at war with France.
This was administered by the Committees. Paine had not been liable to
this law, being a deputy, and never suspected of citizenship in the
country which had outlawed him, until Morris suggested it. Could he
be got out of the Convention the law might be applied to him without
necessitating any public accusation and trial, or anything more than an
announcement to the Deputies.

Such was the course pursued. Christmas day was celebrated by the
terrorist Bourdon de l'Oise with a denunciation of Paine: "They have
boasted the patriotism of Thomas Paine. _Eh bien!_ Since the Brissotins
disappeared from the bosom of this Convention he has not set foot in it.
And I know that he has intrigued with a former agent of the bureau of
Foreign Affairs." This accusation could only have come from the American
Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs--from Gouverneur Morris and
Deforgues. Genêt was the only agent of Deforgues' office with whom Paine
could possibly have been connected; and what that connection was the
reader knows. That accusation is associated with the terrorist's charge
that Paine had declined to unite with the murderous decrees of the
Convention.

After the speech of Bourdon de l'Oise, Bentabole moved the "exclusion
of foreigners from every public function during the war." Bentabole was
a leading member of the Committee of General Surety. "The Assembly,"
adds _The Moniteur_, "decreed that no foreigner should be admitted to
represent the French people." The Committee of General Surety assumed
the right to regard Paine as an Englishman; and as such out of the
Convention, and consequently under the law of June against aliens
of hostile nations. He was arrested next day, and on December 28th
committed to the Luxembourg prison.




CHAPTER VI. A TESTIMONY UNDER THE GUILLOTINE

While Paine was in prison the English gentry were gladdened by a rumor
that he had been guillotined, and a libellous leaflet of "The Last Dying
Words of Thomas Paine" appeared in London. Paine was no less confident
than his enemies that his execution was certain--after the denunciation
in Amar's report, October 3d--and did indeed utter what may be regarded
as his dying words--"The Age of Reason." This was the task which he
had from year to year adjourned to his maturest powers, and to it he
dedicates what brief remnant of life may await him. That completed, it
will be time to die with his comrades, awakened by his pen to a dawn now
red with their blood.

The last letter I find written from the old Pompadour mansion is to
Jefferson, under date of October 20th:

"Dear Sir,--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 thro' 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--and besides this it is
to them a war without an object. Russia keeps her-self 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
then know what steps to take. They could call Mr. Pinckney 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."

     * I am indebted for this letter to Dr. John S. H. Fogg, of
     Boston.  The letter is endorsed by Jefferson, "Rec'd Mar.
     3." (1794.)

Thus has finally faded the dream of Paine's life--an international
republic.

It is notable that in this letter Paine makes no mention of his own
danger. He may have done so in the previous letter, unfound, to which
he alludes. Why he made no attempt to escape after Amar's report seems a
mystery, especially as he was assisting others to leave the country. Two
of his friends, Johnson and Choppin--the last to part from him in the
old garden,--escaped to Switzerland. Johnson will be remembered as the
young man who attempted suicide on hearing of Marat's menaces against
Paine. Writing to Lady Smith of these two friends, he says:

"He [Johnson] recovered, and being anxious to get out of France, a
passport 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 also 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 bedroom I saw the landlord going with
the candle to the gate, which he opened; and a guard with muskets and
fixed bayonets entered. I went to bed again and made up my mind for
prison, for I was 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, George. And the scene in the house finished with the
arrestation of myself. This was soon after you called on me, and sorry
I was that it was not in my power to render to Sir [Robert Smith] the
service that you asked."

All then had fled. Even the old landlord had been arrested. In the
wintry garden this lone man--in whose brain and heart the republic and
the religion of humanity have their abode--moves companionless. In
the great mansion, where once Madame de Pompadour glittered amid
her courtiers, where in the past summer gathered the Round Table of
great-hearted gentlemen and ladies. Thomas Paine sits through the
watches of the night at his devout task.*

"My friends were falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their heads
off, and as I expected, every day, the same fate, I resolved to begin my
work. I appeared to myself to be on my death bed, for death was on every
side of me, and I had no time to lose. This accounts for my writing at
the time I did, and so nicely did the time and intention meet, that I
had not finished the first part of the work more than six hours before
I was arrested and taken to prison. The people of France were running
headlong into atheism, and I had the work translated in their own
language, to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article
of every man's creed, who has any creed at all--_I believe in God_."**

     * It was a resumed task. Early in the year Paine had brought
     to his colleague Lanthenas a manuscript on religion,
     probably entitled "The Age of Reason." Lanthenas translated
     it, and had it printed in French, though no trace of its
     circulation appears. At that time Lanthenas may have
     apprehended blood about to be shed, the tribute to one that
     was pierced in trying to benefit mankind.

     ** Letter to Samuel Adams. The execution of the
     Girondins took place on October 31st.

The second Christmas of the new republican era dawns. Where is the
vision that has led this wayworn pilgrim? Where the star he has followed
so long, to find it hovering over the new birth of humanity? It may have
been on that day that, amid the shades of his slain friends, he wrote,
as with the proscription which fell on him, with the other Girondins, in
May, and took the precaution to show Paine's essay to Couthon, who,
with Robespierre, had religious matters particularly in charge.
Couthon frowned on the work and on Paine, and reproached Lanthenas for
translating it. There was no frown more formidable than that of Couthon,
and the essay (printed only in French) seems to have been suppressed.
At the close of the year Paine wrote the whole work _de novo_. The first
edition in English, now before me, was printed in Paris, by Barrois,
1794. In his preface to Part II., Paine implies a previous draft in
saying: "I had not finished it more than six hours, _in the state it has
since appeared_, before a guard came," etc (The italics are mine.) The
fact of the early translation appears in a letter of Lanthenas to Merlin
de Thionville.

"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
amiable man. The morality that he preached and practised 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 good men in all ages, it has not
been exceeded by any.... He preached most excellent morality, and the
equality of man; but he preached also against the corruption and
avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and
vengeance of the whole order of priesthood. 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 effect 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 religionist lost
his life.... He was the son of God in like manner that every other
person is--for the Creator is the Father of All.... 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."

Many Christmas sermons were preached in 1793, but probably all of them
together do not contain so much recognition of the humanity of Jesus as
these paragraphs of Paine. The Christmas bells ring in the false, but
shall also ring in the true. While he is writing, on that Christmas
night, word comes that he has been denounced by Bourdon de l'Oise,
and expelled from the Convention. He now enters the Dark Valley.
"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."

In the "Age of Reason" there is a page of personal recollections. I have
a feeling that this little episode marks the hour when Paine was told of
his doom. From this overshadowed Christmas, likely to be his last,
the lonely heart--as loving a heart as ever beat--here wanders across
tempestuous years to his early home in Norfolk. There is a grateful
remembrance of the Quaker meeting, the parental care, the Grammar
School; of his pious aunt who read him a printed sermon, and the garden
steps where he pondered what he had just heard,--a Father demanding
his Son's death for the sake of making mankind happier and better. He
"perfectly recollects the spot" in the garden where, even then, but
seven or eight years of age, he felt sure a man would be executed for
doing such a thing, and that God was too good to act in that way. So
clearly come out the scenes of childhood under the shadow of death.

He probably had an intimation on December 27th that he would be
arrested that night. The place of his abode, though well known to
the authorities, was not in the Convention's Almanack. Officially,
therefore, his residence was still in the Passage des Petits Pères.
There the officers would seek him, and there he should be found. "For
that night only he sought a lodging there," reported the officers
afterwards. He may have feared, too, that his manuscript would be
destroyed if he were taken in his residence.

His hours are here traceable. On the evening of December 27th, in the
old mansion, Paine reaches the last page of the "Age of Reason." They
who have supposed him an atheist, may search as far as Job, who said
"Though He slay me I will trust in Him," before finding an author who,
caught in the cruel machinery of destructive nature, could write that
last page.

"The creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of God, in
which we cannot be deceived. It proclaim-eth his power, it demonstrates
his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence. 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 everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and
everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."

In what "Israel" is greater faith found? Having written these words,
the pen drops from our world-wanderer's hand. It is nine o'clock of
the night. He will now go and bend his neck under the decree of the
Convention--provided by "the goodness of God to all men." Through the
Faubourg, past Porte St. Martin, to the Rue Richelieu, to the Passage
des Petits Pères, he walks in the wintry night. In the house where
he wrote his appeal that the Convention would slay not the man in
destroying the monarch, he asks a lodging "for that night only."

As he lays his head on the pillow, it is no doubt with a grateful
feeling that the good God has prolonged his freedom long enough to
finish a defence of true religion from its degradation by superstition
or destruction by atheism,--these, as he declares, being the two
purposes of his work. It was providently if not providentially timed.
"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 as a foreigner, and conveying me to the
prison of the Luxembourg."

The following documents are translated for this work from the originals
in the National Archives of France.

"National Convention.

"Committee of General Surety and Surveillance of the National
Convention.

"On the 7th Nivose [December 27th] of the ad year of the French
Republic, one and indivisible.

"To the Deputies:

"The Committee resolves, that the persons named Thomas Paine and
Anacharsis Clootz, formerly Deputies to the National Convention,
be arrested and imprisoned, as a measure of General Surety; that an
examination be made of their papers, and those found suspicious put
under seal and brought to the Committee of General Surety.

"Citizens Jean Baptiste Martin and Lamy, bearers of the present decree
are empowered to execute it,--for which they ask the help of the Civil
authorities and, if need be, of the army.

"The representatives of the nation, members of the Committee of General
Surety--Signed: M. Bayle, Voulland, Jagot, Amar, Vadier, Élie Lacoste,
Guffroy, Louis (du bas Rhin) La Vicomterie, Panis."

"This day, the 8th Nivose of the 2d year of the French Republic, one and
indivisible, to execute and fulfil the order given us, we have gone to
the residence of Citizen Thomas Paine, Passage des Petits Pères,
number seven, Philadelphia House. Having requested the Commander of the
[Police] post, William Tell Section, to have us escorted, according to
the order we showed him, he obeyed by assigning us four privates and
a corporal, to search the above-said lodging; where we requested the
porter to open the door, and asked him whether he knew all who lodged
there; and as he did not affirm it, we desired him to take us to the
principal agent, which he did; having come to the said agent, we asked
him if he knew by name all the persons to whom he rented lodgings; after
having repeated to him the name mentioned in our order, he replied to
us, that he had come to ask him a lodging for that night only; which
being ascertained, we asked him to conduct us to the bedroom of Citizen
Thomas Paine, where we arrived; then seeing we could not be understood
by him, an American, we begged the manager of the house, who knows his
language, to kindly interpret for him, giving him notice of the order of
which we were bearers; whereupon the said Citizen Thomas Paine submitted
to be taken to Rue Jacob, Great Britain Hotel, which he declared
through his interpreter to be the place where he had his papers; having
recognized that his lodging contained none of them, we accompanied the
said Thomas Paine and his interpreter to Great Britain Hotel, Rue Jacob,
Unity Section; the present minutes closed, after being read before the
undersigned.

"(Signed): Thomas Paine.

J. B. Martin.

Dorlé, Commissary.

Gillet, Commissary.

F. Dellanay.

Achille Audibert, Witness.*

Lamy."

     * It will be remembered that Audibert had carried to London
     Paine's invitation to the Convention.

"And as it was about seven or eight o'clock in the morning of this day
8th Nivose, being worn out with fatigue, and forced to take some food,
we postponed the end of our proceeding till eleven o'clock of the same
day, when, desiring to finish it, we went with Citizen Thomas Paine to
Britain House, where we found Citizen Barlow, whom Citizen Thomas Paine
informed that we, the Commissaries, were come to look into the papers,
which he said were at his house, as announced in our preceding paragraph
through Citizen Dellanay, his interpreter; We, Commissary of the Section
of the Unity, undersigned, with the Citizens order-bearers, requested
Citizen Barlow to declare whether there were in his house, any papers
or correspondence belonging to Citizen Thomas Paine; on which, complying
with our request, he declared there did not exist any; but wishing to
leave no doubt on our way of conducting the matter, we did not think it
right to rely on what he said; resolving, on the contrary, to ascertain
by all legal ways that there did not exist any, we requested Citizen
Barlow to open for us all his cupboards; which he did, and after having
visited them, we, the abovesaid Commissary, always in the presence of
Citizen Thomas Paine, recognized that there existed no papers belonging
to him; we also perceived that it was a subterfuge on the part of
Citizen Thomas Paine who wished only to transfer himself to the house of
Citizen Barlow, his native friend (_son ami natal_) whom we invited to
ask of Citizen Thomas Paine his usual place of abode; and the latter
seemed to wish that his friend might accompany him and be present at the
examination of his papers. Which we, the said Commissary granted him,
as Citizen Barlow could be of help to us, together with Citizen Etienne
Thomas Dessous, interpreter for the English language, and Deputy
Secretary to the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention,
whom we called, in passing by the said Committee, to accompany us to
the true lodging of the said Paine, Faubourg du Nord, Nro. 63. At which
place we entered his rooms, and gathered in the Sitting-room all
the papers found in the other rooms of the said apartment. The said
Sitting-room receives light from three windows, looking, one on
the Garden and the two others on the Courtyard; and after the most
scrupulous examination of all the papers, that we had there gathered,
none of them has been found suspicious, neither in French nor in
English, according to what was affirmed to us by Citizen Dessous our
interpreter who signed with us, and Citizen Thomas Paine; and we, the
undersigned Commissary, resolved that no seal should be placed, after
the examination mentioned, and closed the said minutes, which we declare
to contain the truth. Drawn up at the residence, and closed at 4 p.m.
in the day and year abovenamed; and we have all signed after having read
the minutes.

"(Signed): Thomas Paine. Joel Barlow.

Dorlé, Commissary. Gillet, Commissary. Dessous. J. B. Martin. Lamy.

"And after having signed we have requested, according to the order of
the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention, Citizen
Thomas Paine to follow us, to be led to jail; to which he complied
without any difficulty, and he has signed with us:

Thomas Paine. J. B. Martin.

Dorlé, Commissary. Lamy. Gillett, Commissary."

"I have received from the Citizens Martin and Lamy, Deputy-Secretaries
to the Committee of General Surety of the National Convention, the
Citizens Thomas Paine and Ana-charsis Clootz, formerly Deputies; by
order of the said Committee.

"At the Luxembourg, this day 8th Nivose, 2nd year of the French
Republic, One and Indivisible.

"Signed: Benoit, Concierge."




{1794}

"Foreign Office--Received the 12th Ventose [March 2d]. Sent to the
Committees of General Surety and Public Safety the 8th Pluviôse [January
27th] this 2d year of the French Republic, One and indivisible.

"Signed: Bassol, Secretary."

"Citizens Legislators!--The French nation has, by a universal decree,
invited to France one of our countrymen, most worthy of honor, namely,
Thomas Paine, one of the political founders of the independence and of
the Republic of America.

"Our experience of twenty years has taught America to know and esteem
his public virtues and the invaluable services he rendered her.

"Persuaded that his character of foreigner and ex-Deputy is the only
cause of his provisional imprisonment, we come in the name of our
country (and we feel sure she will be grateful to us for it), we come
to you, Legislators, to reclaim our friend, our countryman, that he may
sail with us for America, where he will be received with open arms.

"If it were necessary to say more in support of the Petition which,
as friends and allies of the French Republic, we submit to her
representatives, to obtain the liberation of one of the most earnest and
faithful apostles of liberty, we would beseech the National Convention,
for the sake of all that is dear to the glory and to the heart of
freemen, not to give a cause of joy and triumph to the allied tyrants of
Europe, and above all to the despotism of Great Britain, which did not
blush to outlaw this courageous and virtuous defender of Liberty.

"But their insolent joy will be of short duration; for we have the
intimate persuasion that you will not keep longer in the bonds of
painful captivity the man whose courageous and energetic pen did so much
to free the Americans, and whose intentions we have no doubt whatever
were to render the same services to the French Republic. Yes, we feel
convinced that his principles and views were pure, and in that regard
he is entitled to the indulgence due to human fallibility, and to the
respect due to rectitude of heart; and we hold all the more firmly
our opinion of his innocence, inasmuch as we are informed that after a
scrupulous examination of his papers, made by order of the Committee of
General Surety, instead of anything to his charge, enough has been
found rather to corroborate the purity of his principles in politics and
morals.

"As a countryman of ours, as a man above all so dear to the Americans,
who like yourselves are earnest friends of Liberty, we ask you, in the
name of that goddess cherished of the only two Republics of the World,
to give back Thomas Paine to his brethren and permit us to take him to
his country which is also ours.

"If you require it, Citizens Representatives, we shall make ourselves
warrant and security for his conduct in France during the short stay he
may make in this land.

"Signed: W. Jackson, of Philadelphia. J. Russell, of Boston. Peter
Whiteside, of Philadelphia. Henry Johnson, of Boston. Thomas Carter, of
Newbury Port. James Cooper of Philadelphia. John Willert Billopp, of New
York. Thomas Waters Griffith, of Baltimore. Th. Ramsden, of Boston.
Samuel P. Broome, of New York. A. Meadenworth, of Connecticut. Joel
Barlow, of Connecticut. Michael Alcorn, of Philadelphia. M. Onealy, of
Baltimore. John McPherson, of Alexandria [Va.]. William Haskins, of
Boston. J. Gregory, of Petersburg, Virginia. James Ingraham, of
Boston."'

The following answer to the petitioning Americans was given by Vadier,
then president of the Convention.

"Citizens: The brave Americans are our brothers in liberty; like us
they have broken the chains of despotism; like us they have sworn the
destruction of kings and vowed an eternal hatred to tyrants and their
instruments. From this identity of principles should result a union
of the two nations forever unalterable. If the tree of liberty already
flourishes in the two hemispheres, that of commerce should, by this
happy alliance, cover the poles with its fruitful branches. It is for
France, it is for the United States, to combat and lay low, in concert,
these proud islanders, these insolent dominators of the sea and the
commerce of nations. When the sceptre of despotism is falling from the
criminal hand of the tyrants of the earth, it is necessary also to break
the trident which emboldens the insolence of these corsairs of Albion,
these modern Carthaginians. It is time to repress the audacity and
mercantile avarice of these pirate tyrants of the sea, and of the
commerce of nations.

"You demand of us, citizens, the liberty of Thomas Paine; you wish to
restore to your hearths this defender of the rights of man. One can only
applaud this generous movement. Thomas Paine is a native of England;
this is undoubtedly enough to apply to him the measures of security
prescribed by the revolutionary laws. It may be added, citizens, that
if Thomas Paine has been the apostle of liberty, if he has powerfully
co-operated with the American Revolution, his genius has not understood
that which has regenerated France; he has regarded the system only
in accordance with the illusions with which the false friends of our
revolution have invested it. You must with us deplore an error little
reconcilable with the principles admired in the justly esteemed works of
this republican author.

     * The preceding documents connected with the arrest are in
     the Archives Nationales. F. 4641.

"The National Convention will take into consideration the object of your
petition, and invites you to its sessions."

A memorandum adds: "Reference of this petition is decreed to the
Committees of Public Safety and General Surety, united."

It is said that Paine sent an appeal for intervention to the Cordeliers
Club, and that their only reply was to return to him a copy of his
speech in favor of preserving the life of Louis XVI. This I have not
been able to verify.

On leaving his house for prison, Paine entrusted to Joel Barlow the
manuscript of the "Age of Reason," to be conveyed to the printer. This
was with the knowledge of the guard, whose kindness is mentioned by
Paine.




CHAPTER VII. A MINISTER AND HIS PRISONER

Before resuming the history of the conspiracy against Paine it is
necessary to return a little on our steps. For a year after the fall of
monarchy in France (August 10, 1792), the real American Minister there
was Paine, whether for Americans or for the French Executive. The
Ministry would not confer with a hostile and presumably decapitated
agent, like Morris. The reader has (Chaps. IV. and V., Vol. II.)
evidence of their consultations with Paine. Those communications of
Paine were utilized in Robespierre's report to the Convention, November
17, 1793, on the foreign relations of France. It was inspired by the
humiliating tidings that Genêt in America had reinforced the European
intrigues to detach Washington from France. The President had demanded
Genêt's recall, had issued a proclamation of "impartiality" between
France and her foes, and had not yet decided whether the treaty formed
with Louis XVI. should survive his death. And Morris was not recalled!

In his report Robespierre makes a solemn appeal to the "brave
Americans." Was it "that crowned automaton called Louis XVI." who helped
to rescue them from the oppressor's yoke, or our arm and armies? Was it
his money sent over or the taxes of French labor? He declares that the
Republic has been treacherously compromised in America.

"By a strange fatality the Republic finds itself still represented
among their allies by agents of the traitors she has punished: Brissot's
brother-in-law is Consul-General there; another man, named Genêt, sent
by Lebrun and Brissot to Philadelphia as plenipotentiary agent, has
faithfully fulfilled the views and instructions of the faction that
appointed him."

The result is that "parallel intrigues" are observable--one aiming
to bring France under the league, the other to break up the American
republic into parts.*

     * "Hist. Pari.," xxx., p. 224.

In this idea of "parallel intrigues" the irremovable Morris is
discoverable. It is the reappearance of what he had said to Deforgues
about the simultaneous sedition in America (Genet's) and "influence in
their affairs from the other side of the channel" (Paine's). There was
not, however, in Robespierre's report any word that might be construed
into a suspicion of Paine; on the contrary, he declares the Convention
now pure. The Convention instructed the Committee of Public Safety
to provide for strictest fulfilment of its treaties with America, and
caution to its agents to respect the government and territory of
its allies. The first necessary step was to respect the President's
Minister, Gouverneur Morris, however odious he might be, since it would
be on his representations that the continuance of France's one important
alliance might depend. Morris played cleverly on that string; he hinted
dangers that did not exist, and dangled promises never to be fulfilled.
He was master of the situation. The unofficial Minister he had
practically superseded him for a year was now easily locked up in the
Luxembourg.

But why was not Paine executed? The historic paradox must be ventured
that he owed his reprieve--his life--to Robespierre. Robespierre had
Morris' intercepted letters and other evidences of his treachery, yet
as Washington insisted on him, and the alliance was at stake, he must be
obeyed. On the other hand were evidences of Washington's friendship
for Paine, and of Jefferson's intimacy with him. Time must therefore be
allowed for the prisoner to communicate with the President and Secretary
of State. They must decide between Paine and Morris. It was only after
ample time had passed, and no word about Paine came from Washington
or Jefferson, while Morris still held his position, that Robespierre
entered his memorandum that Paine should be tried before the
revolutionary tribunal.

Meanwhile a great deal happened, some of which, as Paine's experiences
in the Luxembourg, must be deferred to a further chapter. The American
Minister had his triumph. The Americans in Paris, including the
remaining sea-captains, who had been looking to Paine as their Minister,
were now to discover where the power was lodged. Knowing Morris' hatred
for Paine, they repaired to the Convention with their petition. Major
Jackson, a well known officer of the American Revolution, who headed the
deputation (which included every unofficial American in Paris), utilized
a letter of introduction he had brought from Secretary Jefferson to
Morris by giving it to the Committee of General Surety, as an evidence
of his right to act in the emergency.

Action was delayed by excitement over the celebration of the first
anniversary of the King's execution. On that occasion (January 21st)
the Convention joined the Jacobin Club in marching to the "Place de la
Révolution," with music and banners; there the portraits of kings were
burned, an act of accusation against all the kings of the earth adopted,
and a fearfully realistic drama enacted. By a prearrangement unknown
to the Convention four condemned men were guillotined before them.
The Convention recoiled, and instituted an inquisition as to the
responsibility for this scene. It was credited to the Committee of
General Surety, justly no doubt, but its chief, Vadier, managed
to relieve it of the odium. This Vadier was then president of the
Convention. He was appropriately selected to give the first anniversary
oration on the King's execution. A few days later it fell to Vadier to
address the eighteen Americans at the bar of the Convention on their
petition for Paine's release. The petition and petitioners being
referred to the Committees of Public Safety and General Surety in joint
session, the Americans were there answered, by Billaud-Varennes it was
said, "that their reclamation was only the act of individuals, without
any authority from the American government."

This was a plain direction. The American government, whether in Paris or
Philadelphia, had Paine's fate in its hands.

At this time it was of course not known that Jefferson had retired
from the Cabinet. To him Paine might have written, but--sinister
coincidence!--immediately after the committees had referred the
matter to the American government an order was issued cutting off all
communication between prisoners and the outside world. That Morris had
something to do with this is suggested by the fact that he was allowed
to correspond with Paine in prison, though this was not allowed to his
successor, Monroe. However, there is, unfortunately, no need to repair
to suspicions for the part of Gouverneur Morris in this affair. His
first ministerial mention of the matter to Secretary Jefferson is dated
on the tragical anniversary, January 21st "Lest I should forget it," he
says of this small incident, the imprisonment of one whom Congress and
the President had honored--

"Lest I should forget it, I must mention that Thomas Paine is in prison,
where he amuses himself with publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ.
I do not recollect whether I mentioned to you that he would have been
executed along with the rest of the Brissotins if the advance party had
not viewed him with contempt I incline to think that if he is quiet in
prison he may have the good luck to be forgotten, whereas, should he be
brought much into notice, the long suspended axe might fall on him. I
believe he thinks that I ought to claim him as an American citizen; but
considering his birth, his naturalization in this country, and the place
he filled, I doubt much the right, and I am sure that the claim would
be, for the present at least, inexpedient and ineffectual."

Although this paragraph is introduced in such a casual way, there is
calculation in every word First of all, however, be it observed, Morris
knows precisely how the authorities will act several days before they
have been appealed to. It also appears that if Paine was not executed
with the Brissotins on October 31st, it was not due to any interference
on his part The "contempt" which saved Paine may be estimated by a
reference to the executive consultations with him, and to Amar's bitter
denunciation of him (October 3d) after Morris had secretly accused this
contemptible man of influencing the Convention and helping to excite
sedition in the United States. In the next place, Jefferson is
admonished that if he would save his friend's head he must not bring
the matter into notice. The government at Philadelphia must, in mercy
to Paine, remain silent. As to the "pamphlet against Jesus Christ," my
reader has already perused what Paine wrote on that theme in the "Age
of Reason." But as that may not be so likely to affect freethinking
Jefferson, Morris adds the falsehood that Paine had been naturalized in
France. The reader need hardly be reminded that if an application by
the American Minister for the release would be "ineffectual," it must be
because the said Minister would have it so. Morris had already found,
as he tells Washington, that the Ministry, supposing him immovable,
were making overtures of conciliation; and none can read the obsequious
letter of the Foreign Minister, Deforgues (October 19, 1793), without
knowing that a word from Morris would release Paine. The American
petitioners had indeed been referred to their own government--that is,
to Morris.

The American Minister's version of what had occurred is given in a
letter to Secretary Jefferson, dated March 6th:

"I have mentioned Mr. Paine's confinement. Major Jackson--who, by
the by, has not given me a letter from you which he says was merely
introductory, but left it with the Comité de Sûreté Générale, as a kind
of letter of credence--Major Jackson, relying on his great influence
with the leaders here, stepped forward to get Mr. Paine out of jail, and
with several other Americans, has presented a petition to that effect,
which was referred to that Committee and the Comité de Salut Public.
This last, I understand, slighted the application as totally irregular;
and some time afterwards Mr. Paine wrote me a note desiring I would
claim him as an American, which I accordingly did, though contrary to my
judgment, for reasons mentioned in my last The Minister's letter to me
of the 1st Ventose, of which I enclose a copy, contains the answer to my
reclamation. I sent a copy to Mr. Paine, who prepared a long answer, and
sent it to me by an Englishman, whom I did not know. I told him, as
Mr. Paine's friend, that my present opinion was similar to that of the
Minister, but I might, perhaps, see occasion to change it, and in that
case, if Mr. Paine wished it, I would go on with the claim, but that it
would be well for him to consider the result; that, if the Government
meant to release him, they had already a sufficient ground; but if not,
I could only push them to bring on his trial for the crimes imputed
to him; seeing that whether he be considered as a Frenchman, or as an
American, he must be amenable to the tribunals of France for his conduct
while he was a Frenchman, and he may see in the fate of the Brissotins,
that to which he is exposed. I have heard no more of the affair since;
but it is not impossible that he may force on a decision, which, as far
as I can judge, would be fatal to him: for in the best of times he had
a larger share of every other sense than common sense, and lately the
intemperate use of ardent spirits has, I am told, considerably impaired
the small stock he originally possessed."

In this letter the following incidental points suggest comment:

1. "Several other Americans." The petitioners for Paine's release were
eighteen in number, and seem to have comprised all the Americans then
left in Paris, some of them eminent.

2. "The crimes imputed to him." There were none. Paine was imprisoned
under a law against "foreigners." Those charged with his arrest reported
that his papers were entirely innocent. The archives of France, now open
to exploration, prove that no offence was ever imputed to him, showing
his arrest due only to Morris' insinuation of his being objectionable to
the United States. By this insinuation ("crimes imputed to him") Paine
was asserted to be amenable to French laws for matters with which the
United States would of course have nothing to do, and of which nothing
could be known in Philadelphia.

3. "While he was a Frenchman." Had Paine ever been a Frenchman, he was
one when Morris pretended that he had claimed him as an American. But
Paine had been excluded from the Convention and imprisoned expressly
because he was not a Frenchman. No word of the Convention's published
action was transmitted by Morris.

4. "The fate of the Brissotins," etc. This of course would frighten
Paine's friends by its hint of a French hostility to him which did
not exist, and might restrain them from applying to America for
interference. Paine was already restrained by the new order preventing
him from communicating with any one except the American Minister.

5. "Intemperate," etc This is mere calumny. Since the brief lapse in
June, 1793, when overwhelmed by the arrest of his friends, Paine's daily
life is known from those who dwelt with him. During the months preceding
his arrest he wrote the "Age of Reason"; its power, if alcoholic, might
have recommended his cellar to Morris, or to any man living.

So much for the insinuations and _suggestions falsi_ in Morris' letter.
The suppressions of fact are more deadly. There is nothing of what had
really happened; nothing of the eulogy of Paine by the President of the
Convention, which would have been a commentary on what Morris had said
of the contempt in which he was held; not a word of the fact that the
petitioners were reminded by the Committee that their application was
unofficial,--in other words, that the determination on Paine's fate
rested with Morris himself. This Morris hides under the phrase:
"slighted the application as totally irregular."

But the fatal far-reaching falsehood of Morris' letter to Jefferson was
his assertion that he had claimed Paine as an American. This falsehood,
told to Washington, Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, paralyzed all action in
America in Paine's behalf; told to the Americans in Paris, it paralyzed
further effort of their own.

The actual correspondence between Morris and Deforgues is now for the
first time brought to light.

MORRIS TO DEFORGUES,

"Paris, 14th February (26 Pluviôse) 1794.

"Sir,--Thomas Paine has just applied to me to claim him as a Citizen of
the United States. These (I believe) are the facts which relate to him.
He was born in England. Having become a citizen of the United States, he
acquired great celebrity there through his revolutionary writings. In
consequence he was adopted as French Citizen, and then elected Member of
the Convention. His behaviour since that 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 there be reasons which
prevent his liberation, and which are unknown to me, be so good as to
inform me of them, so that I may communicate them to the Government of
the United States.--I have the honour to be, Sir, Your very humble
servant,

"Gouv. Morris."

DEFORGUES TO MORRIS.

"Paris, 1st Ventose, 2nd year of the Republic [February 19, 1794.]

"The Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Minister of the United States.

"In your letter of the 26th of last month you reclaim the liberty of
Thomas Payne, 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 Legislative Corps,
he submitted himself to the laws of the Republic, and has _de fait_
renounced the protection which the right of the people 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 the demand you have
addressed me to the Committee of Public Safety, and I shall lose no time
in letting you know its decision.

"DEFORGUES."

     * "États Unis," vol. xl., Doc. 54. Endorsed: "Received the
     18th of same [Pluviôse, i. e., Feb. 16th]. To declare
     reception and to tell him that the Minister will take the
     necessary steps." The French Minister's reply is Doc. 01 of
     the same volume.

The opening assertion of the French Minister's note reveals the
collusion. Careful examination of the American Minister's letter, to
find where he "reclaims the liberty of Thomas Payne as an American
citizen," forces me to the conclusion that the Frenchman only discovered
such reclamation there by the assistance of Morris.

The American Minister distinctly declares Paine to be a French citizen,
and disclaims official recognition of his conduct as "_pas de mon
ressort_."

It will be borne in mind that this French Minister is the same Deforgues
who had confided to Morris his longing to succeed Genêt in America, and
to whom Morris had whispered his design against Paine. Morris resided
at Sainport, twenty-seven miles away, but his note is written in Paris.
Four days elapse before the reply. Consultation is further proved by
the French Minister's speaking of Paine as "occupying a place in the
Legislative Corps." No uninspired Frenchman could have so described
the Convention, any more than an American would have described the
Convention of 1787 as "Congress." Deforgues' phrase is calculated for
Philadelphia, where it might be supposed that the recently adopted
Constitution had been followed by the organization of a legislature,
whose members must of course take an oath of allegiance, which the
Convention had not required.* Deforgues also makes bold to declare--as
far away as Philadelphia--that Paine is a French citizen, though he
was excluded from the Convention and imprisoned; because he was a
"foreigner."

     * Deforgues' phrase "laws of the Republic" is also a
     deception. The Constitution had been totally suspended by
     the Convention; no government or law had been or ever was
     established under or by it. There was as yet no Republic,
     and only revolutionary or martial laws.

The extreme ingenuity of the letter was certainly not original with
this Frenchman. The American Minister, in response to his note declaring
Paine a French citizen, and disclaiming jurisdiction over him, returns
to Sainport with his official opiate for Paine's friends in America and
Paris--a certificate that he has "reclaimed the liberty of Thomas
Paine as an American citizen." The alleged reclamation suppressed,
the certificate sent to Secretary Jefferson and to Paine, the American
Minister is credited with having done his duty. In Washington's
Cabinet, where the technicalities of citizenship had become of paramount
importance, especially as regarded France, Deforgues' claim that Paine
was not an American must be accepted--Morris consenting--as final.

It may be wondered that Morris should venture on so dangerous a game.
But he had secured himself in anything he might choose to do. So soon as
he discovered, in the previous summer, that he was not to be removed,
and had fresh thunderbolts to wield, he veiled himself from the
inspection of Jefferson. This he did in a letter of September 22, 1793.
In the quasi-casual way characteristic of him when he is particularly
deep, Morris then wrote: "_By the bye, I shall cease to send you copies
of my various applications in particular cases, for they will cost you
more in postage than they are worth_." I put in italics this sentence,
as one which merits memorable record in the annals of diplomacy.

The French Foreign Office being secret as the grave, Jefferson facile,
and Washington confiding, there was no danger that Morris' letter to
De-forgues would ever appear. Although the letter of Deforgues,--his
certificate that Morris had reclaimed Paine as an American,--was a
little longer than the pretended reclamation, postal economy did not
prevent the American Minister from sending _that_, but his own was never
sent to his government, and to this day is unknown to its archives.

It cannot be denied that Morris' letter to De-forgues is masterly in its
way. He asks the Minister to give him such reasons for Paine's detention
as may not be known to him (Morris), there being no such reasons. He
sets at rest any timidity the Frenchman might have, lest Morris should
be ensnaring him also, by begging--not demanding--such knowledge as he
may communicate to his government. Philadelphia is at a safe distance in
time and space. Deforgues is complacent enough, Morris being at hand,
to describe it as a "demand," and to promise speedy action on the
matter--which was then straightway buried, for a century's slumber.

Paine was no doubt right in his subsequent belief that Morris was
alarmed at his intention of returning to America. Should Paine ever
reach Jefferson and his adherents, Gouverneur Morris must instantly lose
a position which, sustained by Washington, made him a power
throughout Europe. Moreover, there was a Nemesis lurking near him. The
revolutionists, aware of his relations with their enemies, were only
withheld from laying hands on him by awe of Washington and anxiety about
the alliance. The moment of his repudiation by his government would have
been a perilous one. It so proved, indeed, when Monroe supplanted him.
For the present, however, he is powerful. As the French Executive
could have no interest merely to keep Paine, for six months, without
suggestion of trial, it is difficult to imagine any reason, save the
wish of Morris, why he was not allowed to depart with the Americans, in
accordance with their petition.

Thus Thomas Paine, recognized by every American statesman and by
Congress as a founder of their Republic, found himself a prisoner, and a
man without a country. Outlawed by the rulers of his native land--though
the people bore his defender, Erskine, from the court on their shoulders
--imprisoned by France as a foreigner, disowned by America as a
foreigner, and prevented by its Minister from returning to the country
whose President had declared his services to it pre-eminent!

Never dreaming that his situation was the work of Morris, Paine
(February 24th) appealed to him for help.

"I received your letter enclosing a copy of a letter from the Minister
of foreign affairs. 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 essay in
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 be 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 to
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."

Supposing, from the French Minister's opening assertion, that a
reclamation had really been made, Paine's simplicity led him into a
trap. He sent his argument to be used by the Minister in an answer of
his own, so that Minister was able to do as he pleased with it, the
result being that it was buried among his private papers, to be partly
brought to light by Jared Sparks, who is candid enough to remark on the
Minister's indifference and the force of Paine's argument. Not a word to
Congress was ever said on the subject.

Jefferson, without the knowledge or expectation of Morris, had resigned
the State Secretaryship at the close of 1793. Morris' letter of March
6th reached the hands of Edmund Randolph, Jefferson's successor, late in
June. On June 25th Randolph writes Washington, at Mount Vernon, that
he has received a letter from Morris, of March 6th, saying "that he has
demanded Paine as an American citizen, but that the Minister holds him
to be amenable to the French laws." Randolph was a just man and an exact
lawyer; it is certain that if he had received a copy of the fictitious
"reclamation" the imprisonment would have been curtailed. Under the
false information before him, nothing could be done but await the
statement of the causes of Paine's detention, which Deforgues would
"lose no time" in transmitting. It was impossible to deny, without
further knowledge, the rights over Paine apparently claimed by the
French government.

And what could be done by the Americans in Paris, whom Paine alone had
befriended? Joel Barlow, who had best opportunities of knowing the
facts, says: "He [Paine] was always charitable to the poor beyond his
means, a sure friend and protector to all Americans in distress that he
found in foreign countries; and he had frequent occasions to exert his
influence in protecting them during the Revolution in France." They were
grateful and deeply moved, these Americans, but thoroughly deceived
about the situation. Told that they must await the action of a distant
government, which itself was waiting for action in Paris, alarmed by the
American Minister's hints of danger that might ensue on any misstep or
agitation, assured that he was proceeding with the case, forbidden to
communicate with Paine, they were reduced to helplessness. Meanwhile,
between silent America and these Americans, all so cunningly disabled,
stood the remorseless French Committee, ready to strike or to release in
obedience to any sign from the alienated ally, to soothe whom no
sacrifice would be too great. Genêt had been demanded for the altar of
sacred Alliance, but (to Morris' regret) refused by the American
government. The Revolution would have preferred Morris as a victim, but
was quite ready to offer Paine.

Six or seven months elapsed without bringing from President or Cabinet a
word of sympathy for Paine. But they brought increasing indications that
America was in treaty with England, and Washington disaffected towards
France. Under these circumstances Robespierre resolved on the accusation
and trial of Paine. It does not necessarily follow that Paine would
have been condemned; but there were some who did not mean that he should
escape, among whom Robespierre may or may not have been included. The
probabilities, to my mind, are against that theory. Robespierre having
ceased to attend the Committee of Public Safety when the order issued
for Paine's death.




CHAPTER VIII. SICK AND IN PRISON

It was a strange world into which misfortune had introduced Paine. There
was in prison a select and rather philosophical society, mainly persons
of refinement, more or less released from conventional habit by the
strange conditions under which they found themselves. There were
gentlemen and ladies, no attempt being made to separate them until some
scandal was reported. The Luxembourg was a special prison for the French
nobility and the English, who had a good opportunity for cultivating
democratic ideas. The gaoler, Benoit, was good-natured, and cherished
his unwilling guests as his children, according to a witness.
Paine might even have been happy there but for the ever recurring
tragedies--the cries of those led forth to death. He was now and then in
strange juxtapositions. One day Deforgues came to join him, he who had
conspired with Morris. Instead of receiving for his crime diplomatic
security in America he found himself beside his victim. Perhaps if
Deforgues and Paine had known each other's language a confession might
have passed There were horrors on horrors. Paine's old friend, Hérault
de Séchelles, was imprisoned for having humanely concealed in his house
a poor officer who was hunted by the police; he parted from Paine for
the scaffold. So also he parted from the brilliant Camille Desmoulins,
and the fine dreamer, Anacharsis Clootz. One day came Danton, who,
taking Paine's hand, said: "That which you did for the happiness and
liberty of your country, I tried in vain to do for mine. I have been
less fortunate, but not less innocent. They will send me to the
scaffold; very well, my friends, I shall go gaily." Even so did Danton
meet his doom.*

All of the English prisoners became Paine's friends. Among these was
General O'Hara,--that same general who had fired the American heart at
Yorktown by offering the surrendered sword of Cornwallis to
Rochambeau instead of Washington. O'Hara's captured suite included two
physicians--Bond and Graham--who attended Paine during an illness, as he
gratefully records. What money Paine had when arrested does not appear
to have been taken from him, and he was able to assist General O'Hara
with £200 to return to his country; though by this and similar charities
he was left without means when his own unexpected deliverance came.**

The first part of "The Age of Reason" was sent out with final revision
at the close of January.

* "Mémoires sur les prisons," t. ii., p. 153.

** Among the anecdotes told of O'Hara in prison, one is related of an
argument he held with a Frenchman, on the relative degrees of liberty
in England and France. "In England," he said, "we are perfectly free to
write and print, George is a good King; but you--why you are not even
Permitted to write, Robespierre is a tiger!"

In the second edition appeared the following inscription:

"TO MY FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.--I put the
following work under your protection. It contains my opinion upon
Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always
strenuously supported the Right of every man to his opinion, however
different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this
right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he
precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon
against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and
I trust I never shall.--Your affectionate friend and fellow citizen,

"Thomas Paine."

This dedication is dated, "Luxembourg (Paris), 8th Pluviôse, Second year
of the French Republic, one and indivisible. January 27, O. S. 1794."
Paine now addressed himself to the second part of "The Age of Reason,"
concerning which the following anecdote is told in the manuscript
memoranda of Thomas Rickman:

"Paine, while in the Luxembourg prison and expecting to die hourly, read
to Mr. Bond (surgeon of Brighton, from whom this anecdote came) parts
of his _Age of Reason_; and every night, when Mr. Bond left him, to
be separately locked up, and expecting not to see Paine alive in the
morning, he [Paine] always expressed his firm belief in the principles
of that book, and begged Mr. Bond should tell the world such were his
dying sentiments. Paine further said, if he lived he should further
prosecute the work and print it. Bond added, Paine was the most
conscientious man he ever knew."

In after years, when Paine was undergoing persecution for "infidelity,"
he reminded the zealots that they would have to "accuse Providence of
infidelity," for having "protected him in all his dangers." Incidentally
he gives reminiscences of his imprisonment.

"I was one of the nine members that composed the first Committee of
Constitution. Six of them have been destroyed. Sieyès and myself have
survived--he by bending with the times, and I by not bending. The other
survivor [Barrère] 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. Hérault Séchelles, an acquaintance of Mr.
Jefferson, and a good patriot, was my _suppléant_ as member of the
Committee of Constitution.... He was imprisoned in the Luxembourg with
me, was taken to the tribunal and guillotined, and I, his principal,
left. There were two foreigners in the Convention, Anacharsis 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.... 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 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 knew I was to be one; and the manner I escaped that fate is
curious, and has all the appearance of accident. The room in which I
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 Vanhuile of Bruges, since president of the municipality of
that town, Michael and Robbins 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-said, were four, and the door
of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but
it happened, if happening is the 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."

Paine did not hear of this chalk mark until afterwards. In his letter to
Washington he says:

"I had 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."

The probabilities are that the prison physician Marhaski, whom Paine
mentions with gratitude, was with him when the chalk mark was made,
and that there was some connivance in the matter. In the same letter he
says:

"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 to
live. 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."

To this Paine adds the memorandum for his accusation found in
Robespierre's note-book. Of course it was natural, especially with the
memorandum, to accept the Robespierre mythology of the time without
criticism. The massacres of July were not due to Robespierre, who during
that time was battling with the Committee of Public Safety, at whose
hands he fell on the 29th. At the close of June there was an alarm at
preparations for an insurrection in Luxembourg prison, which caused a
union of the Committee of Public Safety and the police, resulting in
indiscriminate slaughter of prisoners.

But Paine was discriminated. Barrère, long after, apologized to him for
having signed "the warrant," by saying he felt himself in danger and
was obliged to do it Paine accepted the apology, and when Barrère
had returned to France, after banishment, Paine introduced him to the
English author, Lewis Goldsmith.* As Barrère did not sign the warrant
for Paine's imprisonment, it must have been a warrant for his death, or
for accusation at a moment when it was equivalent to a death sentence.
Whatever danger Barrère had to fear, so great as to cause him to
sacrifice Paine, it was not from Robespierre; else it would not have
continued to keep Paine in prison three months after Robespierre's
death.

     * "Mémoires de B. Barrère," t. i., p. 80. Lewis Goldsmith was
     the author of "Crimes of the Cabinets."

As Robespierre's memorandum was for a "decree of accusation" against
Paine, separately, which might not have gone against him, but possibly
have dragged to light the conspiracy against him, there would seem to be
no ground for connecting that "demand" with the warrant signed by a
Committee he did not attend.

Paine had good cause for writing as he did in praise of "Forgetfulness."
During the period in which he was unconscious with fever the horrors of
the prison reached their apogee. On June 19th the kindly gaoler, Benoit,
was removed and tried; he was acquitted but not restored. His place was
given to a cruel fellow named Gayard, who instituted a reign of terror
in the prison.

There are many evidences that the good Benoit, so warmly remembered
by Paine, evaded the rigid police regulations as to communications of
prisoners with their friends outside, no doubt with precaution against
those of a political character. It is pleasant to record an instance
of this which was the means of bringing beautiful rays of light into
Paine's cell. Shortly before his arrest an English lady had called on
him, at his house in the Faubourg St. Denis, to ask his intervention in
behalf of an Englishman of rank who had been arrested. Paine had now,
however, fallen from power, and could not render the requested service.
This lady was the last visitor who preceded the officers who
arrested him. But while he was in prison there was brought to him a
communication, in a lady's handwriting, signed "A little corner of the
World." So far as can be gathered, this letter was of a poetical
character, perhaps tinged with romance. It was followed by others, all
evidently meant to beguile the weary and fearful hours of a prisoner
whom she had little expectation of ever meeting again. Paine, by the aid
of Benoit, managed to answer his "contemplative correspondent," as he
called her, signing, "The Castle in the Air." These letters have never
seen the light, but the sweetness of this sympathy did, for many an
hour, bring into Paine's _oubliette_ the oblivion of grief described in
the letter on "Forgetfulness," sent to the lady after his liberation.

"Memory, like a beauty that is always present to hear herself
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 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
then glides away with the silence of a departing shadow."

Paine was not forgotten by his old friends in France. So soon as the
excitement attending Robespierre's execution had calmed a little,
Lan-thenas (August 7th) sent Merlin de Thionville a copy of the "Age of
Reason," which he had translated, and made his appeal.

"I think it would be in the well-considered interest of the Republic,
since the fall of the tyrants we have overthrown, to re-examine the
motives of Thomas Paine's imprisonment. That re-examination is suggested
by too many and sensible grounds to be related in detail. Every friend
of liberty familiar with the history of our Revolution, and feeling the
necessity of repelling the slanders with which despots are loading it in
the eyes of nations, misleading them against us, will understand these
grounds. Should the Committee of Public Safety, having before it no
founded charge or suspicion against Thomas Paine, retain any scruples,
and think that from my occasional conversation with that foreigner, whom
the people's suffrage called to the national representation, and some
acquaintance with his language, I might perhaps throw light upon their
doubt, I would readily communicate to them all that I know about him. I
request Merlin de Thionville to submit these considerations to the
Committee."

Merlin was now a leading member of the Committee. On the following day
Paine sent (in French) the following letters:

"Citizens, Representatives, and Members of the Committee of Public
Safety: I address you a copy of a letter which I have to-day written to
the Convention. The singular situation in which I find myself determines
me to address myself to the whole Convention, of which you are a part

"Thomas Paine. Maison d'Arrêt du Luxembourg, Le 19 Thermidor, l'an 2 de
la République, une et indivisible."

"Citizen 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.

"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 even 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, 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, and it
is to the national representation that I appeal against that 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
Barrère, and it will speak for itself.

"It is perhaps proper that I inform you of the cause 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 of the decrees concerning Foreigners. But any excuse can be made to
serve the purpose of malignity when it is 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 19th, 2d year of the French Republic, one and
indivisible."

No doubt this touching letter would have been effectual had it reached
the Convention. But the Committee of Public Safety took care that no
whisper even of its existence should be heard. Paine's participation in
their fostered dogma, that _Robespierre le veut_ explained all crimes,
probably cost him three more months in prison. The lamb had confided its
appeal to the wolf. Barrère, Bil-laud-Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois,
by skilful use of the dead scapegoat, maintained their places on the
Committee until September 1st, and after that influenced its counsels.
At the same time Morris, as we shall see, was keeping Monroe out of his
place. There might have been a serious reckoning for these men had Paine
been set free, or his case inquired into by the Convention. And Thuriot
was now on the Committee of Public Safety; he was eager to lay his own
crimes on Robespierre, and to conceal those of the Committee. Paine's
old friend, Achille Audibert, unsuspicious as himself of the real
facts, sent an appeal (August 20th) to "Citizen Thuriot, member of the
Committee of Public Safety."

"Representative:--A friend of mankind is groaning in chains,--Thomas
Paine, who was not so politic as to remain silent in regard to a man
unlike himself, but dared to say that Robespierre was a monster to be
erased from the list of men. From that moment he became a criminal;
the despot marked him as his victim, put him into prison, and doubtless
prepared the way to the scaffold for him, as for others who knew him and
were courageous enough to speak out.*

     * It most be remembered that at this time it seemed the
     strongest recommendation of any one to public favor to
     describe him as a victim of Robespierre; and Paine's friends
     could conceive no other cause for the detention of a man
     they knew to be innocent.

"Thomas Paine is an acknowledged citizen of the United States. He was
the secretary of the Congress for the department of foreign affairs
during the Revolution. He has made himself known in Europe by his
writings, and especially by his 'Rights of Man.' The electoral
assembly of the department of Pas-de-Calais elected him one of its
representatives to the Convention, and commissioned me to go to London,
inform him of his election, and bring him to France. I hardly escaped
being a victim to the English Government with which he was at open war;
I performed my mission; and ever since friendship has attached me to
Paine. This is my apology for soliciting you for his liberation.

"I can assure you, Representative, that America was by no means
satisfied with the imprisonment of a strong column of its Revolution.
Please to take my prayer into consideration. But for Robespierre's
villainy this friend of man would now be free. Do not permit liberty
longer to see in prison a victim of the wretch who lives no more but by
his crimes; and you will add to the esteem and veneration I feel for
a man who did so much to save the country amidst the most tremendous
crisis of our Revolution.

"Greeting, respect, and brotherhood,

"Achille Audibert, of Calais.

"No. 216 Rue de Bellechase, Fauborg St Germaine."

Audibert's letter, of course, sank under the burden of its Robespierre
myth to a century's sleep beside Paine's, in the Committee's closet.

Meanwhile, the regulation against any communication of prisoners with
the outside world remaining in force, it was some time before Paine
could know that his letter had been suppressed on its way to the
Convention. He was thus late in discovering his actual enemies.

An interesting page in the annals of diplomacy remains to be written
on the closing weeks of Morris in France. On August 14th he writes to
Robert Morris: "I am preparing for my departure, but as yet can take no
step, as there is a kind of interregnum in the government and Mr. Monroe
is not yet received, at which he grows somewhat impatient." There was
no such interregnum, and no such explanation was given to Monroe, who
writes:

"I presented my credentials to the commissary of foreign affairs soon
after my arrival [August 2d]; but more than a week had elapsed, and I
had obtained no answer, when or whether I should be received. A delay
beyond a few days surprised me, because I could discern no adequate or
rational motive for it."*

     * "View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign
     Affairs of the United States," by James Monroe, p. 7.

It is plain that the statement of Paine, who was certainly in
communication with the Committees a year later, is true, that Morris was
in danger on account of the interception of compromising letters written
by him. He needed time to dispose of his house and horses, and ship his
wines, and felt it important to retain his protecting credentials. At
any moment his friends might be expelled from the Committee, and their
papers be examined. While the arrangements for Monroe's reception rested
with Morris and this unaltered Committee, there was little prospect
of Monroe's being installed at all. The new Minister was therefore
compelled, as other Americans had been, to appeal directly to the
Convention. That assembly responded at once, and he was received
(August 28th) with highest honors. Morris had nothing to do with
the arrangement. The historian Frédéric Masson, alluding to the
"unprecedented" irregularity of Morris in not delivering or receiving
letters of recall, adds that Monroe found it important to state that he
had acted without consultation with his predecessor.* This was necessary
for a cordial reception by the Convention, but it invoked the cordial
hatred of Morris, who marked him for his peculiar guillotine set up in
Philadelphia.

     * "Le Département des Affaires Étrangères," etc., p. 345.

So completely had America and Congress been left in the dark about Paine
that Monroe was surprised to find him a prisoner. When at length the new
Minister was in a position to consult the French Minister about Paine,
he found the knots so tightly tied around this particular victim--almost
the only one left in the Luxembourg of those imprisoned during the
Terror--that it was difficult to untie them. The Minister of Foreign
Affairs was now M. Bouchot, a weak creature who, as Morris said, would
not wipe his nose without permission of the Committee of Public Safety.
When Monroe opened Paine's case he was asked whether he had brought
instructions. Of course he had none, for the administration had no
suspicion that Morris had not, as he said, attended to the case.

When Paine recovered from his fever he heard that Monroe had superseded
Morris.

"As soon as I was able to write a note legible enough to be read,
I found a way to convey one to him [Monroe] by means of the man who
lighted the lamps in the prison, and whose unabated friendship to me,
from whom he 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 in a note from an
intermediate person, with assurance of his friendship, and expressing
a desire that I should rest the case in his hands. After a fortnight
or more had passed, and hearing nothing farther, I wrote to a friend
[Whiteside], 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
told me he had no order (meaning from the president, Mr. Washington)
respecting you, but that he (Mr. Monroe) will do everything 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 individuals, as an American citizen.'"

As the American government did regard Paine as an American citizen,
and approved Monroe's demanding him as such, there is no difficulty in
recognizing the source from which these statements were diffused among
Paine's newly arriving countrymen. Morris was still in Paris.

On the receipt of Whiteside's note, Paine wrote a Memorial to Monroe,
of which important parts--amounting to eight printed pages--are omitted
from American and English editions of his works. In quoting this
Memorial, I select mainly the omitted portions.*

     * The whole is published in French: "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, zo Septembre, 1794.
     Villeneuve."

Paine says that before leaving London for the Convention, he consulted
Minister Pinckney, who agreed with him that "it was for the interest of
America that the system of European governments should be changed and
placed on the same principle with her own"; and adds: "I have wished to
see America the mother church of government, and I have done my utmost
to exalt her character and her condition." He points out that he had not
accepted any title or office under a foreign government, within the
meaning of the United States Constitution, because there was no
government in France, the Convention being assembled to frame one; that
he was a citizen of France only in the honorary sense in which others in
Europe and America were declared such; that no oath of allegiance was
required or given. The following paragraphs are from various parts of
the Memorial.

"They 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....

"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 conceive that 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 America 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....

"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,
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 that
Committee continued, I had no expectation of liberty. I speak here of
the Committee of which Robespierre was a member....

"I here close my Memorial and proceed to offer to 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 upon 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 appear to the Minister of
the United States, and shew that my citizenship of that Country is good
and valid, referring at the same time, through 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 for a 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 is who was born, as
they all were, under the same government, or that 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....

"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 shown the ruin with which it
was pregnant. They who have esteemed me on former occasions, whether
in America or England, 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."

In a postscript Paine adds 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 left." Which to the reader
of the preceding pages will appear sufficiently naïve.

To this Monroe responded (September 18th) with a letter of warm
sympathy, worthy of the high-minded gentleman that he was. After
ascribing the notion that Paine was not an American to mental confusion,
and affirming his determination to maintain his rights as a citizen of
the United States, Monroe says:

"It is unnecessary 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 services in our own revolution, but as being on a
more extensive scale, the friend of human rights, and a distinguished
and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas
Paine the Americans are not and cannot 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, menaced by no kind of danger. To liberate you,
will be an object of my endeavors, and as soon as possible. But you
must, until that event shall be accomplished, face 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, and 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."

Monroe was indeed "placed upon a difficult theatre." Morris was showing
a fresh letter from the President expressing unabated confidence in him,
apologizing for his recall; he still had friends in the Committee of
Public Safety, to which Monroe had appealed in vain. The continued dread
the conspirators had of Paine's liberation appears in the fact that
Monroe's letter, written September 18th, did not reach Paine until
October 18th, when Morris had reached the boundary line of Switzerland,
which he entered on the 19th. He had left Paris (Sainport) October 14th,
when Barrère, Billaud-Varennes, and Collot d'Herbois, no longer on
the Committee, were under accusation, and their papers under
investigation,--a search that resulted in their exile. Morris got across
the line on an irregular passport.

While Monroe's reassuring letter to Paine was taking a month to
penetrate his prison walls, he vainly grappled with the subtle
obstacles. All manner of delays impeded the correspondence, the
principal one being that he could present no instructions from the
President concerning Paine. Of course he was fighting in the dark,
having no suspicion that the imprisonment was due to his predecessor.
At length, however, he received from Secretary Randolph a letter (dated
July 30th), from which, though Paine was not among its specifications,
he could select a sentence as basis of action: "We have heard with
regret that several of our citizens have been thrown into prison in
France, from a suspicion of criminal attempts against the government. If
they are guilty we are extremely sorry for it; if innocent we must
protect them." What Paine had said in his Memorial of collusion between
Morris and the Committee of Public Safety probably determined Monroe to
apply no more in that quarter; so he wrote (November 2d) to the
Committee of General Surety. After stating the general principles and
limitations of ministerial protection to an imprisoned countryman, he
adds:

"The citizens of the United States cannot look back upon the time of
their own revolution without recollecting among the names of their most
distinguished patriots that of Thomas Paine; the services he rendered to
his country in its struggle for freedom have implanted in the hearts of
his countrymen a sense of gratitude never to be effaced as long as they
shall deserve the title of a just and generous people.

"The above-named citizen is at this moment languishing in prison,
affected with a disease growing more intense from his confinement. I
beg, therefore, to call your attention to his condition and to request
you to hasten the moment when the law shall decide his fate, in case of
any accusation against him, and if none, to restore him to liberty.

"Greeting and fraternity,

"Monroe."

At this the first positive assertion of Paine's American citizenship the
prison door flew open. He had been kept there solely "pour les intérêts
de l'Amérique," as embodied in Morris, and two days after Monroe
undertook, without instructions, to affirm the real interests of America
in Paine he was liberated.

"Brumaire, 13th. Third year of the French Republic.--The Committee of
General Surety orders that the Citizen Thomas Paine be set at liberty,
and the seals taken from his papers, on sight of these presents.

"Members of the Committee (signed): Clauzel, Lesage, Senault, Bentabole,
Reverchon, Goupilleau de Fontenai, Rewbell.

"Delivered to Clauzel, as Commissioner."*

There are several interesting points about this little decree. It
is signed by Bentabole, who had moved Paine's expulsion from the
Convention. It orders that the seals be removed from Paine's papers,
whereas none had been placed on them, the officers reporting them
innocent. This same authority, which had ordered Paine's arrest, now,
in ordering his liberation, shows that the imprisonment had never been
a subject of French inquiry. It had ordered the seals but did not know
whether they were on the papers or not. It was no concern of France,
but only of the American Minister. It is thus further evident that when
Monroe invited a trial of Paine there was not the least trace of any
charge against him. And there was precisely the same absence of any
accusation against Paine in the new Committee of Public Safety, to which
Monroe's letter was communicated the same day.

Writing to Secretary Randolph (November 7th) Monroe says:

"He was actually a citizen of the United States, and of the United
States only; for the Revolution which parted us from Great Britain broke
the allegiance which was before due to the Crown, of all who took our
side. He was, of course, not a British subject; nor was he strictly a
citizen of France, for he came by invitation for the temporary purpose
of assisting in the formation of their government only, and meant to
withdraw to America when that should be completed. And what confirms
this is the act of the Convention itself arresting him, by which he is
declared a foreigner. Mr. Paine pressed my interference.

"I told him I had hoped getting him enlarged without it; but, if I did
interfere, it could only be by requesting that he be tried, in case
there was any charge against him, and liberated in case there was
not. This was admitted. His correspondence with me is lengthy and
interesting, and I may probably be able hereafter to send you a copy
of it. After some time had elapsed, without producing any change in his
favor, I finally resolved to address the Committee of General Surety in
his behalf, resting my application on the above principle. My letter was
delivered by my Secretary in the Committee to the president, who assured
him he would communicate its contents immediately to the Committee of
Public Safety, and give me an answer as soon as possible. The conference
took place accordingly between the two Committees, and, as I presume,
on that night, or on the succeeding day; for on the morning of the day
after, which was yesterday, I was presented by the Secretary of the
Committee of General Surety with an order for his enlargement. I
forwarded it immediately to the Luxembourg, and had it carried into
effect; and have the pleasure now to add that he is not only released to
the enjoyment of liberty, but is in good spirits."

In reply, the Secretary of State (Randolph) in a letter to Monroe of
March 8, 1795, says: "Your observations on our commercial relations
to France, and your conduct as to Mr. Gardoqui's letter, prove your
judgment and assiduity. Nor are your measures as to Mr. Paine, and the
lady of our friend [Lafayette] less approved."

Thus, after an imprisonment of ten months and nine days, Thomas Paine
was liberated from the prison into which he had been cast by a Minister
of the United States.




CHAPTER IX. A RESTORATION

As in 1792 Paine had left England with the authorities at his heels,
so in 1794 escaped Morris from France. The ex-Minister went off to
play courtier to George III. and write for Louis XVIII. the despotic
proclamation with which monarchy was to be restored in France*; Paine
sat in the house of a real American Minister, writing proclamations of
republicanism to invade the empires. So passed each to his own place.

While the American Minister in Paris and his wife were nursing their
predecessor's victim back into life, a thrill of joy was passing
through European courts, on a rumor that the dreaded author had
been guillotined. Paine had the satisfaction of reading, at Monroe's
fireside, his own last words on the scaffold,** and along with it an
invitation of the 27th of December 1792.

     * Morris' royal proclamations are printed in full in his
     biography by Jared Sparks.

     ** "The last dying words of Thomas Paine. Executed at the
     Guillotine in France on the 1st of September, 1794." The
     dying speech begins: "Ye numerous spectators gathered
     around, pray give ear to my last words; I am determined to
     speak the Truth in these my last moments, altho' I have
     written and spoke nothing but lies all my life." There is
     nothing in the witless leaflet worth quoting. When Paine was
     burnt in effigy, in 1792, it appears to have been with
     accompaniments of the same kind. Before me is a small
     placard, which reads thus: "The Dying Speech and Confession
     of the Arch-Traitor Thomas Paine. Who was executed at Oakham
     on Thursday."

     "This morning the Officers usually attending on such
     occasions went in procession on Horseback to the County
     Gaol, and demanded the Body of the Arch-Traitor, and from
     thence proceeded with the Criminal drawn in a Cart by an Ass
     to the usual place of execution with his Pamphlet called the
     'Rights of Man' in his right hand."

On December 7, 1794, Thibaudeau had spoken to that assembly in the
following terms:

"It yet remains for the Convention to perform an act of justice. I
reclaim one of the most zealous defenders of liberty'--Thomas Paine.
(_Loud applause_.) My reclamation is for a man who has honored his
age by his energy in defence of the rights of humanity, and who is
so gloriously distinguished by his part in the American revolution. A
naturalized Frenchman* by a decree of the legislative assembly, he was
nominated by the people. It was only by an intrigue that he was driven
from the Convention, the pretext being a decree excluding foreigners
from representing the French people. There were only two foreigners in
the Convention; one [Anacharsis Clootz] is dead, and I speak not of him,
but of Thomas Paine, who powerfully contributed to establish liberty in
a country allied with the French Republic. I demand that he be recalled
to the bosom of the Convention." (_Applause._)

"The _Moniteur_, from which I translate, reports the unanimous adoption
of Thibaudeau's motion. But this was not enough. The Committee of Public
Instruction, empowered to award pensions for literary services, reported
(January 3, 1795) as the first name on their list, Thomas Paine.
Chenier, in reading the report, claimed the honor of having originally
suggested Paines name as an honorary citizen of France, and denounced,
amid applause, the decree against foreigners under which the great
author had suffered.

     * Here Thibaudeau was inexact. In the next sentence but one
     he rightly describes Paine as a foreigner. The allusion to
     "an intrigue" is significant.

You have revoked that inhospitable decree, and we again see Thomas
Paine, the man of genius without fortune, our colleague, dear to all
friends of humanity,--a cosmopolitan, persecuted equally by Pitt and by
Robespierre. Notable epoch in the life of this philosopher, who opposed
the arms of Common Sense to the sword of Tyranny, the Rights of Man to
the machiavelism of English politicians; and who, by two immortal works,
has deserved well of the human race, and consecrated liberty in the two
worlds."

Poor as he was, Paine declined this literary pension. He accepted
the honors paid him by the Convention, no doubt with a sorrow at the
contrasted silence of those who ruled in America. Monroe, however,
encouraged him to believe that he was still beloved there, and, as he
got stronger, a great homesickness came upon him. The kindly host
made an effort to satisfy him. On January 4th he (Monroe) wrote to the
Committee of Public Safety:

"Citizens: The Decree just passed, bearing on the execution of Articles
23 and 24 of the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between the two
Republics, is of such great importance to my country, that I think it
expedient to send it there officially, by some particularly confidential
hand; and no one seems to be better fitted for this errand than Thomas
Paine, Having resided a long time in France, and having a perfect
knowledge of the many vicissitudes which the Republic has passed, he
will be able to explain and compare the happy lot she now enjoys. As he
has passed the same himself, remaining faithful to his principles, his
reports will be the more trustworthy, and consequently produce a better
effect. But as Citizen Paine is a member of the Convention, I thought it
better to submit this subject to your consideration. If this affair
can be arranged, the Citizen will leave for America immediately, via
Bordeaux, on an American vessel which will be prepared for him. As he
has reason to fear the persecution of the English government, should he
be taken prisoner, he desires that his departure may be kept a secret.

"Jas. Monroe."

The Convention alone could give a passport to one of its members, and
as an application to it would make Paine's mission known, the Committee
returned next day a negative answer.

"Citizen: We see with satisfaction and without surprise, that you attach
some interest to sending officially to the United States the Decree
which the National Convention has just made, in which are recalled and
confirmed the reports of Friendship and Commerce existing between the
two Republics.

"As to the design you express of confiding this errand to Citizen Thomas
Paine, we must observe to you that the position he holds will not permit
him to accept it. Salutation and Friendship.

"Cambacérès."*

Liberty's great defender gets least of it! The large seal of the
Committee--mottoed "Activity, Purity, Attention"--looks like a wheel of
fortune; but one year before it had borne from the Convention to prison
the man it now cannot do without. France now especially needs the
counsel of shrewd and friendly American heads. There are indications
that Jay in London is carrying the United States into Pitt's combination
against the Republic, just as it is breaking up on the Continent.

Monroe's magnanimity towards Paine found its reward. He brought to his
house, and back into life, just the one man in France competent to
give him the assistance he needed. Comprehending the history of the
Revolution, knowing the record of every actor in it, Paine was able to
revise Monroe's impressions, and enable him to check calumnies
circulated in America. The despatches of Monroe are of high historic
value, largely through knowledge derived from Paine.

     * State Archives of France. États Unis, vol. xliii. Monroe
     dates his letter, "19th year of the American Republic."

Nor was this all. In Monroe's instructions emphasis was laid on
the importance to the United States of the free navigation of the
Mississippi and its ultimate control.* Paine's former enthusiasm in this
matter had possibly been utilized by Gouverneur Morris to connect him,
as we have seen, with Genêt's proceedings. The Kentuckians consulted
Paine at a time when expulsion of the Spaniard was a patriotic American
scheme. This is shown in a letter written by the Secretary of State
(Randolph) to the President, February 27, 1794.

"Mr. Brown [Senator of Kentucky] has shown me a letter from the famous
Dr. O'Fallon to Captain Herron, dated Oct 18, 1793. It was intercepted,
and he has permitted me to take the following extract:--'This plan
(an attack on Louisiana) was digested between Gen. Clarke and me last
Christmas. I framed the whole of the correspondence in the General's
name, and corroborated it by a private letter of my own to Mr. Thomas
Paine, of the National Assembly, with whom during the late war I was
very intimate. His reply reached me but a few days since, enclosed in
the General's despatches from the Ambassador."**

     * "The conduct of Spain towards us is unaccountable and
     injurious. Mr. Pinckney is by this time gone over to Madrid
     as our envoy extraordinary to bring matters to a conclusion
     some way or other. But you will seize any favorable moment
     to execute what has been entrusted to you respecting the
     Mississippi."--Randolph to Monroe, February 15, 1795.

     ** Two important historical works have recently appeared
     relating to the famous Senator Brown. The first is a
     publication of the Filson Club: "The Political Beginnings of
     Kentucky," by John Mason Brown. The second is: "The Spanish
     Conspiracy," by Thomas Marshall Green (Cincinnati, Robert
     Clarke & Co., 1891). The intercepted letter quoted above has
     some bearing on the controversy between these authors.
     Apparently, Senator Brown, like many other good patriots,
     favored independent action in Kentucky when that seemed for
     the welfare of the United States, but, when the situation
     had changed, Brown is found co-operating with Washington and
     Randolph.

That such letters (freely written as they were at the beginning of 1793)
were now intercepted indicates the seriousness of the situation time had
brought on. The administration had soothed the Kentuckians by pledges
of pressing the matter by negotiations. Hence Monroe's instructions, in
carrying out which Paine was able to lend a hand.




{1795}

In the State Archives at Paris (États Unis, vol. xliii.) there are two
papers marked "Thomas Payne." The first urges the French Ministry to
seize the occasion of a treaty with Spain to do a service to the United
States: let the free navigation of the Mississippi be made by France a
condition of peace. The second paper (endorsed "3 Ventose, February 21,
1795") proposes that, in addition to the condition made to Spain, an
effort should be made to include American interests in the negotiation
with England, if not too late. The negotiation with England was
then finished, but the terms unpublished. Paine recommended that the
Convention should pass a resolution that freedom of the Mississippi
should be a condition of peace with Spain, which would necessarily
accept it; and that, in case the arrangement with England should
prove unsatisfactory, any renewed negotiations should support the just
reclamations of their American ally for the surrender of the frontier
posts and for depredations on their trade. Paine points out that such a
declaration could not prolong the war a day, nor cost France an obole;
whereas it might have a decisive effect in the United States, especially
if Jay's treaty with England should be reprehensible, and should be
approved in America.

That generosity "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 would undo the bad effects of the
depredations of French privateers on American vessels, which rejoiced
the British party in the United States and discouraged the friends of
liberty and humanity there. It would acquire for France the merit
which is her due, supply her American friends with strength against the
intrigues of England, and cement the alliance of the Republics.

This able paper might have been acted on, but for the anger in France at
the Jay treaty.

While writing in Monroe's house, the invalid, with an abscess in his
side and a more painful sore in his heart--for he could not forget that
Washington had forgotten him,--receives tidings of new events through
cries in the street. In the month of his release they had been resonant
with yells as the Jacobins were driven away and their rooms turned to
a Normal School. Then came shouts, when, after trial, the murderous
committeemen were led to execution or exile. In the early weeks of 1795
the dread sounds of retribution subside, and there is a cry from the
street that comes nearer to Paine's heart--"Bread and the Constitution
of Ninety-three!" He knows that it is his Constitution for which
they are really calling, for they cannot understand the Robespierrian
adulteration of it given out, as one said, as an opiate to keep the
country asleep. The people are sick of revolutionary rule. These are the
people in whom Paine has ever believed,--the honest hearts that summoned
him, as author of "The Rights of Man," to help form their Constitution.
They, he knows, had to be deceived when cruel deeds were done, and
heard of such deeds with as much horror as distant peoples. Over that
Constitution for which they were clamoring he and his lost friend
Condorcet had spent many a day of honest toil. Of the original Committee
of Nine appointed for the work, six had perished by the revolution,
one was banished, and two remained--Sieyès and Paine. That original
Committee had gradually left the task to Paine and Condorcet,--Sieyès,
because he had no real sympathy with republicanism, though he honored
Paine.* When afterwards asked how he had survived the Terror, Sieyès
answered, "I lived." He lived by bending, and now leads a Committee of
Eleven on the Constitution, while Paine, who did not bend, is
disabled. Paine knows Sieyès well. The people will vainly try for the
"Constitution of Ninety-three." They shall have no Constitution but
of Sieyès' making, and in it will be some element of monarchy. Sieyès
presently seemed to retire from the Committee, but old republicans did
not doubt that he was all the more swaying it.

     * "Mr. Thomas Paine is one of those men who have contributed
     the most to establish the liberty of America. His ardent
     love of humanity, and his hatred of every sort of tyranny,
     have induced him to take up in England the defence of the
     French revolution, against the amphigorical declamation of
     Mr. Burke. His work has been translated into our language,
     and is universally known. What French patriot is there who
     has not already, from the bottom of his heart, thanked this
     foreigner for having strengthened our cause by all the
     powers of his reason and reputation? It is with pleasure
     that I observe an opportunity of offering him the tribute of
     my gratitude and my esteem for the truly philosophical
     application of talents so distinguished as his own."--Sieyès
     in the Moniteur, July 6, 1791.

So once more Paine seizes his pen; his hand is feeble, but His intellect
has lost no fibre of force, nor his heart its old faith. His trust in
man has passed through the ordeal of seeing his friends--friends of
man--murdered by the people's Convention, himself saved by accident; it
has survived the apparent relapse of Washington into the arms of
George the Third. The ingratitude of his faithfully-served America
is represented by an abscess in his side, which may strike into his
heart--in a sense has done so--but will never reach his faith in
liberty, equality, and humanity.

Early in July the Convention is reading Paine's "Dissertation on First
Principles of Government" His old arguments against hereditary right,
or investing even an elective individual with extraordinary power, are
repeated with illustrations from the passing Revolution.

"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. The nation would 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 or 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 or 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 farther_. But in the
absence of a Constitution men look entirely to party; and instead of
principle governing party, party governs principle.

"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 himself."

Few of Paine's pamphlets better deserve study than this. In writing it,
he tells us, he utilized the fragment of a work begun at some time
not stated, which he meant to dedicate to the people of Holland,
then contemplating a revolution. It is a condensed statement of the
principles underlying the Constitution written by himself and Condorcet,
now included among Condorcet's works. They who imagine that Paine's
political system was that of the democratic demagogues may undeceive
themselves by pondering this pamphlet. It has been pointed out, on a
previous page of this work, that Paine held the representative to be
not the voter's mouthpiece, but his delegated sovereignty. The
representatives of a people are therefore its supreme power. The
executive, the ministers, are merely as chiefs of the national police
engaged in enforcing the laws. They are mere employés, without any
authority at all, except of superintendence. "The executive department
is official, and is subordinate to the legislative as the body is to
the mind." The chief of these official departments is the judicial. In
appointing officials the most important rule is, "never to invest any
individual with extraordinary power; for besides being tempted to
misuse it, it will excite contention and commotion in the nation for
the office." All of this is in logical conformity with the same author's
"Rights of Man," which James Madison declared to be an exposition of the
principles on which the United States government is based. It would be
entertaining to observe the countenance of a President should our House
of Representatives address him as a chief of national police.

Soon after the publication of Paine's "Dissertation" a new French
Constitution was textually submitted for popular consideration. Although
in many respects it accorded fairly well with Paine's principles, it
contained one provision which he believed would prove fatal to the
Republic. This was the limitation of citizenship to payers of direct
taxes, except soldiers who had fought in one or more campaigns for the
Republic, this being a sufficient qualification. This revolutionary
disfranchisement of near half the nation brought Paine to the Convention
(July 7th) for the first time since the fall of the Brissotins, two
years before. The scene at his return was impressive. A special motion
was made by Lan-thenas and unanimously adopted, "that permission be
granted Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the declaration of
rights and the Constitution." With feeble step he ascended the tribune,
and stood while a secretary read his speech. Of all present this man had
suffered most by the confusion of the mob with the people, which caused
the reaction on which was floated the device he now challenged. It is
an instance of idealism rare in political history. The speech opens with
words that caused emotion.

"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 line of conduct. During the reign of terrorism
I was a prisoner for eight long months, and remained so above three
months after the era of the 10th Thermidor. 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 control of tyranny have not their foundation in the
heart."

Though they slay him Paine will trust in the people. There seems a
slight slip of memory; his imprisonment, by revolutionary calendar,
lasted ten and a half months, or 315 days; but there is no failure
of conviction or of thought. He points out the inconsistency of the
disfranchisement of indirect tax-payers with the Declaration of Rights,
and the opportunity afforded partisan majorities to influence
suffrage by legislation on the mode of collecting taxes. The soldier,
enfranchised without other qualification, would find his children
slaves.

"If you subvert the basis of the Revolution, if you dispense with
principles and substitute expedients, you will extinguish that
enthusiasm which has 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."

There was an educational test of suffrage to which he did not object.
"Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime." But in his appeal to
pure principle simple-hearted Paine knew nothing of the real test of the
Convention's votes. This white-haired man was the only eminent member
of the Convention with nothing in his record to cause shame or fear. He
almost alone among them had the honor of having risked his head rather
than execute Louis, on whom he had looked as one man upon another. He
alone had refused to enter the Convention when it abandoned the work for
which it was elected and became a usurping tribunal. During two fearful
years the true Republic had been in Paine's house and garden, where he
conversed with his disciples; or in Luxembourg prison, where he won all
hearts, as did imprisoned George Fox, who reappeared in him, and where,
beneath the knife whose fall seemed certain, he criticised consecrated
dogmas. With this record Paine spoke that day to men who feared to face
the honest sentiment of the harried peasantry. Some of the members had
indeed been terrorized, but a majority shared the disgrace of the old
Convention. They were jeered at on the streets. The heart of France was
throbbing again, and what would become of these "Conventionnels," when
their assembly should die in giving birth to a government? They must
from potentates become pariahs. Their aim now was to prolong their
political existence. The constitutional narrowing of the suffrage was
in anticipation of the decree presently appended, that two thirds of the
new legislature should be chosen from the Convention. Paine's speech was
delivered against a foregone conclusion. This was his last appearance
in the Convention. Out of it he naturally dropped when it ended (October
26, 1795), with the organization of the Directory. Being an American he
would not accept candidature in a foreign government.




CHAPTER X. THE SILENCE OF WASHINGTON

Monroe, in a letter of September 15th to his relative, Judge Joseph
Jones, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, after speaking of the Judge's son
and his tutor at St. Germain, adds:

"As well on his account as that of our child, who is likewise at St.
Germain, we had taken rooms there, with the intention of occupying for a
month or two in the course of the autumn, but fear it will not be in our
power to do so, on account of the ill-health of Mr. Paine, who has lived
in my house for about ten months past. He was upon my arrival confined
in the Luxembourg, and released on my application; after which, being
ill, he has remained with me. For some time the prospect of his recovery
was good; his malady being an abscess in his side, the consequence of a
severe fever in the Luxembourg. Latterly his symptoms have become worse,
and the prospect now is that he will not be able to hold out more than a
month or two at the furthest. I shall certainly pay the utmost attention
to this gentleman, as he is one of those whose merits in our Revolution
were most distinguished."*

     * I am indebted to Mrs. Gouverneur, of Washington, for this
     letter, which is among the invaluable papers of her
     ancestor, President Monroe, which surely should be secured
     for our national archives.

Paine's speech in the Convention told sadly on his health. Again he had
to face death. As when, in 1793, the guillotine rising over him, he had
set about writing his last bequest, the "Age of Reason," he now devoted
himself to its completion. The manuscript of the second part, begun in
prison, had been in the printer's hands some time before Monroe wrote
of his approaching end. When the book appeared, he was so low that his
death was again reported.

So far as France was concerned, there was light about his eventide.
"Almost as suddenly," so he wrote, "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." This
may now seem morbid optimism, but it was shared by the merry youth, and
the pretty dames, whose craped arms did not prevent their sandalled feet
and Greek-draped forms from dancing in their transient Golden Age. Of
all this, we may be sure, the invalid hears many a beguiling story from
Madame Monroe.

But there is a grief in his heart more cruel than death. The months have
come and gone,--more than eighteen,--since Paine was cast into prison,
but as yet no word of kindness or inquiry had come from Washington.
Early in the year, on the President's sixty-third birthday, Paine had
written him a letter of sorrowful and bitter reproach, which Monroe
persuaded him not to send, probably because of its censures on the
ministerial failures of Morris, and "the pusillanimous conduct of Jay
in England." It now seems a pity that Monroe did not encourage Paine to
send Washington, in substance, the personal part of his letter, which
was in the following terms:

"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 danger 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 a 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 anything more
than this, you had sufficient ground to have taken some interest for my
safety. Every motive arising from recollection ought to have suggested
to you the consistency 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 honor or to your's that I tell
the story?

"I do not hesitate to say that you have not served America with more
fidelity, or greater zeal, or greater disinterestedness, than myself,
and perhaps with not better effect After the revolution of America had
been established, you rested at home to partake its advantages, and I
ventured into new scenes of difficulty to extend the principles which
that revolution had produced. 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 everything 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 everything 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 of the despotic faction
that imprisoned me in France (though the pretence was that I was a
foreigner); and those that have been silent towards me in America,
appear to me to have acted from the same motive. It is impossible for me
to discover any other."

Unwilling as all are to admit anything disparaging to Washington,
justice requires the fair consideration of Paine's complaint There were
in his hands many letters proving Washington's friendship, and his great
appreciation of Paine's services. Paine had certainly done nothing to
forfeit his esteem. The "Age of Reason" had not appeared in America
early enough to affect the matter, even should we suppose it offensive
to a deist like Washington. The dry approval, forwarded by the Secretary
of State, of Monroe's reclamation of Paine, enhanced the grievance. It
admitted Paine's American citizenship. It was not then an old friend
unhappily beyond his help, but a fellow-citizen whom he could legally
protect, whom the President had left to languish in prison, and in
hourly danger of death. During six months he saw no visitor, he heard no
word, from the country for which he had fought. To Paine it could appear
only as a sort of murder. And, although he kept back the letter, at his
friend's desire, he felt that it might yet turn out to be murder. Even
so it seemed, six months later, when the effects of his imprisonment,
combined with his grief at Washington's continued silence (surely Monroe
must have written on the subject), brought him to death's door. One must
bear in mind also the disgrace, the humiliation of it, for a man who had
been reverenced as a founder of the American Republic, and its apostle
in France. This, indeed, had made his last three months in prison, after
there had been ample time to hear from Washington, heavier than all the
others. After the fall of Robespierre the prisons were rapidly
emptied--from twenty to forty liberations daily,--the one man apparently
forgotten being he who wrote, "in the times that tried men's souls," the
words that Washington ordered to be read to his dispirited soldiers.

And now death approaches. If there can be any explanation of this long
neglect and silence, knowledge of it would soothe the author's dying
pillow; and though there be little probability that he can hold out so
long, a letter (September 20th) is sent to Washington, under cover to
Franklin Bache.

"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
your private ones, if you had chosen to give them) as contained any
instructions or directions either to Mr. Monroe, 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 make 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 in which it is understood here,
and will be understood in America, unless you will 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 I may remove
this suspicion. In the Second Part of the "Age of Reason," I have given
a memorandum from the handwriting of Robespierre, in which he proposed a
decree of accusation against me 'for the interest 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 inquiring 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."

This is a bitter letter, but it is still more a sorrowful one. In view
of what Washington had written of Paine's services, and for the sake
of twelve years of _camaraderie_, Washington should have overlooked the
sharpness of a deeply wronged and dying friend, and written to him what
his Minister in France had reported. My reader already knows, what the
sufferer knew not, that a part of Paine's grievance against Washington
was unfounded. Washington could not know that the only charge against
Paine was one trumped up by his own Minister in France. Had he
considered the letter just quoted, he must have perceived that Paine was
laboring under an error in supposing that no inquiry had been made into
his case. There are facts antecedent to the letter showing that his
complaint had a real basis. For instance, in a letter to Monroe
(July 30th), President's interest was expressed in two other American
prisoners in France--Archibald Hunter and Shubael Allen,--but no word
was said of Paine. There was certainly a change in Washington towards
Paine, and the following may have been its causes.

1. Paine had introduced Genêt to Morris, and probably to public men in
America. Genêt had put an affront on Morris, and taken over a demand for
his recall, with which Morris connected Paine. In a letter to Washington
(private) Morris falsely insinuated that Paine had incited the actions
of Genêt which had vexed the President.

2. Morris, perhaps in fear that Jefferson, influenced by Americans in
Paris, might appoint Paine to his place, had written to Robert Morris in
Philadelphia slanders of Paine, describing him as a sot and an object of
contempt. This he knew would reach Washington without passing under the
eye of Paine's friend, Jefferson.

3. In a private letter Morris related that Paine had visited him with
Colonel Oswald, and treated him insolently. Washington particularly
disliked Oswald, an American journalist actively opposing his
administration.

4. Morris had described Paine as intriguing against him, both in Europe
and America, thus impeding his mission, to which the President attached
great importance.

5. The President had set his heart on bribing England with a favorable
treaty of commerce to give up its six military posts in America. The
most obnoxious man in the world to England was Paine. Any interference
in Paine s behalf would not only have offended England, but appeared as
a sort of repudiation of Morris' intimacy with the English court.
The (alleged) reclamation of Paine by Morris had been kept secret by
Washington even from friends so intimate (at the time) as Madison, who
writes of it as having never been done. So carefully was avoided the
publication of anything that might vex England.

6. Morris had admonished the Secretary of State that if Paine's
imprisonment were much noticed it might endanger his life. So conscience
was free to jump with policy.

What else Morris may have conveyed to Washington against Paine can be
only matter for conjecture; but what he was capable of saying about
those he wished to injure may be gathered from various letters of his.
In one (December 19, 1795) he tells Washington that he had heard from a
trusted informant that his Minister, Monroe, had told various Frenchmen
that "he had no doubt but that, if they would do what was proper here,
he and his friends would turn out Washington."

Liability to imposition is the weakness of strong natures. Many an Iago
of canine cleverness has made that discovery. But, however Washington's
mind may have been poisoned towards Paine, it seems unaccountable that,
after receiving the letter of September 20th, he did not mention to
Monroe, or to somebody, his understanding that the prisoner had been
promptly reclaimed. In my first edition it was suggested that the letter
might have been intercepted by Secretary Pickering, Paine's enemy, who
had withheld from Washington important documents in Randolph's case.
Unfortunately my copyist in the State Department sent me only Bache's
endorsement: "Jan. 18,1796. Enclosed to Benj. Franklin Bache, and by him
forwarded immediately upon receipt." But there is also an endorsement by
Washington: "From Mr. Thomas Paine, 20 Sept. 1795." (Addressed outside:
"George Washington, President of the United States.") The President was
no longer visited by his old friends, Madison and others, and they could
not discuss with him the intelligence they were receiving about Paine.
Madison, in a letter to Jefferson (dated at Philadelphia, January 10,
1796), says:

"I have a letter from Thomas Paine which breathes the same sentiments,
and contains some keen observations on the administration of the
government here. It appears that the neglect to claim him as an American
citizen when confined by Robespierre, or even to interfere in any way
whatever in his favor, has filled him with an indelible rancor against
the President, to whom it appears he has written on the subject
[September 20, 1795]. His letter to me is in the style of a dying one,
and we hear that he is since dead of the abscess in his side, brought on
by his imprisonment. His letter desires that he may be remembered to
you."

Whatever the explanation may be, no answer came from Washington. After
waiting a year Paine employed his returning strength in embodying the
letters of February 22d and September 20th, with large additions, in a
printed _Letter to George Washington_. The story of his imprisonment
and death sentence here for the first time really reached the
American people. His personal case is made preliminary to an attack on
Washington's whole career. The most formidable part of the pamphlet was
the publication of Washington's letter to the Committee of Public
Safety, which, departing from its rule of secrecy (in anger at the
British Treaty), thus delivered a blow not easily answerable. The
President's letter was effusive, about the "alliance," "closer bonds of
friendship," and so forth,--phrases which, just after the virtual
transfer of our alliance to the enemy of France, smacked of perfidy.
Paine attacks the treaty, which is declared to have put American
commerce under foreign dominion. "The sea is not free to her. Her right
to navigate is reduced to the right of escaping; that is, until some
ship of England or France stops her vessels and carries them into port."
The ministerial misconduct of Gouverneur Morris, and his neglect of
American interests, are exposed in a sharp paragraph. Washington's
military mistakes are relentlessly raked up, with some that he did not
commit, and the credit given him for victories won by others heavily
discounted.




{1796}

That Washington smarted under this pamphlet appears by a reference to it
in a letter to David Stuart, January 8, 1797. Speaking of himself in the
third person, he says: "Although he is soon to become a private citizen,
his opinions are to be knocked down, and his character reduced 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
[Philadelphia], and disseminated with great industry." In the same
letter he says: "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."*
Cobbett's answer to Paine's personal grievance was really an arraignment
of the President. He undertakes to prove that the French Convention was
a real government, and that by membership in it Paine had forfeited
his American citizenship. But Monroe had formally claimed Paine as an
American citizen, and the President had officially endorsed that claim.
That this approval was unknown to Cobbett is a remarkable fact, showing
that even such small and tardy action in Paine's favor was kept secret
from the President's new British and Federalist allies.

     * "Porcupine's Political Censor, for December, 1796.    A
     Letter to the Infamous Tom. Paine, in answer to his letter
     to General Washington."

For the rest it is a pity that Washington did not specify the "absolute
falsehoods" in Paine's pamphlet, if he meant the phrase to apply to
that. It might assist us in discovering just how the case stood in his
mind. He may have been indignant at the suggestion of his connivance
with Paine's imprisonment; but, as a matter of fact, the President had
been brought by his Minister into the conspiracy which so nearly cost
Paine his life.

On a review of the facts, my own belief is that the heaviest part of
Paine's wrong came indirectly from Great Britain. It was probably one
more instance of Washington's inability to weigh any injustice against
an interest of this country. He ignored compacts of capitulation in the
cases of Burgoyne and Asgill, in the Revolution; and when convinced
that this nation must engage either in war or commercial alliance with
England he virtually broke faith with France.*

     * In a marginal note on Monroe's "View, etc.," found among
     his papers, Washington writes: "Did then the situation of
     our affairs admit of any other alternative than negotiation
     or war?" (Sparks' "Washington," xi., P- 505). Since writing
     my "Life of Randolph," in which the history of the British
     treaty is followed, I found in the French Archives ( États-
     Unis, vol. ii., doc. 12) Minister Fauchet's report of a
     conversation with Secretary Randolph in which he (Randolph)
     said: "What would you have us do? We could not end our
     difficulties with the English but by a war or a friendly
     treaty. We were not prepared for war; it was necessary to
     negotiate." It is now tolerably certain that there was
     "bluff" on the part of the British players, in London and
     Philadelphia, but it won.

To the new alliance he sacrificed his most faithful friends Edmund
Randolph and James Monroe; and to it, mainly, was probably due his
failure to express any interest in England's outlaw, Paine. For this
might gain publicity and offend the government with which Jay was
negotiating. Such was George Washington. Let justice add that he
included himself in the list of patriotic martyrdoms. By sacrificing
France and embracing George III. he lost his old friends, lost the
confidence of his own State, incurred denunciations that, in his own
words, "could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter,
or even to a common pickpocket." So he wrote before Paine's pamphlet
appeared, which, save in the personal matter, added nothing to
the general accusations. It is now forgotten that with one
exception--Johnson--no President ever went out of office so loaded with
odium as Washington. It was the penalty of Paine's power that, of the
thousand reproaches, his alone survived to recoil on his memory when
the issues and the circumstances that explain if they cannot justify
his pamphlet, are forgotten. It is easy for the Washington worshipper
of to-day to condemn Paine's pamphlet, especially as he is under no
necessity of answering it. But could he imagine himself abandoned to
long imprisonment and imminent death by an old friend and comrade, whose
letters of friendship he cherished, that friend avowedly able to protect
him, with no apparent explanation of the neglect but deference to an
enemy against whom they fought as comrades, an unprejudiced reader
would hardly consider Paine's letter unpardonable even where unjust. Its
tremendous indignation is its apology so far as it needs apology. A man
who is stabbed cannot be blamed for crying out. It is only in poetry
that dying Desdemonas exonerate even their deluded slayers. Paine, who
when he wrote these personal charges felt himself dying of an abscess
traceable to Washington's neglect, saw not Iago behind the President.
His private demand for explanation, sent through Bache, was answered
only with cold silence. "I have long since resolved," wrote Washington
to Governor Stone (December 6, 1795), "for the present time at least,
to let my calumniators proceed without any notice being taken of
their invectives by myself, or by any others with my participation or
knowledge." But now, nearly a year later, comes Paine's pamphlet, which
is not made up of invectives, but of statements of fact. If, in this
case, Washington sent, to one friend at least, Cobbett's answer to
Paine, despite its errors which he vaguely mentions, there appears no
good reason why he should not have specified those errors, and Paine's
also. By his silence, even in the confidence of friendship, the truth
which might have come to light was suppressed beyond his grave. For such
silence the best excuse to me imaginable is that, in ignorance of
the part Morris had acted, the President's mind may have been in
bewilderment about the exact facts.

As for Paine's public letter, it was an answer to Washington's
unjustifiable refusal to answer his private one. It was the natural
outcry of an ill and betrayed man to one whom we now know to have been
also betrayed. Its bitterness and wrath measure the greatness of the
love that was wounded. The mutual personal services of Washington and
Paine had continued from the beginning of the American revolution to the
time of Paine's departure for Europe in 1787. Although he recognized, as
Washington himself did, the commander's mistakes Paine had magnified
his successes; his all-powerful pen defended him against loud charges
on account of the retreat to the Delaware, and the failures near
Philadelphia. In those days what "Common Sense" wrote was accepted
as the People's verdict. It is even doubtful whether the proposal to
supersede Washington might not have succeeded but for Paine's fifth
_Crisis_.*

     * "When a party was forming, in the latter end of seventy-
     seven and beginning of seventy-eight, 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 seventy-six 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."--
     Paine's Letter iii to the People of the United States
     (1802).

The personal relations between the two had been even affectionate. We
find Paine consulting him about his projected publications at little
oyster suppers in his own room; and Washington giving him one of his
two overcoats, when Paine's had been stolen. Such incidents imply many
others never made known; but they are represented in a terrible epigram
found among Paine's papers,--"Advice to the statuary who is to execute
the statue of Washington.

     "Take from the mine the coldest, hardest stone,
     It needs no fashion: it is Washington.
     But if you chisel, let the stroke be rude,
     And on his heart engrave--Ingratitude."

Paine never published the lines. Washington being dead, old memories may
have risen to restrain him; and he had learned more of the treacherous
influences around the great man which had poisoned his mind towards
other friends besides himself. For his pamphlet he had no apology to
make. It was a thing inevitable, volcanic, and belongs to the history of
a period prolific in intrigues, of which both Washington and Paine were
victims.




CHAPTER XI. "THE AGE OF REASON"

The reception which the "Age of Reason" met is its sufficient
justification. The chief priests and preachers answered it with personal
abuse and slander, revealing by such fruits the nature of their tree,
and confessing the feebleness of its root, either in reason or human
affection.

Lucian, in his "[--Greek--]" represents the gods as invisibly present
at a debate, in Athens, on their existence. Damis, who argues from the
evils of the world that there are no gods, is answered by Timocles, a
theological professor with large salary. The gods feel doleful, as the
argument goes against them, until their champion breaks out against
Damis,--"You blasphemous villain, you! Wretch! Accursed monster!" The
chief of the gods takes courage, and exclaims: "Well done, Timocles!
give him hard words. That is your strong point. Begin, to reason and you
will be dumb as a fish."

So was it in the age when the Twilight of the Gods was brought on by
faith in the Son of Man. Not very different was it when this Son of
Man, dehumanized by despotism, made to wield the thunderbolts of Jove,
reached in turn his inevitable Twilight. The man who pointed out the
now admitted survivals of Paganism in the despotic system then called
Christianity, who said, "the church has set up a religion of pomp and
revenue in the pretended imitation of a person whose life was
humility and poverty," was denounced as a sot and an adulterer. These
accusations, proved in this work unquestionably false, have accumulated
for generations, so that a mountain of prejudice must be tunnelled
before any reader can approach the "Age of Reason" as the work of an
honest and devout mind.

It is only to irrelevant personalities that allusion is here made. Paine
was vehement in his arraignment of Church and Priesthood, and it was
fair enough for them to strike back with animadversions on Deism and
Infidelity. But it was no answer to an argument against the antiquity of
Genesis to call Paine a drunkard, had it been true. This kind of reply
was heard chiefly in America. In England it was easy for Paine's chief
antagonist, the Bishop of Llandaff, to rebuke Paine's strong language,
when his lordship could sit serenely in the House of Peers with
knowledge that his opponent was answered with handcuffs for every
Englishman who sold his book. But in America, slander had to take the
place of handcuffs.

Paine is at times too harsh and militant. But in no case does he attack
any person's character. Nor is there anything in his language, wherever
objectionable, which I have heard censured when uttered on the side of
orthodoxy. It is easily forgotten that Luther desired the execution of
a rationalist, and that Calvin did burn a Socinian. The furious language
of Protestants against Rome, and of Presbyterians against the English
Church, is considered even heroic, like the invective ascribed to
Christ, "Generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of
hell!" Although vehement language grates on the ear of an age that
understands the real forces of evolution, the historic sense remembers
that moral revolutions have been made with words hard as cannon-balls.
It was only when soft phrases about the evil of slavery, which
"would pass away in God's good time," made way for the abolitionist
denunciation of the Constitution as "an agreement with hell," that the
fortress began to fall. In other words, reforms are wrought by those who
are in earnest.* It is difficult in our time to place one's self in
the situation of a heretic of Paine's time. Darwin, who is buried
in Westminster, remembered the imprisonment of some educated men for
opinions far less heretical than his own. George III. egoistic insanity
appears (1892) to have been inherited by an imperial descendant, and
should Germans be presently punished for their religion, as Paine's
early followers were in England, we shall again hear those words that
are the "half-battles" preceding victories.

     * "In writing upon this, as upon every other subject, I
     speak a language plain and intelligible. I deal not in hints
     and intimations. I have several reasons for this: first,
     that I may be clearly understood; secondly, that it may be
     seen I am in earnest; and thirdly, because it is an affront
     to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance."--Paine's
     reply to Bishop Watson.

There is even greater difficulty in the appreciation by one generation
of the inner sense of the language of a past one. The common notion
that Paines "Age of Reason" abounds in "vulgarity" is due to the lack
of literary culture in those--probably few--who have derived that
impression from its perusal. It is the fate of all genius potent enough
to survive a century that its language will here and there seem coarse.
The thoughts of Boccaccio, Rabelais, Shakespeare,--whose works are
commonly expurgated,--are so modern that they are not generally granted
the allowances conceded to writers whose ideas are as antiquated as
their words. Only the instructed minds can set their classic nudities in
the historic perspective that reveals their innocency and value. Paine's
book has done as much to modify human belief as any ever written. It is
one of the very few religious works of the last century which survives
in unsectarian circulation. It requires a scholarly perception to
recognize in its occasional expressions, by some called "coarse," the
simple Saxon of Nor-folkshire. Similar expressions abound in pious
books of the time; they are not censured, because they are not read. His
refined contemporary antagonists--Dr. Watson and Dr. Priestley--found no
fault with Paine's words, though the former twice accuses his assertions
as "indecent." In both cases, however, Paine is pointing out some
biblical triviality or indecency--or what he conceived such. I have
before me original editions of both Parts of the "Age of Reason" printed
from Paine's manuscripts. Part First may be read by the most prudish
parent to a daughter, without an omission. In Part Second six or seven
sentences might be omitted by the parent, where the writer deals,
without the least prurience, with biblical narratives that can hardly be
daintily touched. Paine would have been astounded at the suggestion of
any impropriety in his expressions. He passes over four-fifths of the
passages in the Bible whose grossness he might have cited in support of
his objection to its immorality. "Obscenity," he says, "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. The
story [of the miraculous conception] is, upon the face of it, the same
kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda."

     * "An Apology for the Bible.    By R. Llandaff" [Dr.
     Richard Watson].

Another fostered prejudice supposes "The Age of Reason" largely made up
of scoffs. The Bishop of Llandaff, in his reply to Paine, was impressed
by the elevated Theism of the work, to portions of which he ascribed
"a philosophical sublimity." Watson apparently tried to constrain
his ecclesiastical position into English fair play, so that his actual
failures to do so were especially misleading, as many knew Paine only as
represented by this eminent antagonist. For instance, the Bishop says,
"Moses you term a coxcomb, etc." But Paine, commenting on Numbers xii.,
3, "Moses was very meek, above all men," had argued that Moses could
not have written the book, for "If Moses said this of himself he was a
coxcomb." Again the Bishop says Paine terms Paul "a fool." But Paine had
quoted from Paul, "'Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened
except it die.' To which [he says] one might reply in his own language,
and say, 'Thou fool, Paul, that which thou sowest is not quickened
except it die not.'"

No intellect that knows the law of literature, that deep answers only
unto deep, can suppose that the effect of Paine's "Age of Reason," on
which book the thirty years' war for religious freedom in England was
won, after many martyrdoms, came from a scoffing or scurrilous work. It
is never Paine's object to raise a laugh; if he does so it is because
of the miserable baldness of the dogmas, and the ignorant literalism,
consecrated in the popular mind of his time. Through page after page he
peruses the Heavens, to him silently declaring the glory of God, and it
is not laughter but awe when he asks, "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!"

In another work Paine finds allegorical truth in the legend of Eden. The
comparative mythlogists of to-day, with many sacred books of the East,
can find mystical meaning and beauty in many legends of the Bible
wherein Paine could see none, but it is because of their liberation by
the rebels of last century from bondage to the pettiness of literalism.
Paine sometimes exposes an absurdity with a taste easily questionable by
a generation not required like his own to take such things under foot
of the letter. But his spirit is never flippant, and the sentences that
might so seem to a casual reader are such as Browning defended in his
"Christmas Eve."

                       "If any blames me,
     Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
     The topics I dwell on, were unlawful--
     Or, worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
     On the bounds of the Holy and the awful,
     I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
     And refer myself to Thee, instead of him;
     Who head and heart alike discernest,
     Looking below light speech we utter,
     When the frothy spume and frequent sputter
     Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!"

Even Dr. James Martineau, whose reverential spirit no one can question,
once raised a smile in his audience, of which the present writer was
one, by saying that the account of the temptation of Jesus, if true,
must have been reported by himself, or "by the only other party
present." Any allusion to the devil in our day excites a smile. But it
was not so in Paine's day, when many crossed themselves while speaking
of this dark prince. Paine has "too much respect for the moral character
of Christ" to suppose that he told the story of the devil showing 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?" This is not flippancy; it was by following the inkstand
Luther threw at the devil with equally vigorous humor that the grotesque
figure was eliminated, leaving the reader of to-day free to appreciate
the profound significance of the Temptation.

How free Paine is from any disposition to play to pit or gallery, any
more than to dress circle, is shown in his treatment of the Book of
Jonah. It is not easy to tell the story without exciting laughter;
indeed the proverbial phrases for exaggeration,--"a whale," a "fish
story,"--probably came from Jonah. Paine's smile is slight. He says,
"it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had
swallowed the whale"; but this is merely in passing to an argument that
miracles, in the early world, would hardly have represented Divinity.
Had the fish cast up Jonah in the streets of Nineveh the people would
probably have been affrighted, and fancied them both devils. But in the
second Part of the work there is a very impressive treatment of the Book
of Jonah. This too is introduced with a passing smile--"if credulity
could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything." But it
is precisely to this supposed "scoffer" that we owe the first
interpretation of the profound and pathetic significance of the book,
lost sight of in controversies about its miracle. Paine anticipates Baur
in pronouncing it a poetical work of Gentile origin. He finds in it the
same lesson against intolerance contained in the story of the reproof of
Abraham for piously driving the suffering fire-worshipper from his tent.
(This story is told by the Persian Saadi, who also refers to Jonah: "And
now the whale swallowed Jonah: the sun set.") In the prophet mourning
for his withered gourd, while desiring the destruction of a city, Paine
finds a satire; in the divine rebuke he hears the voice of a true
God, and one very different from the deity to whom the Jews ascribed
massacres. The same critical acumen is shown in his treatment of the
Book of Job, which he believes to be also of Gentile origin, and much
admires.

The large Paine Mythology cleared aside, he who would learn the
truth about this religious teacher will find in his way a misleading
literature of uncritical eulogies. Indeed the pious prejudices against
Paine have largely disappeared, as one may see by comparing the earlier
with the later notices of him in religious encyclopaedias. But though he
is no longer placed in an infernal triad as in the old hymn--"The world,
the devil, and Tom Paine"--and his political services are now candidly
recognized, he is still regarded as the propagandist of a bald
illiterate deism. This, which is absurdly unhistorical, Paine having
been dealt with by eminent critics of his time as an influence among the
educated, is a sequel to his long persecution. For he was relegated to
the guardianship of an unlearned and undiscriminating radicalism, little
able to appreciate the niceties of his definitions, and was gilded by
its defensive commonplaces into a figurehead. Paine therefore has now
to be saved from his friends more perhaps than from his enemies. It has
been shown on a former page that his governmental theories were of a
type peculiar in his time. Though such writers as Spencer, Frederic
Harrison, Bagehot, and Dicey have familiarized us with his ideas, few of
them have the historic perception which enables Sir George Trevelyan
to recognize Paine's connection with them. It must now be added that
Paine's religion was of a still more peculiar type. He cannot be classed
with deists of the past or theists of the present. Instead of being
the mere iconoclast, the militant assailant of Christian beliefs, the
"infidel" of pious slang, which even men who should know better suppose,
he was an exact thinker, a slow and careful writer, and his religious
ideas, developed through long years, require and repay study.

The dedication of "The Age of Reason" places the work under the
"protection" of its authors fellow-citizens of the United States. To-day
the trust comes to many who really are such as Paine supposed all of his
countrymen to be,--just and independent lovers of truth and right.
We shall see that his trust was not left altogether unfulfilled by
a multitude of his contemporaries, though they did not venture to do
justice to the man. Paine had idealized his countrymen, looking from
his prison across three thousand miles. But, to that vista of space, a
century of time had to be added before the book which fanatical Couthon
suppressed, and the man whom murderous Barrère sentenced to death, could
both be fairly judged by educated America.

"The Age of Reason" is in two Parts, published in successive years.
These divisions are interesting as memorials of the circumstances
under which they were written and published,--in both cases with death
evidently at hand. But taking the two Parts as one work, there appears
to my own mind a more real division: a part written by Paine's century,
and another originating from himself. Each of these has an important and
traceable evolution.

I. The first of these divisions may be considered, fundementally, as
a continuation of the old revolution against arbitrary authority.
Carlyle's humor covers a profound insight when he remarks that Paine,
having freed America with his "Common Sense," was resolved to free this
whole world, and perhaps the other! All the authorities were and are
interdependent. "If thou release this man thou art not Cæsar's friend,"
cried the Priest to Pilate. The proconsul must face the fact that in
Judea Cæsarism rests on the same foundation with Jahvism. Authority
leans on authority; none can stand alone. It is still a question whether
political revolutions cause or are caused by religious revolutions.
Buckle maintained that the French Revolution was chiefly due to the
previous overthrow of spiritual authority; Rocquain, that the political
_régime_ was shaken before the philosophers arose.* In England religious
changes seem to have usually followed those of a political character,
not only in order of time, but in character. In beginning the "Age of
Reason," Paine says:

     * Felix Rocquain's fine work,  L'Esprit révolutionnaire
     avant la Révolution," though not speculative, illustrates
     the practical nature of revolution,--an uncivilized and
     often retrograde form of evolution.

"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 priestcraft
would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and
unadulterated belief of one God and no more."

The historical continuity of the critical negations of Paine with the
past is represented in his title. The Revolution of 1688,--the secular
arm transferring the throne from one family to another,--brought the
monarchical superstition into doubt; straightway the Christian authority
was shaken.

One hundred years before Paine's book, appeared Charles Blount's
"Oracles of Reason." Macaulay describes Blount as the head of a small
school of "infidels," troubled with a desire to make converts; his
delight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existed before
the sun was made, and where Eve found thread to stitch her fig-leaves.
But to this same Blount, Macaulay is constrained to attribute
emancipation of the press in England.

Blount's title was taken up in America by Ethan Allen, leader of the
"Green Mountain Boys." Allen's "Oracles of Reason" is forgotten; he is
remembered by his demand (1775) for the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga,
"in the name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress." The last five
words of this famous demand would have been a better title for the
book. It introduces the nation to a Jehovah qualified by the
Continental Congress. Ethan Allen's deity is no longer a King of kings:
arbitrariness has disappeared; men are summoned to belief in a governor
administering laws inherent in the constitution of a universe co-eternal
with himself, and with which he is interdependent. His administration
is not for any divine glory, but, in anticipation of our constitutional
preamble, to "promote the general welfare." The old Puritan alteration
in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy Commonwealth come!" would in Allen's church
have been "Thy Republic come!" That is, had he admitted prayer, which
to an Executive is of course out of place. It must not, however, be
supposed that Ethan Allen is conscious that his system is inspired
by the Revolution. His book is a calm, philosophical analysis of New
England theology and metaphysics; an attempt to clear away the ancient
biblical science and set Newtonian science in its place; to found what
he conceives "Natural Religion."

In editing his "Account of Arnold's Campaign in Quebec," John Joseph
Henry says in a footnote that Paine borrowed from Allen. But the aged
man was, in his horror of Paine's religion, betrayed by his memory. The
only connection between the books runs above the consciousness of either
writer. There was necessarily some resemblance between negations dealing
with the same narratives, but a careful comparison of the books leaves
me doubtful whether Paine ever read Allen. His title may have been
suggested by Blount, whose "Oracles of Reason" was in the library of
his assistant at Bor-dentown, John Hall. The works are distinct in aim,
products of different religious climes. Allen is occupied mainly with
the metaphysical, Paine with quite other, aspects of their common
subject. There is indeed a conscientious originality in the freethinkers
who successively availed themselves of the era of liberty secured by
Blount. Collins, Bolingbroke, Hume, Toland, Chubb, Woolston, Tindal,
Middleton, Annet, Gibbon,--each made an examination for himself, and
represents a distinct chapter in the religious history of England.
Annet's "Free Inquirer," aimed at enlightenment of the lower classes,
proved that free thought was tolerated only as an aristocratic
privilege; the author was pilloried, just thirty years before the
cheapening of the "Rights of Man" led to Paine's prosecution. Probably
Morgan did more than any of the deists to prepare English ground for
Paine's sowing, by severely criticising the Bible by a standard
of civilized ethics, so far as ethics were civilized in the early
eighteenth century. But none of these writers touched the deep chord of
religious feeling in, the people. The English-speaking people were timid
about venturing too much on questions which divided the learned, and
were content to express their protest against the worldliness of the
Church and faithlessness to the lowly Saviour, by following pietists and
enthusiasts. The learned clergy, generally of the wealthy classes, were
largely deistical, but conservative. They gradually perceived that the
political and the theological authority rested on the same foundation.
So between the deists and the Christians there was, as Leslie Stephen
says, a "comfortable compromise, which held together till Wesley from
one side, and Thomas Paine from another, forced more serious thoughts on
the age."*

     * "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century."

While "The Age of Reason" is thus, in one aspect, the product of its
time, the renewal of an old siege--begun far back indeed as Celsus,--its
intellectual originality is none the less remarkable. Paine is
more complete master of the comparative method than Tindal in his
"Christianity as old as the Creation." In his studies of "Christian
Mythology" (his phrase), one is surprised by anticipations of Baur
and Strauss. These are all the more striking by reason of his
homely illustrations. Thus, in discussing the liabilities of ancient
manuscripts to manipulation, he mentions in his second Part that in the
first, printed less than two years before, there was already a sentence
he never wrote; and contrasts this with the book of nature wherein
no blade of grass can be imitated or altered.* He distinguishes the
historical Jesus from the mythical Christ with nicety, though none had
previously done this. He is more discriminating than the early deists
in his explanations of the scriptural marvels which he discredits. There
was not the invariable alternative of imposture with which the orthodoxy
of his time had been accustomed to deal. He does indeed suspect Moses
with his rod of conjuring, and thinks no better of those who pretended
knowledge of future events; but the incredible narratives are
traditions, fables, and occasionally "downright lies."

     * The sentence imported into Paine's Part First is: "The
     book of Luke was carried by one voice only." I find the
     words added as a footnote in the Philadelphia edition, 1794,
     p. 33. While Paine in Paris was utilizing the ascent of the
     footnote to his text, Dr. Priestley in Pennsylvania was
     using it to show Paine's untrustworthiness. ("Letters to a
     Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 73.) But it would appear,
     though neither discovered it, that Paine's critic was the
     real offender. In quoting the page, before answering it,
     Priestley incorporated in the text the footnote of an
     American editor. Priestley could not of course imagine such
     editorial folly, but all the same the reader may here see
     the myth-insect already building the Paine Mythology.

"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 wherever we can find a charitable
reason for a thing of this kind we ought not to indulge a severe one."
Paine's use of the word "lies" in this connection is an archaism.
Carlyle told me that his father always spoke of such tales as "The
Arabian Nights" as "downright lies"; by which he no doubt meant fables
without any indication of being such, and without any moral. Elsewhere
Paine uses "lie" as synonymous with "fabulous"; when he means by the
word what it would now imply, "wilful" is prefixed. In the Gospels he
finds "inventions" of Christian Mythologists--tales founded on
vague rumors, relics of primitive works of imagination mistaken for
history,--fathered upon disciples who did not write them.

His treatment of the narrative of Christ's resurrection may be selected
as an example of his method. He rejects Paul's testimony, and his five
hundred witnesses to Christ's reappearance, because the evidence did not
convince Paul himself, until he was struck by lightning, or otherwise
converted. He finds disagreements in the narratives of the gospels,
concerning the resurrection, which, while proving there was no concerted
imposture, show that the accounts were not written by witnesses of the
events; for in this case they would agree more nearly. He finds in the
narratives of Christ's reappearances,--"suddenly coming in and going out
when doors are shut, vanishing out of sight and appearing again,"--and
the lack of details, as to his dress, etc., the familiar signs of a
ghost-story, which is apt to be told in different ways. "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
the 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 further, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start
a ghost, and credulity fills up its life and assigns the cause of its
appearance." The moral and religious importance of the resurrection
would thus be an afterthought. The secrecy and privacy of the alleged
appearances of Christ after death are, he remarks, repugnant to the
supposed end of convincing the world.*

     * In 1778 Lessing set forth his "New Hypothesis of the
     Evangelists," that they had independently built on a basis
     derived from some earlier Gospel of the Hebrews,--a theory
     now confirmed by the recovered fragments of that lost
     Memoir, collected by Dr. Nicholson of the Bodleian Library.
     It is tolerably certain that Paine was unacquainted with
     Lessing's work, when he became convinced, by variations in
     the accounts of the resurrection, that some earlier
     narrative "became afterwards the foundation of the four
     books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,"--these
     being, traditionally eye-witnesses.

Paine admits the power of the deity to make a revelation. He therefore
deals with each of the more notable miracles on its own evidence,
adhering to his plan of bringing the Bible to judge the Bible. Such an
investigation, written with lucid style and quaint illustration, without
one timid or uncandid sentence, coming from a man whose services and
sacrifices for humanity were great, could not have failed to give the
"Age of Reason" long life, even had these been its only qualities. Four
years before the book appeared, Burke said in Parliament: "Who, born
within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and
Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and the whole race who call
themselves freethinkers?" Paine was, in one sense, of this intellectual
pedigree; and had his book been only a digest and expansion of previous
negative criticisms, and a more thorough restatement of theism, these
could have given it but a somewhat longer life; the "Age of Reason" must
have swelled Burke's list of forgotten freethinking books. But there was
an immortal soul in Paine's book. It is to the consideration of this its
unique life, which has defied the darts of criticism for a century, and
survived its own faults and limitations, that we now turn.

II. Paine's book is the uprising of the human heart against the
Religion of Inhumanity.

This assertion may be met with a chorus of denials that there was, or
is, in Christendom any Religion of Inhumanity. And, if Thomas Paine is
enjoying the existence for which he hoped, no heavenly anthem would
be such music in his ears as a chorus of stormiest denials from earth
reporting that the Religion of Inhumanity is so extinct as to be
incredible. Nevertheless, the Religion of Inhumanity did exist, and
it defended against Paine a god of battles, of pomp, of wrath; an
instigator of race hatreds and exterminations; an establisher of
slavery; a commander of massacres in punishment of theological beliefs;
a sender of lying spirits to deceive men, and of destroying angels to
afflict them with plagues; a creator of millions of human beings under
a certainty of their eternal torture by devils and fires of his own
creation. This apotheosis of Inhumanity is here called a religion,
because it managed to survive from the ages of savagery by violence of
superstition, to gain a throne in the Bible by killing off all who did
not accept its authority to the letter, and because it was represented
by actual inhumanities. The great obstruction of Science and
Civilization was that the Bible was quoted in sanction of war, crusades
against alien religions, murders for witchcraft, divine right of
despots, degradation of reason, exaltation of credulity, punishment of
opinion and unbiblical discovery, contempt of human virtues and human
nature, and costly ceremonies before an invisible majesty, which,
exacted from the means of the people, were virtually the offering of
human sacrifices.

There had been murmurs against this consecrated Inhumanity through the
ages, dissentients here and there; but the Revolution began with Paine.
Nor was this accidental. He was just the one man in the world who had
undergone the training necessary for this particular work.

The higher clergy, occupied with the old textual controversy, proudly
instructing Paine in Hebrew or Greek idioms, little realized their
ignorance in the matter now at issue. Their ignorance had been too
carefully educated to even imagine the University in which words are
things, and things the word, and the many graduations passed between
Thetford Quaker meeting and the French Convention. What to scholastics,
for whom humanities meant ancient classics, were the murders and
massacres of primitive tribes, declared to be the word and work of God?
Words, mere words. They never saw these things. But Paine had seen that
war-god at his work. In childhood he had seen the hosts of the Defender
of the Faith as, dripping with the blood of Culloden and Inverness, they
marched through Thetford; in manhood he had seen the desolations wrought
"by the grace of" that deity to the royal invader of America; he
had seen the massacres ascribed to Jahve repeated in France, while
Robespierre and Couthon were establishing worship of an infra-human
deity. By sorrow, poverty, wrong, through long years, amid revolutions
and death-agonies, the stay-maker's needle had been forged into a pen of
lightning. No Oxonian conductor could avert that stroke, which was
not at mere irrationalities, but at a huge idol worshipped with human
sacrifices. The creation of the heart of Paine, historically traceable,
is so wonderful, its outcome seems so supernatural, that in earlier ages
he might have been invested with fable, like some Avatar. Of some such
man, no doubt, the Hindu poets dreamed in their picture of young Arguna
(in the _Bhagavatgita_). The warrior, borne to the battlefield in his
chariot, finds arrayed against him his kinsmen, friends, preceptors.
He bids his charioteer pause; he cannot fight those he loves. His
charioteer turns: 't is the radiant face of divine Chrishna, his
Saviour! Even He has led him to this grievous contention with kinsmen,
and those to whose welfare he was devoted. Chrishna instructs his
disciple that the war is an illusion; it is the conflict by which,
from age to age, the divine life in the world is preserved. "This
imperishable devotion I declared to the sun, the sun delivered it to
Manu, Manu to Ikshâku; handed down from one to another it was studied by
the royal sages. In the lapse of time that devotion was lost. It is even
the same discipline which I this day communicate to thee, for thou
art my servant and my friend. Both thou and I have passed through many
births. Mine are known to me; thou knowest not of thine. I am made
evident by my own power: as often as there is a decline of virtue, and
an insurrection of wrong and injustice in the world, I appear."

Paine could not indeed know his former births; and, indeed, each former
self of his--Wycliffe, Fox, Roger Williams--was sectarianized beyond
recognition. He could hardly see kinsmen in the Unitarians, who were
especially eager to disown the heretic affiliated on them by opponents;
nor in the Wesleyans, though in him was the blood of their apostle, who
declared salvation a present life, free to all. In a profounder sense,
Paine was George Fox. Here was George Fox disowned, freed from his
accidents, naturalized in the earth and humanized in the world of men.
Paine is explicable only by the intensity of his Quakerism, consuming
its own traditions as once the church's ceremonies and sacraments. On
him, in Thetford meeting-house, rolled the burden of that Light that
enlighteneth every man, effacing distinctions of rank, race, sex, making
all equal, clearing away privilege, whether of priest or mediator,
subjecting all scriptures to its immediate illumination.

This faith was a fearful heritage to carry, even in childhood, away from
the Quaker environment which, by mixture with modifying "survivals," in
habit and doctrine, cooled the fiery gospel for the average tongue.
The intermarriage of Paine's father with a family in the English Church
brought the precocious boy's Light into early conflict with his kindred,
his little lamp being still fed in the meeting-house. A child brought up
without respect for the conventional symbols of religion, or even with
pious antipathy to them, is as if born with only one spiritual skin; he
will bleed at a touch.

"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 remember 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 in 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
that kind of thoughts that had anything 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 at this moment; and
I moreover believe that any system of religion that has anything in it
which shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."

The child took his misgivings out into the garden; he would not by a
denial shock his aunt Cocke's faith as his own had been shocked. For
many years he remained silent in his inner garden, nor ever was drawn
out of it until he found the abstract dogma of the death of God's Son an
altar for sacrificing men, whom he reverenced as all God's sons. What he
used to preach at Dover and Sandwich cannot now be known. His ignorance
of Greek and Latin, the scholastic "humanities," had prevented his
becoming a clergyman, and introduced him to humanities of another kind.
His mission was then among the poor and ignorant.*

     * "Old John Berry, the late Col. Hay's servant, told me he
     knew Paine very well when he was at Dover--had heard him
     preach there--thought him a staymaker by trade."--W. Weedon,
     of Glynde, quoted in Notes and Queries (London), December
     29, 1866.

Sixteen years later he is in Philadelphia, attending the English Church,
in which he had been confirmed. There were many deists in that Church,
whose laws then as now were sufficiently liberal to include them. In his
"Common Sense" (published January 10, 1776) Paine used the reproof of
Israel (I. Samuel) for desiring a King. John Adams, a Unitarian and
monarchist, asked him if he really believed in the inspiration of the
Old Testament. Paine said he did not, and intended at a later period to
publish his opinions on the subject. There was nothing inconsistent in
Paine's believing that a passage confirmed by his own Light was a
divine direction, though contained in a book whose alleged inspiration
throughout he did not accept. Such was the Quaker principle. Before
that, soon after his arrival in the country, when he found African
Slavery supported by the Old Testament, Paine had repudiated the
authority of that book; he declares it abolished by "Gospel light,"
which includes man-stealing among the greatest crimes. When, a year
later, on the eve of the Revolution, he writes "Common Sense," he has
another word to say about religion, and it is strictly what the human
need of the hour demands. Whatever his disbeliefs, he could never
sacrifice human welfare to them, any more than he would, suffer dogmas
to sacrifice the same. It would have been a grievous sacrifice of the
great cause of republican independence, consequently, of religious
liberty, had he introduced a theological controversy at the moment
when it was of vital importance that the sects should rise above their
partition-walls and unite for a great common end. The Quakers, deistical
as they were, preserved religiously the separatism once compulsory; and
Paine proved himself the truest Friend among them when he was "moved"
by the Spirit of Humanity, for him at length the Holy Spirit, to utter
(1776) his brave cheer for Catholicity.

"As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all
governments to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know
of no other business which government hath to do therewith. Let a man
throw aside that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle,
which the niggards of all professions are so unwilling to part with, and
he will be at once delivered of his fears on that head. Suspicion is the
companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society. For myself,
I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty
that there should be a diversity of religious opinions amongst us: it
affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. Were we all of
one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter
for probation; and, on this liberal principle, I look on the various
denominations among us to be like children of the same family, differing
only in what is called their Christian names."

There was no pedantry whatever about Paine, this obedient son of
Humanity. He would defend Man against men, against sects and parties;
he would never quarrel about the botanical label of a tree bearing such
fruits as the Declaration of Independence. But no man better knew the
power of words, and that a botanical error may sometimes result in
destructive treatment of the tree. For this reason he censured the
Quakers for opposing the Revolution on the ground that, in the words
of their testimony (1776), "the setting up and putting down kings and
governments is God's peculiar prerogative." Kings, he answers, are not
removed by miracles, but by just such means as the Americans were using.
"Oliver Cromwell thanks you. Charles, then, died not by the hands of
man; and should the present proud imitator of him come to the same
untimely end, the writers and publishers of the Testimony are bound, by
the doctrine it contains, to applaud the fact."

He was then a Christian. In his "Epistle to Quakers" he speaks of the
dispersion of the Jews as "foretold by our Saviour." In his famous first
_Crisis_ he exhorts the Americans not to throw "the burden of the day
upon Providence, but 'show your faith by your works,' that God may bless
you." For in those days there was visible to such eyes as his, as to
anti-slavery eyes in our civil war,

     "A fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel."

The Republic, not American but Human, became Paine's religion. "Divine
Providence intends this country to be the asylum of persecuted
virtue from every quarter of the globe." So he had written before the
Declaration of Independence. In 1778 he finds that there still survives
some obstructive superstition among English churchmen in America about
the connection of Protestant Christianity with the King. In his seventh
_Crisis_(November 21, 1778) he wrote sentences inspired by his new
conception of religion.

"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.... 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.'... 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 on the Religion of Humanity."'

Thus, forty years before Auguste Comte sat, a youth of twenty, at the
feet of Saint Simon, learning the principles now known as "The Religion
of Humanity,"* Thomas Paine had not only minted the name, but with it
the idea of international civilization, in which nations are to treat
each other as gentlemen in private life. National honor was, he said,
confused with "bullying"; but "that which is the best character for an
individual is the best character for a nation." The great and pregnant
idea was, as in the previous instances, occasional. It was a sentence
passed upon the "Defender-of-the-Faith" superstition, which detached
faith from humanity, and had pressed the Indian's tomahawk into the
hands of Jesus.

     *  Mr. Thaddeus B. Wakeman, an eminent representative of the
     "Religion of Humanity," writes me that he has not found this
     phrase in any work earlier than Paine's _Crisis_, vii.

At the close of the American Revolution there appeared little need for
a religious reformation. The people were happy, prosperous, and, there
being no favoritism toward any sect under the new state constitutions,
but perfect equality and freedom, the Religion of Humanity meant
sheathing of controversial swords also. It summoned every man to lend a
hand in repairing the damages of war, and building the new nationality.
Paine therefore set about constructing his iron bridge of thirteen
symbolic ribs, to overleap the ice-floods and quicksands of rivers. His
assistant in this work, at Bordentown, New Jersey, John Hall, gives us
in his journal, glimpses of the religious ignorance and fanaticism of
that region. But Paine showed no aggressive spirit towards them. "My
employer," writes Hall (1786), "has _Common Sense_ enough to disbelieve
most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem
to establish any for himself." In all of his intercourse with Hall (a
Unitarian just from England), and his neighbors, there is no trace
of any disposition to deprive any one of a belief, or to excite any
controversy. Humanity did not demand it, and by that direction he left
the people to their weekly toils and Sunday sermons.

But when (1787) he was in England, Humanity gave another command. It was
obeyed in the eloquent pages on religious liberty and equality in "The
Rights of Man." Burke had alarmed the nation by pointing out that the
Revolution in France had laid its hand on religion. The cry was raised
that religion was in danger. Paine then uttered his impressive paradox:

"Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but the counterfeit
of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes the right of withholding
liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope
armed with fire and faggot, the other is the pope selling or granting
indulgences.... Toleration by the same assumed authority by which it
tolerates a man to pay his worship, presumptuously and blasphemously
sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.... 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 his maker?
Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a
proof that thou believest not as he believeth, and there is no earthly
power can determine between you.... Religion, without regard to names,
as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the divine
object of all adoration, is man bringing to his maker the fruits of his
heart; and though these fruits may differ like the fruits of the earth,
the grateful tribute of every one is accepted."

This, which I condense with reluctance, was the affirmation which the
Religion of Humanity needed in England. But when he came to sit in the
French Convention a new burden rolled upon him. There was Marat with the
Bible always before him, picking out texts that justified his murders;
there were Robespierre and Couthon invoking the God of Nature to
sanction just such massacres as Marat found in his Bible; and there were
crude "atheists" consecrating the ferocities of nature more dangerously
than if they had named them Siva, Typhon, or Satan. Paine had published
the rights of man for men; but here human hearts and minds had been
buried under the superstitions of ages. The great mischief had ensued,
to use his own words, "by the possession of power before they understood
principles: they earned liberty in words but not in fact" Exhumed
suddenly, as if from some Nineveh, resuscitated into semi-conscious
strength, they remembered only the methods of the allied inquisitors and
tyrants they were overthrowing; they knew no justice but vengeance; and
when on crumbled idols they raised forms called "Nature" and "Reason,"
old idols gained life in the new forms. These were the gods which had
but too literally created, by the slow evolutionary force of human
sacrifices, the new revolutionary priesthood. Their massacres could not
be questioned by those who acknowledged the divine hand in the slaughter
of Canaanites.*

     * On August 10, 1793, there was a sort of communion of the
     Convention around the statue of Nature, whose breasts were
     fountains of water. Hérault de Séchelles, at that time
     president, addressed the statue: "Sovereign of the savage
     and of the enlightened nations, O Nature, this great people,
     gathered at the first beam of day before thee, is free! It
     is in thy bosom, it is in thy sacred sources, that it has
     recovered its rights, that it has regenerated itself after
     traversing so many ages of error and servitude: it must
     return to the simplicity of thy ways to rediscover liberty
     and equality. O Nature! receive the expression of the
     eternal attachment of the French people for thy laws; and
     may the teeming waters gushing from thy breasts, may this
     pure beverage which refreshed the first human beings,
     consecrate in this Cup of Fraternity and Equality the vows
     that France makes thee this day,--the most beautiful that
     the sun has illumined since it was suspended in the
     immensity of space." The cup passed around from lip to lip,
     amid fervent ejaculations.    Next year Nature's breasts
     issued Hérault's blood.

The Religion of Humanity again issued its command to its minister. The
"Age of Reason" was written, in its first form, and printed in French.
"Couthon," says Lanthenas, "to whom I sent it, seemed offended with me
for having translated it"* Couthon raged against the priesthood, but
could not tolerate a work which showed vengeance to be atheism, and
compassion--not merely for men, but for animals--true worship of God.

     *  The letter of Lanthenas to Merlin de Thîonville, of which
     the original French is before me, is quoted in an article in
     Scribner, September, 1880, by Hon. E. B. Washbarne (former
     Minister to France); it is reprinted in Remsburg's
     compilation of testimonies: "Thomas Paine, the Apostle of
     Religions and Political Liberty" (1880).    See also p. 135
     of this volume.

On the other hand, Paine's opposition to atheism would appear to have
brought him into danger from another quarter, in which religion could
not be distinguished from priestcraft. In a letter to Samuel Adams Paine
says that he endangered his life by opposing the king's execution, and
"a second time by opposing atheism." Those who denounce the "Age of
Reason" may thus learn that red-handed Couthon, who hewed men to pieces
before his Lord, and those who acknowledged no Lord, agreed with
them. Under these menaces the original work was as I have inferred,
suppressed. But the demand of Humanity was peremptory, and Paine
re-wrote it all, and more. When it appeared he was a prisoner; his
life was in Couthon's hands. He had personally nothing to gain by its
publication--neither wife, child, nor relative to reap benefit by its
sale. It was published as purely for the good of mankind as any work
ever written. Nothing could be more simply true than his declaration,
near the close of life:

"As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an
elevated sense of his own character, and free him from the slavish and
superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary government, so, in my
publications on religious subjects, my endeavors have been directed
to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to
impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, and
mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures;
and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation, in
his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to be the word
of God."

It is misleading at the present day to speak of Paine as an opponent
of Christianity. This would be true were Christianity judged by the
authorized formulas of any church; but nothing now acknowledged as
Christianity by enlightened Christians of any denomination was known
to him. In our time, when the humanizing wave, passing through all
churches, drowns old controversies, floats the dogmas, till it seems
ungenerous to quote creeds and confessions in the presence of our
"orthodox" lovers of man--even "totally depraved" and divinely doomed
man--the theological eighteenth century is inconceivable. Could one
wander from any of our churches, unless of the Christian Pagans or
remote villagers (_pagani_), into those of the last century, he would
find himself moving in a wilderness of cinders, with only the plaintive
song of John and Charles Wesley to break the solitude. If he would hear
recognition of the human Jesus, on whose credit the crowned Christ is
now maintained, he would be sharply told that it were a sin to "know
Christ after the flesh," and must seek such recognition among those
stoned as infidels. Three noble and pathetic tributes to the Man of
Nazareth are audible from the last century--those of Rousseau, Voltaire,
and Paine. From its theologians and its pulpits not one! Should the
tribute of Paine be to-day submitted, without his name, to our most
eminent divines, even to leading American and English Bishops, beside
any theological estimate of Christ from the same century, the Jesus of
Paine would be surely preferred.

Should our cultured Christian of to-day press beyond those sectarian,
miserable controversies of the eighteenth century, known to him now as
cold ashes, into the seventeenth century, he would find himself in a
comparatively embowered land; that is, in England, and in a few oases
in America--like that of Roger Williams in Rhode Island. In England he
would find brain and heart still in harmony, as in Tillotson and South;
still more in Bishop Jeremy Taylor, "Shakespeare of divines." He would
hear this Jeremy reject the notions of original sin and transmitted
guilt, maintain the "liberty of prophesying," and that none should
suffer for conclusions concerning a book so difficult of interpretation
as the Bible. In those unsophisticated years Jesus and the disciples
and the Marys still wore about them the reality gained in miracle-plays.
What Paine need arise where poets wrote the creed, and men knew the
Jesus of whom Thomas Dekker wrote:

                    "The best of men
     That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer;
     A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,
     The first true gentleman that ever breathed."

Dean Swift, whose youth was nourished in that living age, passed into
the era of dismal disputes, where he found the churches "dormitories of
the living as well as of the dead." Some ten years before Paine's birth
the Dean wrote: "Since the union of Divinity and Humanity is the great
Article of our Religion, 't is odd to see some clergymen, in their
writings of Divinity, wholly devoid of Humanity." Men have, he said,
enough religion to hate, but not to love. Had the Dean lived to the
middle of the eighteenth century he might have discovered exceptions
to this holy heartlessness, chiefly among those he had traditionally
feared--the Socinians. These, like the Magdalene, were seeking the lost
humanity of Jesus. He would have sympathized with Wesley, who escaped
from "dormitories of the living" far enough to publish the Life of a
Socinian (Firmin), with the brave apology, "I am sick of opinions, give
me the life." But Socianism, in eagerness to disown its bolder children,
presently lost the heart of Jesus, and when Paine was recovering it the
best of them could not comprehend his separation of the man from the
myth. So came on the desiccated Christianity of which Emerson said,
even among the Unitarians of fifty years ago, "The prayers and even the
dogmas of our church are like the zodiac of Denderah, wholly insulated
from anything now extant in the life and business of the people."
Emerson may have been reading Paine's idea that Christ and the Twelve
were mythically connected with Sun and Zodiac, this speculation being
an indication of their distance from the Jesus he tenderly revered. If
Paine rent the temple-veils of his time, and revealed the stony images
behind them, albeit with rudeness, let it not be supposed that those
forms were akin to the Jesus and the Marys whom skeptical criticism is
re-incarnating, so that they dwell with us. Outside Paine's heart the
Christ of his time was not more like the Jesus of our time than Jupiter
was like the Prometheus he bound on a rock. The English Christ was not
the Son of Man, but a Prince of Dogma, bearing handcuffs for all who
reasoned about him; a potent phantasm that tore honest thinkers
from their families and cast them into outer darkness, because they
circulated the works of Paine, which reminded the clergy that the Jesus
even of their own Bible sentenced those only who ministered not to the
hungry and naked, the sick and in prison. Paine's religious culture was
English. There the brain had retreated to deistic caves, the heart had
gone off to "Salvationism" of the time; the churches were given over
to the formalist and the politician, who carried divine sanction to the
repetition of biblical oppressions and massacres by Burke and Pitt. And
in all the world there had not been one to cry _Sursum Corda_ against
the consecrated tyranny until that throb of Paine's heart which
brought on it the vulture. But to-day, were we not swayed by names and
prejudices, it would bring on that prophet of the divine humanity, even
the Christian dove.

Soon after the appearance of Part First of the "Age of Reason" it
was expurgated of its negative criticisms, probably by some English
Unitarians, and published as a sermon, with text from Job xi., 7: "Canst
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to
perfection?" It was printed anonymously; and were its sixteen pages
read in any orthodox church to-day it would be regarded as admirable.
It might be criticised by left wings as somewhat old-fashioned in the
warmth of its theism. It is fortunate that Paine's name was not appended
to this doubtful use of his work, for it would have been a serious
misrepresentation.*

     * "A Lecture on the Existence and Attributes of the Deity,
     as Deduced from a Contemplation of His Works. M,DCC,XCV."
     The copy in my possession is inscribed with pen: "This was
     J. Joyce's copy, and noticed by him as Paine's work." Mr.
     Joyce was a Unitarian minister. It is probable that the
     suppression of Paine's name was in deference to his
     outlawry, and to the dread, by a sect whose legal position
     was precarious, of any suspicion of connection with
     "Painite" principles.

That his Religion of Humanity took the deistical form was an
evolutionary necessity. English deism was not a religion, but at first a
philosophy, and afterwards a scientific generalization. Its founder, as
a philosophy, Herbert of Cherbury, had created the matrix in which
was formed the Quaker religion of the "inner light," by which Paine's
childhood was nurtured; its founder as a scientific theory of creation,
Sir Isaac Newton, had determined the matrix in which all unorthodox
systems should originate. The real issue was between a sanctified
ancient science and a modern science. The utilitarian English race,
always the stronghold of science, had established the freedom of the
new deism, which thus became the mould into which all unorthodoxies ran.
From the time of Newton, English and American thought and belief have
steadily become Unitarian. The dualism of Jesus, the thousand years
of faith which gave every soul its post in a great war between God
and Satan, without which there would have been no church, has steadily
receded before a monotheism which, under whatever verbal disguises,
makes the deity author of all evil. English Deism prevailed only to be
reconquered into alliance with a tribal god of antiquity, developed
into the tutelar deity of Christendom. And this evolution involved the
transformation of Jesus into Jehovah, deity of a "chosen" or "elect"
people. It was impossible for an apostle of the international republic,
of the human brotherhood, whose Father was degraded by any notion of
favoritism to a race, or to a "first-born son," to accept a name in
which foreign religions had been harried, and Christendom established on
a throne of thinkers' skulls. The philosophical and scientific deism of
Herbert and Newton had grown cold in Paine's time, but it was detached
from all the internecine figure-heads called gods; it appealed to the
reason of all mankind; and in that manger, amid the beasts, royal and
revolutionary, was cradled anew the divine humanity.

Paine wrote "Deism" on his banner in a militant rather than an
affirmative way. He was aiming to rescue the divine Idea from
traditional degradations in order that he might with it confront a
revolutionary Atheism defying the celestial monarchy. In a later work,
speaking of a theological book, "An Antidote to Deism," he remarks: "An
antidote to Deism must be Atheism." So far as it is theological, the
"Age of Reason" was meant to combat Infidelity. It raised before the
French the pure deity of Herbert, of Newton, and other English deists
whose works were unknown in France. But when we scrutinize Paine's
positive Theism we find a distinctive nucleus forming within the
nebulous mass of deistical speculations. Paine recognizes a deity only
in the astronomic laws and intelligible order of the universe, and in
the corresponding reason and moral nature of man. Like Kant, he was
filled with awe by the starry heavens and man's sense of right*. The
first part of the "Age of Reason" is chiefly astronomical; with those
celestial wonders he contrasts such stories as that of Samson and the
foxes. "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." Then turning to the Atheist he says:
"We did not make ourselves; we did not make the principles of science,
which we discover and apply but cannot alter." The only revelation of
God in which he believes is "the universal display of himself in the
works of creation, and that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad
actions, and disposition to do good ones." "The only idea we can have
of serving God, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living
creation that God has made."

     * Astronomy, as we know, he had studied profoundly. In early
     life he had studied astronomic globes, purchased at the cost
     of many a dinner, and the orrery(sp), and attended lectures
     at the Royal Society. In the "Age of Reason" he writes,
     twenty-one years before Herschel's famous paper on the
     Nebulae: "The probability is that each of those fixed stars
     is also a sun, round which another system of worlds or
     planets, though too remote for as to discover, performs its
     revolutions."

It thus appears that in Paine's Theism the deity is made manifest, not
by omnipotence, a word I do not remember in his theories, but in this
correspondence of universal order and bounty with rçason and conscience,
and the humane heart In later works this speculative side of his Theism
presented a remarkable Zoroastrian variation. When pressed with Bishop
Butler's terrible argument against previous Deism,--that the God of
the Bible is no more cruel than the God of Nature,--Paine declared his
preference for the Persian religion, which exonerated the deity from
responsibility for natural evils, above the Hebrew which attributed
such things to God. He was willing to sacrifice God's omnipotence to
his humanity. He repudiates every notion of a devil, but was evidently
unwilling to ascribe the unconquered realms of chaos to the divine Being
in whom he believed.

Thus, while theology was lowering Jesus to a mere King, glorying in
baubles of crown and throne, pleased with adulation, and developing
him into an authorizor of all the ills and agonies of the world, so
depriving him of his humanity, Paine was recovering from the universe
something like the religion of Jesus himself. "Why even of yourselves
judge ye not what is right" In affirming the Religion of Humanity, Paine
did not mean what Comte meant, a personification of the continuous life
of our race*; nor did he merely mean benevolence towards all living
creatures.

     * Paine's friend and fellow-prisoner, Anacharsis Clootz, was
     the first to describe Humanity as "L'Être Supreme."

He affirmed a Religion based on the authentic divinity of that which
is supreme in human nature and distinctive of it The sense of right,
justice, love, mercy, is God himself in man; this spirit judges all
things,--all alleged revelations, all gods. In affirming a deity too
good, loving, just, to do what is ascribed to Jahve, Paine was animated
by the same spirit that led the early believer to turn from heartless
elemental gods to one born of woman, bearing in his breast a human
heart. Pauline theology took away this human divinity, and effected a
restoration, by making the Son of Man Jehovah, and commanding the heart
back from its seat of judgment, where Jesus had set it. "Shall the clay
say to the potter, why hast thou formed me thus?" "Yes," answered
Paine, "if the thing felt itself hurt, and could speak." He knew as did
Emerson, whom he often anticipates, that "no god dare wrong a worm."

The force of the "Age of Reason" is not in its theology, though this
ethical variation of Deism in the direction of humanity is of exceeding
interest to students who would trace the evolution of avatars and
incarnations. Paine's theology was but gradually developed, and in this
work is visible only as a tide beginning to rise under the fiery orb of
his religious passion. For abstract theology he cares little. "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." He evinces regret
that the New Testament, containing so many elevated moral precepts,
should, by leaning on supposed prophecies in the Old Testament, have
been burdened with its barbarities. "It must follow the fate of its
foundation." This fatal connection, he knows, is not the work of Jesus;
he ascribes it to the church which evoked from the Old Testament a
crushing system of priestly and imperial power reversing the benign
principles of Jesus. It is this oppression, the throne of all
oppressions, that he assails. His affirmations of the human deity are
thus mainly expressed in his vehement denials.

This long chapter must now draw to a close. It would need a volume to
follow thoroughly the argument of this epoch-making book, to which
I have here written only an introduction, calling attention to its
evolutionary factors, historical and spiritual. Such then was the new
Pilgrim's Progress. As in that earlier prison, at Bedford, there shone
in Paine's cell in the Luxembourg a great and imperishable vision, which
multitudes are still following. The book is accessible in many editions.
The Christian teacher of to-day may well ponder this fact. The atheists
and secularists of our time are printing, reading, revering a work that
opposes their opinions. For above its arguments and criticisms they see
the faithful heart contending with a mighty Apollyon, girt with all the
forces of revolutionary and Royal Terrorism. Just this one Englishman,
born again in America, confronting George III. and Robespierre on earth
and tearing the like of them from the throne of the universe! Were it
only for the grandeur of this spectacle in the past Paine would maintain
his hold on thoughtful minds.

But in America the hold is deeper than that. In this self-forgetting
insurrection of the human heart against deified Inhumanity there is an
expression of the inarticulate wrath of humanity against continuance of
the same wrong. In the circulation throughout the earth of the Bible as
the Word of God, even after its thousand serious errors of translation
are turned, by exposure, into falsehoods; in the deliverance to savages
of a scriptural sanction of their tomahawks and poisoned arrows; in the
diffusion among cruel tribes of a religion based on human sacrifice,
after intelligence has abandoned it; in the preservation of costly
services to a deity who "needs nothing at men's hands," beside hovels
of the poor who need much; in an exemption of sectarian property from
taxation which taxes every man to support the sects, and continues the
alliance of church and state; in these things, and others--the list is
long--there is still visible, however refined, the sting and claw of the
Apollyon against whom Paine hurled his far-reaching dart. The "Age of
Reason" was at first published in America by a religious house, and as
a religious book. It was circulated in Virginia by Washington's old
friend, Parson Weems. It is still circulated, though by supposed
unbelievers, as a religious book, and such it is.

Its religion is expressed largely in those same denunciations which
theologians resent. I have explained them; polite agnostics apologize
for them, or cast Paine over as a Jonah of the rationalistic ship. But
to make one expression more gentle would mar the work. As it stands,
with all its violences and faults, it represents, as no elaborate or
polite treatise could, the agony and bloody sweat of a heart breaking in
the presence of crucified Humanity. What dear heads, what noble hearts
had that man seen laid low; what shrieks had he heard in the desolate
homes of the Condorcets, the Brissots; what Canaanite and Midianite
massacres had he seen before the altar of Brotherhood, erected by
himself! And all because every human being had been taught from his
cradle that there is something more sacred than humanity, and to which
man should be sacrificed. Of all those mas-sacred thinkers not one voice
remains: they have gone silent: over their reeking guillotine sits
the gloating Apollyon of Inhumanity. But here is one man, a prisoner,
preparing for his long silence. He alone can speak for those slain
between the throne and the altar. In these outbursts of laughter and
tears, these outcries that think not of literary style, these appeals
from surrounding chaos to the starry realm of order, from the tribune of
vengeance to the sun shining for all, this passionate horror of cruelty
in the powerful which will brave a heartless heaven or hell with its
immortal indignation,--in all these the unfettered mind may hear the
wail of enthralled Europe, sinking back choked with its blood, under the
chain it tried to break. So long as a link remains of the same chain,
binding reason or heart, Paine's "Age of Reason" will live. It is not a
mere book--it is a man's heart.




CHAPTER XII. FRIENDSHIPS

Baron Pichon, who had been a sinuous Secretary of Legation in America
under Genêt and Fauchet, and attached to the Foreign Office in France
under the Directory, told George Ticknor, in 1837, that "Tom Paine, who
lived in Monroe's house at Paris, had a great deal too much influence
over Monroe."*

     *  "Life of George Ticknor," ii., p. 113. 223

The Baron, apart from his prejudice against republicanism (Talleyrand
was his master), knew more about American than French politics at the
time of Monroe's mission in France. The agitation caused in France
by Jay's negotiations in England, and rumors set afloat by their
secrecy,--such secrecy being itself felt as a violation of good
faith--rendered Monroe's position unhappy and difficult. After Paine's
release from prison, his generous devotion to France, undiminished
by his wrongs, added to the painful illness that reproached the
Convention's negligence, excited a chivalrous enthusiasm for him. The
tender care of Mr. and Mrs. Monroe for him, the fact that this faithful
friend of France was in their house, were circumstances of international
importance. Of Paine's fidelity to republican principles, and his
indignation at their probable betrayal in England, there could be no
doubt in any mind. He was consulted by the French Executive, and was
virtually the most important _attache_ of the United States Legation.
The "intrigue" of which Thibaudeau had spoken, in Convention, as having
driven Paine from that body, was not given to the public, but it was
well understood to involve the American President. If Paine's suffering
represented in London Washington's deference to England, all the more
did he stand to France as a representative of those who in America
were battling for the Alliance. He was therefore a tower of strength
to Monroe. It will be seen by the subjoined letter that while he was
Monroe's guest it was to him rather than the Minister that the Foreign
Office applied for an introduction of a new Consul to Samuel Adams,
Governor of Massachusetts--a Consul with whom Paine was not personally
acquainted. The general feeling and situation in France at the date of
this letter (March 6th), and the anger at Jay's secret negotiations in
England, are reflected in it:

"My Dear Friend,--Mr. Mozard, who is appointed Consul, will present you
this letter. He is spoken of here as a good sort of man, and I can have
no doubt that you will find him the same at Boston. When I came from
America it was my intention to return the next year, and I have intended
the same every year since. The case I believe is, that as I am embarked
in the revolution, I do not like to leave it till it is finished,
notwithstanding the dangers I have run. I am now almost the only
survivor of those who began this revolution, and I know not how it is
that I have escaped. I know however that I owe nothing to the government
of America. The executive department has never directed either the
former or the present Minister to enquire whether I was dead or alive,
in prison or in liberty, what the cause of the imprisonment was, and
whether there was any service or assistance it could render. Mr. Monroe
acted voluntarily in the case, and reclaimed me as an American citizen;
for the pretence for my imprisonment was that I was a foreigner, born in
England.

"The internal scene here from the 31 of May 1793 to the fall of
Robespierre has been terrible. I was shut up in the prison of the
Luxembourg eleven months, and I find by the papers of Robespierre
that have been published by the Convention since his death, that I
was designed for a worse fate. The following memorandum is in his own
handwriting; 'Démander que Thomas Paine soit décrété d'accusation pour
les intérêts de l'Amérique autant que de la France.'

"You will see by the public papers that the successes of the French arms
have been and continue to be astonishing, more especially since the fall
of Robespierre, and the suppression of the system of Terror. They
have fairly beaten all the armies of Austria, Prussia, England, Spain,
Sardignia, and Holland. Holland is entirely conquered, and there is now
a revolution in that country.

"I know not how matters are going on your side the water, but I think
everything is not as it ought to be. The appointment of G. Morris to
be Minister here was the most unfortunate and the most injudicious
appointment that could be made. I wrote this opinion to Mr. Jefferson at
the time, and I said the same to Morris. Had he not been removed at
the time he was I think the two countries would have been involved in a
quarrel, for it is a fact, that he would either have been ordered away
or put in arrestation; for he gave every reason to suspect that he was
secretly a British Emissary.

"What Mr. Jay is about in England I know not; but is it possible that
any man who has contributed to the Independence of America, and to free
her from the tyranny of the British Government, can read without shame
and indignation the note of Jay to Grenville? That the _United States
has no other resource than in the justice and magnanimity of his
Majesty_, is a satire upon the Declaration of Independence, and exhibits
[such] a spirit of meanness on the part of America, that, were it true,
I should be ashamed of her. Such a declaration may suit the spaniel
character of Aristocracy, but it cannot agree with manly character of a
Republican.

"Mr. Mozard is this moment come for this letter, and he sets off
directly.--God bless you, remember me among the circle of our friends,
and tell them how much I wish to be once more among them.

"Thomas Paine."*

     * Mr. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, has kindly copied
     this letter for me from the original, among the papers of
     George Bancroft.

There are indications of physical feebleness as well as haste in this
letter. The spring and summer brought some vigor, but, as we have seen
by Monroe's letter to Judge Jones, he sank again and in the autumn
seemed nearing his end. Once more the announcement of his death appeared
in England, this time bringing joy to the orthodox. From the same
quarter, probably, whence issued, in 1793, "Intercepted Correspondence
from Satan to Citizen Paine," came now ( 1795 ) a folio sheet: "Glorious
News for Old England. The British Lyon rous'd; or John Bull for ever.

     "The Fox has lost his Tail
     The Ass has done his Braying,
     The Devil has got Tom Paine."

Good-hearted as Paine was, it must be admitted that he was cruelly
persistent in disappointing these British obituaries. Despite anguish,
fever, and abscess--this for more than a year eating into his side,--he
did not gratify those prayerful expectations by becoming a monument of
divine retribution. Nay, amid all these sufferings he had managed to
finish Part Second of the "Age of Reason," write the "Dissertation on
Government," and give the Address before the Convention, Nevertheless
when, in November, he was near death's door, there came from England
tidings grievous enough to crush a less powerful constitution. It was
reported that many of his staunchest old friends had turned against
him on account of his heretical book. This report seemed to find
confirmation in the successive volumes of Gilbert Wakefield in reply to
the two Parts of Paine's book. Wakefield held Unitarian opinions, and
did not defend the real fortress besieged by Paine. He was enraged that
Paine should deal with the authority of the Bible, and the orthodox
dogmas, as if they were Christianity, ignoring unorthodox versions
altogether. This, however, hardly explains the extreme and coarse
vituperation of these replies, which shocked Wakefield's friends.*

     * "The office of 'castigation' was unworthy of our friend's
     talents, and detrimental to his purpose of persuading
     others. Such a contemptuous treatment, even of an unfair
     disputant, was also too well calculated to depredate in the
     public estimation that benevolence of character by which Mr.
     Wakefield was so justly distinguished."--"Life of Gilbert
     Wakefield," 1804, ii., p. 33.

Although in his thirty-eighth year at this time, Wakefield was not old
enough to escape the _sequelæ_ of his former clericalism. He had been a
Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, afterwards had a congregation, and
had continued his connection with the English Church after he was
led, by textual criticism, to adopt Unitarian opinions. He had
great reputation as a linguist, and wrote Scriptural expositions and
retranslations. But few read his books, and he became a tutor in a
dissenting college at Hackney, mainly under influence of the Unitarian
leaders, Price and Priestley. Wakefield would not condescend to any
connection with a dissenting society, and his career at Hackney was
marked by arrogant airs towards Unitarians, on account of a university
training, then not open to dissenters. He attacked Price and Priestley,
his superiors in every respect, apart from their venerable position
and services, in a contemptuous way; and, in fact, might be brevetted a
prig, with a fondness for coarse phrases, sometimes printed with blanks.
He flew at Paine as if he had been waiting for him; his replies, not
affecting any vital issue, were displays of linguistic and textual
learning, set forth on the background of Paine's page, which he
blackened. He exhausts his large vocabulary of vilification on a book
whose substantial affirmations he concedes; and it is done in the mean
way of appropriating the credit of Paine's arguments.

Gilbert Wakefield was indebted to the excitement raised by Paine for
the first notice taken by the general public of anything he ever
wrote. Paine, however, seems to have been acquainted with a sort of
autobiography which he had published in 1792. In this book Wakefield
admitted with shame that he had subscribed the Church formulas when he
did not believe them, while indulging in flings at Price, Priestley, and
others, who had suffered for their principles. At the same time there
were some things in Wakefield's autobiography which could not fail to
attract Paine: it severely attacked slavery, and also the whole course
of Pitt towards France. This was done with talent and courage. It
was consequently a shock when Gilbert Wakefield's outrageous abuse
of himself came to the invalid in his sick-room. It appeared to be an
indication of the extent to which he was abandoned by the Englishmen
who had sympathized with his political principles, and to a large extent
with his religious views. This acrimonious repudiation added groans to
Paine's sick and sinking heart, some of which were returned upon his
Socinian assailant, and in kind. This private letter my reader must
see, though it was meant for no eye but that of Gilbert Wakefield. It is
dated at Paris, November 19, 1795.

"Dear Sir,--When you prudently chose, like a starved apothecary,
to offer your eighteenpenny antidote to those who had taken my
two-and-sixpenny Bible-purge,* you forgot that although my dose
was rather of the roughest, it might not be the less wholesome for
possessing that drastick quality; and if I am to judge of its salutary
effects on your infuriate polemic stomach, by the nasty things it has
made you bring away, I think you should be the last man alive to take
your own panacea. As to the collection of words of which you boast the
possession, nobody, I believe, will dispute their amount, but every one
who reads your answer to my 'Age of Reason' will wish there were not so
many scurrilous ones among them; for though they may be very usefull
in emptying your gallbladder they are too apt to move the bile of other
people.

     * These were the actual prices of the books.

"Those of Greek and Latin are rather foolishly thrown away, I think, on
a man like me, who, you are pleased to say, is 'the greatest ignoramus
in nature': yet I must take the liberty to tell you, that wisdom does
not consist in the mere knowledge of language, but of things.

"You recommend me to _know myself_--a thing very easy to advise, but
very difficult to practice, as I learn from your own book; for you take
yourself to be a meek disciple of Christ, and yet give way to passion
and pride in every page of its composition.

"You have raised an ant-hill about the roots of my sturdy oak, and it
may amuse idlers to see your work; but neither its body nor its branches
are injured by you; and I hope the shade of my Civic Crown may be able
to preserve your little contrivance, at least for the season.

"When you have done as much service to the world by your writings, and
suffered as much for them, as I have done, you will be better entitled
to dictate: but although I know you to be a keener politician than Paul,
I can assure you, from my experience of mankind, that you do not much
commend the Christian doctrines to them by announcing that it requires
the labour of a learned life to make them understood.

"May I be permitted, after all, to suggest that your truly vigorous
talents would be best employed in teaching men to preserve their
liberties exclusively,--leaving to that God who made their immortal
souls the care of their eternal welfare.

"I am, dear Sir,

"Your true well-wisher,

"Tho. Paine.

"To Gilbert Wakefield, A. B."

After a first perusal of this letter has made its unpleasant impression,
the reader will do well to read it again. Paine has repaired to his
earliest Norfolk for language appropriate to the coarser tongue of his
Nottinghamshire assailant; but it should be said that the offensive
paragraph, the first, is a travesty of one written by Wakefield. In his
autobiography, after groaning over his books that found no buyers,
a veritable "starved apothecary," Wakefield describes the uneasiness
caused by his pamphlet on "Religious Worship" as proof that the disease
was yielding to his "potion." He says that "as a physician of spiritual
maladies" he had seconded "the favourable operation of the first
prescription,"--and so forth. Paine, in using the simile, certainly
allows the drugs and phials of his sick-room to enter it to a
disagreeable extent, but we must bear in mind that we are looking over
his shoulder. We must also, by the same consideration of its privacy,
mitigate the letter's egotism. Wakefield's ant-hill protected by
the foliage, the "civic crown," of Paine's oak which it has
attacked,--gaining notice by the importance of the work it
belittles,--were admirable if written by another; and the egotism is
not without some warrant. It is the rebuke of a scarred veteran of the
liberal army to the insults of a subaltern near twenty years his junior.
It was no doubt taken to heart For when the agitation which Gilbert
Wakefield had contributed to swell, and to lower, presently culminated
in handcuffs for the circulators of Paine's works, he was filled with
anguish. He vainly tried to resist the oppression, and to call back the
Unitarians, who for twenty-five years continued to draw attention from
their own heresies by hounding on the prosecution of Paine's adherents.*

     * "But I would not forcibly suppress this book ["Age of
     Reason"]; much less would I punish (O my God, be such
     wickedness far from me, or leave me destitute of thy favour
     in the midst of this perjured and sanguinary generation!)
     much less would I punish, by fine or imprisonment, from any
     possible consideration, the publisher or author of these
     pages."--Letter of Gilbert Wakefield to Sir John Scott,
     Attorney General, 1798. For evidence of Unitarian
     intolerance see the discourse of W, J. Fox on "The Duties of
     Christians towards Deists" (Collected Works, vol. i.). In
     this discourse, October 24, 1819, on the prosecution of
     Carlile for publishing the "Age of Reason," Mr. Fox
     expresses his regret that the first prosecution should have
     been conducted by a Unitarian. "Goaded," he says, "by the
     calumny which would identify them with those who yet reject
     the Saviour, they have, in repelling so unjust an
     accusation, caught too much of the tone of their opponents,
     and given the most undesirable proof of their affinity to
     other Christians by that unfairness towards the disbeliever
     which does not become any Christian." Ultimately Mr. Fox
     became the champion of all the principles of "The Age of
     Reason" and "The Rights of Man."

The prig perished; in his place stood a martyr of the freedom bound up
with the work he had assailed. Paine's other assailant, the Bishop of
Llandaff, having bent before Pitt, and episcopally censured the humane
side he once espoused, Gilbert Wakefield answered him with a boldness
that brought on him two years' imprisonment When he came out of prison
(1801) he was received with enthusiasm by all of Paine's friends, who
had forgotten the wrong so bravely atoned for. Had he not died in the
same year, at the age of forty-five, Gilbert Wakefield might have become
a standard-bearer of the freethinkers.

Paine's recovery after such prolonged and perilous suffering was a
sort of resurrection. In April (1796) he leaves Monroe's house for the
country, and with the returning life of nature his strength is steadily
recovered. What to the man whose years of anguish, imprisonment,
disease, at last pass away, must have been the paths and hedgerows of
Versailles, where he now meets the springtide, and the more healing
sunshine of affection! Risen from his thorny bed of pain--

     "The meanest floweret of the vale,
     The simplest note that swells the gale,
     The common sun, the air, the skies,
     To him are opening paradise."

So had it been even if nature alone had surrounded him. But Paine had
been restored by the tenderness and devotion of friends. Had it not been
for friendship he could hardly have been saved. We are little able, in
the present day, to appreciate the reverence and affection with which
Thomas Paine was regarded by those who saw in him the greatest apostle
of liberty in the world. Elihu Palmer spoke a very general belief when
he declared Paine "probably the most useful man that ever existed upon
the face of the earth." This may sound wild enough on the ears of those
to whom Liberty has become a familiar drudge. There was a time when she
was an ideal Rachel, to win whom many years of terrible service were
not too much; but now in the garish day she is our prosaic Leah,--a
serviceable creature in her way, but quite unromantic. In Paris there
were ladies and gentlemen who had known something of the cost of
Liberty,--Colonel and Mrs. Monroe, Sir Robert and Lady Smith, Madame
Lafayette, Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, M. and Madame De Bonneville. They
had known what it was to watch through anxious nights with terrors
surrounding them. He who had suffered most was to them a sacred person.
He had come out of the succession of ordeals, so weak in body, so
wounded by American ingratitude, so sore at heart, that no delicate
child needed more tender care. Set those ladies and their charge a
thousand years back in the poetic past, and they become Morgan le Fay,
and the Lady Nimue, who bear the wounded warrior away to their Avalon,
there to be healed of his grievous hurts. Men say their Arthur is dead,
but their love is stronger than death. And though the service of
these friends might at first have been reverential, it had ended with
attachment, so great was Paine's power, so wonderful and pathetic his
memories, so charming the play of his wit, so full his response to
kindness.

One especially great happiness awaited him when he became convalescent.
Sir Robert Smith, a wealthy banker in Paris, made his acquaintance, and
he discovered that Lady Smith was no other than "The Little Corner of
the World," whose letters had carried sunbeams into his prison.* An
intimate friendship was at once established with Sir Robert and his
lady, in whose house, probably at Versailles, Paine was a guest after
leaving the Monroes. To Lady Smith, on discovering her, Paine addressed
a poem,--"The Castle in the Air to the Little Corner of the World":

     * Sir Robert Smith (Smythe in the Peerage List) was born in
     1744, and married, first, Miss Blake of London (1776). The
     name of the second Lady Smith, Paine's friend, before her
     marriage I have not ascertained.

     "In the region of clouds, where the whirlwinds arise,
     My Castle of Fancy was built;
     The turrets reflected the blue from the skies,
     And the windows with sunbeams were gilt.

     "The rainbow sometimes, in its beautiful state,
     Enamelled the mansion around;
     And the figures that fancy in clouds can create
     Supplied me with gardens and ground.

     "I had grottos, and fountains, and orange-tree groves,
     I had all that enchantment has told;
     I had sweet shady walks for the gods and their loves,
     I had mountains of coral and gold.

     "But a storm that I felt not had risen and rolled,
     While wrapped in a slumber I lay;
     And when I looked out in the morning, behold,
     My Castle was carried away.

     "It passed over rivers and valleys and groves,
     The world it was all in my view;
     I thought of my friends, of their fates, of their loves,
     And often, full often, of you.

     "At length it came over a beautiful scene,
     That nature in silence had made;
     The place was but small, but't was sweetly serene,
     And chequered with sunshine and shade.

     "I gazed and I envied with painful good will,
     And grew tired of my seat in the air;
     When all of a sudden my Castle stood still,
     As if some attraction were there.

     "Like a lark from the sky it came fluttering down,
     And placed me exactly in view,
     When whom should I meet in this charming retreat
     This corner of calmness, but--you.

     "Delighted to find you in honour and ease,
     I felt no more sorrow nor pain;
     But the wind coming fair, I ascended the breeze,
     And went back with my Castle again."

Paine was now a happy man. The kindness that rescued him from death was
followed by the friendship that beguiled him from horrors of the past.
From gentle ladies he learned that beyond the Age of Reason lay the
forces that defeat Giant Despair.

"To reason [so he writes to Lady Smith] 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 reasoning 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 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."

The mouth of the rescued and restored captive was filled with song.
Several little poems were circulated among his friends, but not printed;
among them the following:

"Contentment; or, if you please, Confession. _To Mrs. Barlow, on
her pleasantly telling the author that, after writing against the
superstition of the Scripture religion, he was setting up a religion
capable of more bigotry and enthusiasm, and more dangerous to its
votaries--that of making a religion of Love._

     "O could we always live and love,
     And always be sincere,
     I would not wish for heaven above,
     My heaven would be here.

     "Though many countries I have seen,
     And more may chance to see,
     My Little Corner of the World
     Is half the world to me.

     "The other half, as you may guess,
     America contains;
     And thus, between them, I possess
     The whole world for my pains.

     "I'm then contented with my lot,
     I can no happier be;
     For neither world I 'm sure has got
     So rich a man as me.

     "Then send no fiery chariot down
     To take me off from hence,
     But leave me on my heavenly ground--
     This prayer is _common sense_.

     "Let others choose another plan,
     I mean no fault to find;
     The true theology of man
     Is happiness of mind."

Paine gained great favor with the French government and fame throughout
Europe by his pamphlet, "The Decline and Fall of the English System of
Finance," in which he predicted the suspension of the Bank of England,
which followed the next year. He dated the pamphlet April 8th, and the
Minister of Foreign Affairs is shown, in the Archives of that office, to
have ordered, on April 27th, a thousand copies. It was translated in all
the languages of Europe, and was a terrible retribution for the forged
assignats whose distribution in France the English government had
considered a fair mode of warfare. This translation "into all the
languages of the continent" is mentioned by Ralph Broome, to whom the
British government entrusted the task of answering the pamphlet.* As
Broome's answer is dated June 4th, this circulation in six or seven
weeks is remarkable, The proceeds were devoted by Paine to the relief of
prisoners for debt in Newgate, London.**

     * "Observations on Mr. Paine's Pamphlet," etc. Broome
     escapes the charge of prejudice by speaking of "Mr. Paine,
     whose abilities I admire and deprecate in a breath." Paine's
     pamphlet was also replied to by George Chalmers ("Oldys")
     who had written the slanderous biography.

     ** Richard Carlile's sketch of Paine, p. 20. This large
     generosity to English sufferers appears the more
     characteristic beside the closing paragraph of Paine's
     pamphlet, "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 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 en the verge, nay even in the gulf of
     bankruptcy.'"

     Concerning the false French assignats forged in  England,
     see  Louis Blanc's "History of the Revolution," vol. xii.,
     p. 101.

The concentration of this pamphlet on its immediate subject, which made
it so effective, renders it of too little intrinsic interest in the
present day to delay us long, especially as it is included in all
editions of Paine's works. It possesses, however, much biographical
interest as proving the intellectual power of Paine while still but a
convalescent. He never wrote any work involving more study and mastery
of difficult details. It was this pamphlet, written in Paris, while
"Peter Porcupine," in America, was rewriting the slanders of "Oldys,"
which revolutionized Cobbett's opinion of Paine, and led him to try and
undo the injustice he had wrought.

It now so turned out that Paine was able to repay all the kindnesses he
had received. The relations between the French government and Monroe,
already strained, as we have seen, became in the spring of 1796 almost
intolerable. The Jay treaty seemed to the French so incredible that,
even after it was ratified, they believed that the Representatives would
refuse the appropriation needed for its execution. But when tidings came
that this effort of the House of Representatives had been crushed by a
menaced _coup d'état_, the ideal America fell in France, and was broken
in fragments. Monroe could now hardly have remained save on the credit
of Paine with the French. There was, of course, a fresh accession of
wrath towards England for this appropriation of the French alliance.
Paine had been only the first sacrifice on the altar of the new
alliance; now all English families and all Americans in Paris except
himself were likely to become its victims. The English-speaking
residents there made one little colony, and Paine was sponsor for them
all. His fatal blow at English credit proved the formidable power of the
man whom Washington had delivered up to Robespierre in the interest of
Pitt. So Paine's popularity reached its climax; the American Legation
found through him a _modus vivendi_ with the French government; the
families which had received and nursed him in his weakness found in his
intimacy their best credential. Mrs. Joel Barlow especially, while her
husband was in Algeria, on the service of the American government, might
have found her stay in Paris unpleasant but for Paine s friendship. The
importance of his guarantee to the banker, Sir Robert Smith, appears by
the following note, written at Versailles, August 13th:

"Citizen Minister: The citizen Robert Smith, a very particular friend
of mine, wishes to obtain a passport to go to Hamburg, and I will be
obliged to you to do him that favor. Himself and family have lived
several years in France, for he likes neither the government nor the
climate of England. He has large property in England, but his Banker
in that country has refused sending him remittances. This makes it
necessary for him to go to Hamburg, because from there he can draw his
money out of his Banker's hands, which he cannot do whilst in France.
His family remains in France.--_Salut et fraternité._

"Thomas Paine."

Amid his circle of cultured and kindly friends Paine had dreamed of a
lifting of the last cloud from his life, so long overcast. His eyes were
strained to greet that shining sail that should bring him a response to
his letter of September to Washington, in his heart being a great hope
that his apparent wrong would be explained as a miserable mistake,
and that old friendship restored. As the reader knows, the hope was
grievously disappointed. The famous public letter to Washington (August
3d), which was not published in France, has already been considered, in
advance of its chronological place. It will be found, however, of more
significance if read in connection with the unhappy situation, in which
all of Paine's friends, and all Americans in Paris, had been brought
by the Jay treaty. From their point of view the deliverance of Paine to
prison and the guillotine was only one incident in a long-planned and
systematic treason, aimed at the life of the French republic. Jefferson
in America, and Paine in France, represented the faith and hope of
republicans that the treason would be overtaken by retribution and
reversal.

     * Soon after Jefferson became President Paine wrote to him,
     suggesting that Sir Robert's firm might be safely depended
     on as the medium of American financial transactions in
     Europe.




CHAPTER XIII. THEOPHILANTHROPY

In the ever-recurring controversies concerning Paine and his "Age
of Reason" we have heard many triumphal claims. Christianity and
the Church, it is said, have advanced and expanded, unharmed by such
criticisms. This is true. But there are several fallacies implied in
this mode of dealing with the religious movement caused by Paine's work.
It assumes that Paine was an enemy of all that now passes under the name
of Christianity--a title claimed by nearly a hundred and fifty different
organizations, with some of which (as the Unitarians, Universalists,
Broad Church, and Hick-site Friends) he would largely sympathize. It
further assumes that he was hostile to all churches, and desired or
anticipated their destruction. Such is not the fact. Paine desired and
anticipated their reformation, which has steadily progressed. At the
close of the "Age of Reason" he exhorts the clergy to "preach something
that is edifying, and from 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 for devotion as well 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 right use of reason, and setting up an invented
thing called revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous
conceits nave 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 and his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and
the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgment. 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?"

To the statement that Christianity has not been impeded by the "Age of
Reason," it should be added that its advance has been largely due to
modifications rendered necessary by that work. The unmodified dogmas
are represented in small and eccentric communities. The advance has
been under the Christian name, with which Paine had no concern; but
to confuse the word "Christianity" with the substance it labels is
inadmissible. England wears the device of St. George and the Dragon; but
English culture has reduced the saint and dragon to a fable.

The special wrath with which Paine is still visited, above all other
deists put together, or even atheists is a tradition from a so-called
Christianity which his work compelled to capitulate. That system is
now nearly extinct, and the vendetta it bequeathed should now end. The
capitulation began immediately with the publication of the Bishop of
Llandaff's "Apology for the Bible," a title that did not fail to attract
notice when it appeared (1796). There were more than thirty replies to
Paine, but they are mainly taken out of the Bishop's "Apology," to which
they add nothing. It is said in religious encyclopedias that Paine was
"answered" by one and another writer, but in a strict sense Paine was
never answered, unless by the successive surrenders referred to.
As Bishop Watson's "Apology" is adopted by most authorities as the
sufficient "answer," it may be here accepted as a representative of the
rest. Whether Paine's points dealt with by the Bishop are answerable
or not, the following facts will prove how uncritical is the prevalent
opinion that they were really answered.

Dr. Watson concedes generally to Paine the discovery of some "real
difficulties" in the Old Testament, and the exposure, in the Christian
grove, of "a few unsightly shrubs, which good men had wisely concealed
from public view" (p. 44).* It is not Paine that here calls some
"sacred" things unsightly, and charges the clergy with concealing
them--it is the Bishop. Among the particular and direct concessions made
by the Bishop are the following:

     * Corey's edition. Philadelphia, 1796.

1. That Moses may not have written every part of the Pentateuch. Some
passages were probably written by later hands, transcribers or editors
(pp. 9-11, 15). [If human reason and scholarship are admitted to detach
any portions, by what authority can they be denied the right to bring
all parts of the Pentateuch, or even the whole Bible, under their human
judgment?]

2. The law in Deuteronomy giving parents the right, under certain
circumstances, to have their children stoned to death, is excused only
as a "humane restriction of a power improper to be lodged with any
parent" (p. 13). [Granting the Bishop's untrue assertion, that the same
"improper" power was arbitrary among the Romans, Gauls, and Persians,
why should it not have been abolished in Israel? And if Dr. Watson
possessed the right to call any law established in the Bible "improper,"
how can Paine be denounced for subjecting other things in the book
to moral condemnation? The moral sentiment is not an episcopal
prerogative.]

3. The Bishop agrees that it is "the opinion of many learned men and
good Christians" that the Bible, though authoritative in religion, is
fallible in other respects, "relating the ordinary history of the times"
(p. 23). [What but human reason, in the absence of papal authority, is
to draw the line between the historical and religious elements in the
Bible?]

4. It is conceded that "Samuel did not write any part of the second book
bearing his name, and only a part of the first" (p. 24). [One of many
blows dealt by this prelate at confidence in the Bible.]

5. It is admitted that Ezra contains a contradiction in the estimate
of the numbers who returned from Babylon; it is attributed to a
transcriber's mistake of one Hebrew figure for another (p. 30). [Paine's
question here had been: "What certainty then can there be in the Bible
for anything"? It is no answer to tell him how an error involving a
difference of 12,542 people may perhaps have occurred.]

5. It is admitted that David did not write some of the Psalms ascribed
to him (p. 131).

7. "It is acknowledged that the order of time is not everywhere
observed" [in Jeremiah]; also that this prophet, fearing for his life,
suppressed the truth [as directed by King Zedekiah]. "He was under
no obligation to tell the whole [truth] to men who were certainly his
enemies and no good subjects of the king" (pp. 36, 37). [But how can it
be determined how much in Jeremiah is the "word of God," and how much
uttered for the casual advantage of himself or his king?]

8. It is admitted that there was no actual fulfilment of Ezekie's
prophecy, "No foot of man shall pass through it [Egypt], nor foot of
beast shall pass through it, for forty years" (p. 42).

9. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Christ, in Matthew and
Luke, are admitted: they are explained by saying that Matthew gives the
genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary; and that Matthew commits "an
error" in omitting three generations between Joram and Ozias (p.
48.) [Paine had asked, why might not writers mistaken in the natural
genealogy of Christ be mistaken also in his celestial genealogy? To this
no answer was attempted.]

Such are some of the Bishop's direct admissions.

There are other admissions in his silences and evasions. For instance,
having elaborated a theory as to how the error in Ezra might occur, by
the close resemblance of Hebrew letters representing widely different
numbers, he does not notice Nehemiah's error in the same matter, pointed
out by Paine,--a self-contradiction, and also a discrepancy with Ezra,
which could not be explained by his theory. He says nothing about
several other contradictions alluded to by Paine. The Bishop's evasions
are sometimes painful, as when he tries to escape the force of Paine's
argument, that Paul himself was not convinced by the evidences of the
resurrection which he adduces for others. The Bishop says: "That Paul
had so far resisted the evidence which the apostles had given of the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as to be a persecutor of the
disciples of Christ, is certain; but I do not remember the place where
he declares that he had not believed them." But when Paul says, "I
verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to
the name of Jesus of Nazareth," surely this is inconsistent with his
belief in the resurrection and ascension. Paul declares that when it
was the good pleasure of God "to reveal his Son in me," immediately he
entered on his mission. He "was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."
Clearly then Paul had not been convinced of the resurrection and
ascension until he saw Christ in a vision.

In dealing with Paine's moral charges against the Bible the Bishop has
left a confirmation of all that I have said concerning the Christianity
of his time. An "infidel" of to-day could need no better moral arguments
against the Bible than those framed by the Bishop in its defence. He
justifies the massacre of the Canaanites on the ground that they were
sacrificers of their own children to idols, cannibals, addicted to
unnatural lust Were this true it would be no justification; but as no
particle of evidence is adduced in support of these utterly unwarranted
and entirely fictitious accusations, the argument now leaves the
massacre without any excuse at all. The extermination is not in the
Bible based on any such considerations, but simply on a divine command
to seize the land and slay its inhabitants. No legal right to the land
is suggested in the record; and, as for morality, the only persons
spared in Joshua's expedition were a harlot and her household, she
having betrayed her country to the invaders, to be afterwards exalted
into an ancestress of Christ. Of the cities destroyed by Joshua it is
said: "It was of Jehovah to harden their hearts, to come against Israel
in battle, that he might utterly destroy them, that they might have
no favor, but that he might destroy them, as Jehovah commanded Moses"
(Joshua xi., 20). As their hearts were thus in Jehovah's power for
hardening, it may be inferred that they were equally in his power for
reformation, had they been guilty of the things alleged by the Bishop.
With these things before him, and the selection of Rahab for mercy
above all the women in Jericho--every woman slain save the harlot who
delivered them up to slaughter--the Bishop says: "The destruction of the
Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a signal proof of God's
displeasure against sin."

The Bishop rages against Paine for supposing that the commanded
preservation of the Midianite maidens, when all males and married women
were slain, was for their "debauchery."

"Prove this, and I will allow that Moses was the horrid monster you make
him--prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it--'a
book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy'--prove this, or excuse my
warmth if I say to you, as Paul said to Elymas the sorcerer, who sought
to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, 'O full of all subtilty,
and of all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the
Lord?'--I did not, when I began these letters, think that I should
have been moved to this severity of rebuke, by anything you could
have written; but when so gross a misrepresentation is made of God's
proceedings, coolness would be a crime."

And what does my reader suppose is the alternative claimed by the
prelate's foaming mouth? The maidens, he declares, were not reserved for
debauchery, but for slavery!

Little did the Bishop foresee a time when, of the two suppositions,
Paine's might be deemed the more lenient. The subject of slavery was
then under discussion in England, and the Bishop is constrained to add,
concerning this enslavement of thirty-two thousand maidens, from
the massacred families, that slavery is "a custom abhorrent from our
manners, but everywhere practised in former times, and still practised
in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not
softened the ferocity of human nature." Thus, Jehovah is represented
as not only ordering the wholesale murder of the worshippers of another
deity, but an adoption of their "abhorrent" and inhuman customs.

This connection of the deity of the Bible with "the ferocity of human
nature" in one place, and its softening in another, justified Paine's
solemn rebuke to the clergy of his time.

"Had the cruel and murderous 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 honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid
tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference."

This is fundamentally what the Bishop has to answer, and of course he
must resort to the terrible _Tu quoque_ of Bishop Butler, Dr. Watson
says he is astonished that "so acute a reasoner" should reproduce the
argument.

"You profess yourself to be a deist, and to believe that there is a God,
who created the universe, and established the laws of nature, by which
it is sustained in existence. You profess that from a contemplation
of the works of God you derive a knowledge of his attributes; and you
reject the Bible because it ascribes to God things inconsistent (as you
suppose) with the attributes which you have discovered to belong to
him; in particular, you think it repugnant to his moral justice that
he should doom to destruction the crying and smiling infants of the
Canaanites. Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to his moral
justice that he should suffer crying or smiling infants to be swallowed
up by an earthquake, drowned by an inundation, consumed by fire, starved
by a famine, or destroyed by a pestilence?"

Dr. Watson did not, of course, know that he was following Bishop Butler
in laying the foundations of atheism, though such was the case. As was
said in my chapter on the "Age of Reason," this dilemma did not really
apply to Paine, His deity was inferred, despite all the disorders in
nature, exclusively from its apprehensible order without, and from the
reason and moral nature of man. He had not dealt with the problem of
evil, except implicitly, in his defence of the divine goodness, which is
inconsistent with the responsibility of his deity for natural evils, or
for anything that would be condemned by reason and conscience if done by
man. It was thus the Christian prelate who had abandoned the primitive
faith in the divine humanity for a natural deism, while the man he calls
a "child of the devil" was defending the divine humanity.

This then was the way in which Paine was "answered," for I am not aware
of any important addition to the Bishop's "Apology" by other opponents.
I cannot see how any Christian of the present time can regard it
otherwise than as a capitulation of the system it was supposed to
defend, however secure he may regard the Christianity of to-day. It
subjects the Bible to the judgment of human reason for the determination
of its authorship, the integrity of its text, and the correction of
admitted errors in authorship, chronology, and genealogy; it admits the
fallibility of the writers in matters of fact; it admits that some of
the moral laws of the Old Testament are "improper" and others, like
slavery, belonging to "the ferocity of human nature"; it admits the
non-fulfilment of one prophet's prediction, and the self-interested
suppression of truth by another; and it admits that "good men" were
engaged in concealing these "unsightly" things. Here are gates thrown
open for the whole "Age of Reason."

The unorthodoxy of the Bishop's "Apology" does not rest on the judgment
of the present writer alone. If Gilbert Wakefield presently had to
reflect on his denunciations of Paine from the inside of a prison, the
Bishop of Llandaff had occasion to appreciate Paine's ideas on "mental
lying" as the Christian infidelity. The Bishop, born in the same year
(1737) with the two heretics he attacked--Gibbon and Paine--began his
career as a professor of chemistry at Cambridge (1764), but seven years
later became Regius professor of divinity there. His posthumous papers
present a remarkable picture of the church in his time. In replying to
Gibbon he studied first principles, and assumed a brave stand against
all intellectual and religious coercion. On the episcopal bench he
advocated a liberal policy toward France. In undertaking to answer Paine
he became himself unsettled; and at the very moment when unsophisticated
orthodoxy was hailing him as its champion, the sagacious magnates of
Church and State proscribed him. He learned that the king had described
him as "impracticable"; with bitterness of soul he saw prelates of
inferior rank and ability promoted over his head. He tried the effect
of a political recantation, in one of his charges; and when Williams was
imprisoned for publishing the "Age of Reason," and Gilbert Wakefield
for rebuking his "Charge," this former champion of free speech dared not
utter a protest. But by this servility he gained nothing. He seems to
have at length made up his mind that if he was to be punished for his
liberalism he would enjoy it. While preaching on "Revealed Religion" he
saw the Bishop of London shaking his head. In 18111, five years before
his death, he writes this significant note: "I have treated my divinity
as I, twenty-five years ago, treated my chemical papers: I have lighted
my fire with the labour of a great portion of my life."*

     * Patrick Henry's Answer to the "Age of Reason" shared the
     like fate. "When, during the first two years of his
     retirement, Thomas Paine's 'Age of Reason' made its
     appearance, the old statesman was moved to write out a
     somewhat elaborate treatise in defence of the truth of
     Christianity. This treatise it was his purpose to have
     published. 'He read the manuscript to his family as he
     progressed with it, and completed it a short time before his
     death' (1799). When it was finished, however, 'being
     diffident about his own work,' and impressed also by the
     great ability of the replies to Paine which were then
     appearing in England, 'he directed his wife to destroy' what
     he had written. She 'complied literally with his
     directions,' and thus put beyond the chance of publication a
     work which seemed, to some who heard it, 'the most eloquent
     and unanswerable argument in defence of the Bible which was
     ever written.'"--Fontaine MS. quoted in Tyler's "Patrick
     Henry."

Next to the "Age of Reason," the book that did most to advance Paine's
principles in England was, as I believe, Dr. Watson's "Apology for the
Bible." Dean Swift had warned the clergy that if they began to reason
with objectors to the creeds they would awaken skepticism. Dr. Watson
fulfilled this prediction. He pointed out, as Gilbert Wakefield did,
some exegetical and verbal errors in Paine's book, but they no more
affected its main purpose and argument than the grammatical mistakes in
"Common Sense" diminished its force in the American Revolution. David
Dale, the great manufacturer at Paisley, distributed three thousand
copies of the "Apology" among his workmen. The books carried among them
extracts from Paine, and the Bishop's admissions. Robert Owen married
Dale's daughter, and presently found the Paisley workmen a ripe harvest
for his rationalism and radicalism.

Thus, in the person of its first clerical assailant, began the march
of the "Age of Reason" in England. In the Bishop's humiliations for
his concessions to truth, were illustrated what Paine had said of his
system's falsity and fraudulence. After the Bishop had observed the
Bishop of London manifesting disapproval of his sermon on "Revealed
Religion" he went home and wrote: "What is this thing called Orthodoxy,
which mars the fortunes of honest men? It is a sacred thing to which
every denomination of Christians lays exclusive claim, but to which no
man, no assembly of men, since the apostolic age, can prove a title."
There is now a Bishop of London who might not acknowledge the claim
even for the apostolic age. The principles, apart from the particular
criticisms, of Paine's book have established themselves in the
English Church. They were affirmed by Bishop Wilson in clear language:
"Christian duties are founded on reason, not on the sovereignty of God
commanding what he pleases: God cannot command us what is not fit to be
believed or done, all his commands being founded in the necessities of
our nature." It was on this principle that Paine declared that things
in the Bible, "not fit to be believed or done," could not be divine
commands.

His book, like its author, was outlawed, but men more heretical are
now buried in Westminster Abbey, and the lost bones of Thomas Paine are
really reposing in those tombs. It was he who compelled the hard and
heartless Bibliolatry of his time to repair to illiterate conventicles,
and the lovers of humanity, true followers of the man of Nazareth, to
abandon the crumbling castle of dogma, preserving its creeds as archaic
bric-a-brac. As his "Rights of Man" is now the political constitution
of England, his "Age of Reason" is in the growing constitution of its
Church,--the most powerful organization in Christendom because the
freest and most inclusive.

The excitement caused in England by the "Age of Reason," and the large
number of attempted replies to it, were duly remarked by the _Moniteur_
and other French journals. The book awakened much attention in France,
and its principles were reproduced in a little French book entitled:
"Manuel des Théoantropophiles." This appeared in September, 1796. In
January, 1797, Paine, with five families, founded in Paris the church
of Theo-philanthropy,--a word, as he stated in a letter to Erskine
"compounded of three Greek words, signifying God, Love, and Man. The
explanation given to this word is _Lovers of God and Man, or Adorers of
God and Friends of Man._" The society opened "in the street Denis, No.
34, corner of Lombard Street." "The Theophilanthropists believe in
the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul." The inaugural
discourse was given by Paine. It opens with these words: "Religion
has two principal enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which
is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and
morality, the other by natural philosophy." The discourse is chiefly an
argument for a divine existence based on motion, which, he maintains,
is not a property of matter. It proves a Being "at the summit of all
things." At the close he says:

"The society is at present in its infancy, and its means are small; but
I wish to hold in view the subject I allude to, and instead of teaching
the philosophical branches of learning as ornamental branches only, as
they have hitherto been taught, to teach them in a manner that shall
combine theological knowledge with scientific instruction. To do this to
the best advantage, some instruments will be necessary for the purpose
of explanation, of which the society is not yet possessed. But as the
views of the Society extend to public good, as well as to that of the
individual, and as its principles can have no enemies, means may be
devised to procure them. If we unite to the present instruction a series
of lectures on the ground I have mentioned, we shall, in the first
place, render theology the most entertaining of all studies. In the
next place, we shall give scientific instruction to those who could
not otherwise obtain it. The mechanic of every profession will there be
taught the mathematical principles necessary to render him proficient
in his art. The cultivator will there see developed the principles of
vegetation; while, at the same time, they will be led to see the hand of
God in all these things."

A volume of 214 pages put forth at the close of the year shows that the
Theophilanthropists sang theistic and humanitarian hymns, and read Odes;
also that ethical readings were introduced from the Bible, and from
the Chinese, Hindu, and Greek authors. A library was established
(rue Neuve-Etienne-l'Estrapade, No. 25) at which was issued (1797),
"Instruction Élémentaire sur la Morale religieuse,"--this being declared
to be morality based on religion.




{1797}

Thus Paine, pioneer in many things, helped to found the first theistic
and ethical society.

It may now be recognized as a foundation of the Religion of Humanity. It
was a great point with Paine that belief in the divine existence was the
one doctrine common to all religions. On this rock the Church of Man was
to be built Having vainly endeavored to found the international Republic
he must repair to an ideal moral and human world. Robespierre and Pitt
being unfraternal he will bring into harmony the sages of all races.
It is a notable instance of Paine's unwillingness to bring a personal
grievance into the sacred presence of Humanity that one of the four
festivals of Theophilanthropy was in honor of Washington, while its
catholicity was represented in a like honor to St. Vincent de Paul. The
others so honored were Socrates and Rousseau. These selections were no
doubt mainly due to the French members, but they could hardly have been
made without Paine's agreement. It is creditable to them all that, at a
time when France believed itself wronged by Washington, his services to
liberty should alone have been remembered. The flowers of all races, as
represented in literature or in history, found emblematic association
with the divine life in nature through the flowers that were heaped on
a simple altar, as they now are in many churches and chapels. The walls
were decorated with ethical mottoes, enjoining domestic kindness and
public benevolence.

Paine's pamphlet of this year (1797) on "Agrarian Justice" should be
considered part of the theophil-anthropic movement. It was written as a
proposal to the French government, at a time when readjustment of landed
property had been rendered necessary by the Revolution.*

     * "Thomas Payne à la Législature et au Directoire: ou la
     Justice Agraire Opposée à la Loi et aux Privilèges
     Agraires."

It was suggested by a sermon printed by the Bishop of Llandaff, on "The
wisdom and goodness of God in having made both rich and poor." Paine
denies that God made rich and poor: "he made only male and female, and
gave them the earth for their inheritance." The earth, though naturally
the equal possession of all, has been necessarily appropriated by
individuals, because their improvements, which alone render its
productiveness adequate to human needs, cannot be detached from the
soil. Paine maintains that these private owners do nevertheless owe
mankind ground-rent. He therefore proposes a tithe,--not for God,
but for man. He advises that at the time when the owner will feel
it least,--when property is passing by inheritance from one to
another,--the tithe shall be taken from it. Personal property also owes
a debt to society, without which wealth could not exist,--as in the case
of one alone on an island. By a careful estimate he estimates that a
tithe on inheritances would give every person, on reaching majority,
fifteen pounds, and after the age of fifty an annuity of ten pounds,
leaving a substantial surplus for charity. The practical scheme
submitted is enforced by practical rather than theoretical
considerations. Property is always imperilled by poverty, especially
where wealth and splendor have lost their old fascinations, and awaken
emotions of disgust.

"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 France, 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."

The tithe was to be given to rich and poor alike, including owners of
the property tithed, in order that there should be no association of
alms with this "agrarian justice."

About this time the priesthood began to raise their heads again. A
report favorable to a restoration to them of the churches, the raising
of bells, and some national recognition of public worship, was made by
Camille Jordan for a committee on the subject The Jesuitical report was
especially poetical about church bells, which Paine knew would ring the
knell of the Republic. He wrote a theophilanthropic letter to Camille
Jordan, from which I quote some paragraphs.

"You claim a privilege incompatible with the Constitution, and with
Rights. The Constitution protects equally, as it ought to do, every
profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The
churches are the common property of all the people; they are national
goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any one profession, because
the right does not exist of giving to any one that which appertains to
all. It would be consistent with right that the churches should be sold,
and the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education
of children of poor parents of every profession, and, if more than
sufficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the
support of the aged poor. After this every profession can erect its own
place of worship, if it choose--support its own priests, if it choose to
have any--or perform its worship without priests, as the Quakers do."

"It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells whilst so many
infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the
streets. The abundance that France possesses is sufficient for every
want, if rightly applied; but priests and bells, like articles of
luxury, ought to be the least articles of consideration."

"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest to do so.
Religion is not an act that can be performed by proxy. One person cannot
act religion for another. Every person must perform it for himself; and
all that a priest can do is to take from him; he wants nothing but his
money, and then to riot in the spoil and laugh at his credulity. The
only people who, as a professional sect of Christians, provide for the
poor of their society, are people known by the name of Quakers. These
men have no priests. They assemble quietly in their places of worship,
and do not disturb their neighbors with shows and noise of bells.
Religion does not unite itself to show and noise. True religion is
without either.'

"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. If we look
back at what was the condition of France under the _ancien régime_ we
cannot acquit the priests of corrupting the morals of the nation."

"Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, while the
Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically
the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different.
Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men,
can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."

While Thomas Paine was thus founding; in Paris a religion of love to God
expressed in love to man, his enemies in England were illustrating
by characteristic fruits the dogmas based on a human sacrifice. The
ascendency of the priesthood of one church over others, which he
was resisting in France, was exemplified across the channel in the
prosecution of his publisher, and the confiscation of a thousand pounds
which had somehow fallen due to Paine.* The "Age of Reason," amply
advertised by its opponents, had reached a vast circulation, and a
prosecution of its publisher, Thomas Williams, for blasphemy, was
instituted in the King's Bench. Williams being a poor man, the defence
was sustained by a subscription.**

     * This loss, mentioned by Paine in a private note, occurred
     about the time when he had devoted the proceeds of his
     pamphlet on English Finance, a very large sum, to prisoners
     held for debt in Newgate. I suppose the thousand pounds were
     the proceeds of the "Age of Reason."

     ** Subscriptions (says his circular) will be received by J.
     Ashley, Shoemaker, No. 6 High Holborn; C. Cooper, Grocer,
     New Compton St., Soho; G. Wilkinson, Printer, No. 115
     Shoreditch; J. Rhynd, Printer, Ray St., Clerkenwell; R.
     Hodgson, Hatter, No. 29 Brook St., Holborn. It will be
     observed that the defence of free printing had fallen to
     humble people.

The trial occurred June 24th. The extent to which the English reign
of terror had gone was shown in the fact that Erskine was now the
prosecutor; he who five years before had defended the "Rights of Man,"
who had left the court in a carriage drawn by the people, now stood
in the same room to assail the most sacred of rights. He began with a
menace to the defendant's counsel (S. Kyd) on account of a notice served
on the prosecution, foreshadowing a search into the Scriptures.*

     * "The King v. Thomas Williams for Blasphemy.--Take notice
     that the Prosecutors of the Indictment against the above
     named Defendant will upon the Trial of this cause be
     required to produce a certain Book described in the said
     Indictment to be the Holy Bible.--John Martin. Solicitor for
     the Defendant.   Dated the 17th day of June 1797."

"No man," he cried, "deserves to be upon the Rolls of the Court who
dares, as an Attorney, to put his name to such a notice. It is an insult
to the authority and dignity of the Court of which he is an officer;
since it seems to call in question the very foundations of its
jurisdiction." So soon did Erskine point the satire of the fable he
quoted from Lucian, in Paine's defence, of Jupiter answering arguments
with thunderbolts. Erskine's argument was that the King had taken a
solemn oath "to maintain the Christian Religion as it is promulgated by
God in the Holy Scriptures." "Every man has a right to investigate, with
modesty and decency, controversial points of the Christian religion; but
no man, consistently with a law which only exists under its sanction,
has a right not only broadly to deny its very existence, but to pour
forth a shocking and insulting invective, etc." The law, he said,
permits, by a like principle, the intercourse between the sexes to
be set forth in plays and novels, but punishes such as "address the
imagination in a manner to lead the passions into dangerous excesses."
Erskine read several passages from the "Age of Reason," which, their
main point being omitted, seemed mere aimless abuse. In his speech, he
quoted as Paine's words of his own collocation, representing the author
as saying, "The Bible teaches nothing but 'lies, obscenity, cruelty,
and injustice.'" This is his entire and inaccurate rendering of
what Paine,--who always distinguishes the "Bible" from the "New
Testament,"--says at the close of his comment on the massacre of the
Midianites and appropriation of their maidens:

"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 [Old Testament] is true, and that it is good;
they permit themselves not to doubt it; and they carry the ideas they
form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book 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?"

Erskine argued that the sanction of Law was the oath by which judges,
juries, witnesses administered law and justice under a belief in
"the revelation of the unutterable blessings which shall attend their
observances, and the awful punishments which shall await upon their
transgressions." The rest of his opening argument was, mainly, that
great men had believed in Christianity.

Mr. Kyd, in replying, quoted from the Bishop of Llandaff's "Answer to
Gibbon": "I look upon the right of private judgment, in every respect
concerning God and ourselves, as superior to the control of human
authority"; and his claim that the Church of England is distinguished
from Mahometanism and Romanism by its permission of every man to utter
his opinion freely. He also cites Dr. Lardner, and Dr. Waddington,
the Bishop of Chichester, who declared that Woolston "ought not to be
punished for being an infidel, nor for writing against the Christian
religion." He quoted Paine's profession of faith on the first page of
the incriminated book: "I believe in one God and no more; I hope for
happiness, beyond this life; I believe in the equality of men, and I
believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy,
and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy." He also quoted
Paine's homage to the character of Jesus. He defied the prosecution to
find in the "Age of Reason" a single passage "inconsistent with the
most chaste, the most correct system of morals," and declared the very
passages selected for indictment pleas against obscenity and cruelty.
Mr. Kyd pointed out fourteen narratives in the Bible (such as Sarah
giving Hagar to Abraham, Lot and his daughters, etc.) which, if found in
any other book, would be pronounced obscene. He was about to enumerate
instances of cruelty when the judge, Lord Kenyon, indignantly
interrupted him, and with consent of the jury said he could only allow
him to cite such passages without reading them. (Mr. Kyd gratefully
acknowledged this release from the "painful task" of reading such
horrors from the "Word of God"!) One of the interesting things about
this trial was the disclosure of the general reliance on Butler's
"Analogy," used by Bishop Watson in his reply to Paine,--namely, that
the cruelties objected to in the God of the Bible are equally found
in nature, through which deists look up to their God. When Kyd, after
quoting from Bishop Watson, said, "Gentlemen, observe the weakness of
this answer," Lord Kenyon exclaimed: "I cannot sit in this place and
hear this kind of discussion." Kyd said: "My Lord, I stand here on the
privilege of an advocate in an English Court of Justice: this man has
applied to me to defend him; I have undertaken his defence; and I have
often heard your Lordship declare, that every man had a right to be
defended. I know no other mode by which I can seriously defend him
against this charge, than that which I am now pursuing; if your Lordship
wish to prevent me from pursuing it, you may as well tell me to abandon
my duty to my client at once." Lord Kenyon said: "Go on, Sir." Returning
to the analogy of the divinely ordered massacres in the Bible with the
like in nature, Kyd said:

"Gentlemen, this is reasoning by comparison; and reasoning by comparison
is often fallacious. On the present occasion the fallacy is this: that,
in the first case, the persons perish by the operation of the general
laws of nature, not suffering punishment for a crime; whereas, in the
latter, the general laws of nature are suspended or transgressed, and
God commands the slaughter to avenge his offended will. Is this then
a satisfactory answer to the objection? I think it is not; another may
think so too; which it may be fairly supposed the Author did; and then
the objection, as to him, remains in full force, and he cannot, from
insisting upon it, be fairly accused of malevolent intention."

In his answer Erskine said: "The history of man is the history of man's
vices and passions, which could not be censured without adverting to
their existence; many of the instances that have been referred to were
recorded as memorable warnings and examples for the instruction of
mankind." But for this argument Erskine was indebted to his old client,
Paine, who did not argue against the things being recorded, but against
the belief "that the inhuman and horrid butcheries of men, women, and
children, told of in those books, were done, as those books say they
were done, at the command of God." Paine says: "Those accounts are
nothing to us, nor to any other persons, 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."

As in Paines own trial in 1792, the infallible scheme of a special jury
was used against Williams. Lord Kenyon closed his charge with the words:
"Unless it was for the most malignant purposes, I cannot conceive how it
was published. It is, however, for you to judge of it, and to do justice
between the Public and the Defendant."

"The jury instantly found the Defendant--Guilty."

Paine at once wrote a letter to Erskine, which was first printed in
Paris. He calls attention to the injustice of the special jury system,
in which all the jurymen are nominated by the crown. In London a special
jury generally consists of merchants. "Talk to some London merchants
about scripture, and they will understand you mean scrip, and tell you
how much it is worth at the Stock Exchange. Ask them about Theology,
and they will say they know no such gentleman upon 'Change." He also
declares that Lord Kenyon's course in preventing Mr. Kyd from reading
passages from the Bible was irregular, and contrary to words, which he
cites, used by the same judge in another case.

This Letter to Erskine contains some effective passages. In one of these
he points out the sophistical character of the indictment in declaring
the "Age of Reason" a blasphemous work, tending to bring in contempt
the holy scriptures. "The charge should have stated that the work was
intended to prove certain books not the holy scriptures. It is one
thing if I ridicule a work as being written by a certain person; but it
is quite a different thing if I write to prove that such a work was not
written by such person. In the first case I attack the person through
the work; in the other case I defend the honour of the person against
the work." After alluding to the two accounts in Genesis of the creation
of man, according to one of which there was no Garden of Eden and no
forbidden tree, Paine says:

"Perhaps I shall be told in the cant language of the day, as I have
often been told by the Bishop of Llandaff and others, of the great and
laudable pains that many pious and learned men have taken to explain the
obscure, and reconcile the contradictory, or, as they say, the seemingly
contradictory passages of the Bible. It is because the Bible needs such
an undertaking, that is one of the first causes to suspect it is _not_
the word of God: this single reflection, when carried home to the mind,
is in itself a volume. What! does not the Creator of the Universe, the
Fountain of all Wisdom, the Origin of all Science, the Author of all
Knowledge, the God of Order and of Harmony, know how to write? When
we contemplate the vast economy of the creation, when we behold the
unerring regularity of the visible solar system, the perfection with
which all its several parts revolve, and by corresponding assemblage
form a whole;--when we launch our eye into the boundless ocean of space,
and see ourselves surrounded by innumerable worlds, not one of which
varies from its appointed place--when we trace the power of a Creator,
from a mite to an elephant, from an atom to an universe, can we suppose
that the mind [which] could conceive such a design, and the power
that executed it with incomparable perfection, cannot write without
inconsistence; or that a book so written can be the work of such a
power? The writings of Thomas Paine, even of Thomas Paine, need no
commentator to explain, compound, arrange, and re-arrange their several
parts, to render them intelligible--he can relate a fact, or write an
essay, without forgetting in one page what he has written in another;
certainly then, did the God of all perfection condescend to write or
dictate a book, that book would be as perfect as himself is perfect: The
Bible is not so, and it is confessedly not so, by the attempts to mend
it."

Paine admonishes Erskine that a prosecution to preserve God's word, were
it really God's word, would be like a prosecution to prevent the sun
from falling out of heaven; also that he should be able to comprehend
that the motives of those who declare the Bible not God's word
are religious. He then gives him an account of the new church of
Theophilanthropists in Paris, and appends his discourse before that
society.

In the following year, Paine's discourse to the Theophilanthropists was
separately printed by Clio Rickman, with a sentence from Shakespeare
in the title-page: "I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the
morality of imprisonment" There was also the following dedication:

"The following little Discourse is dedicated to the enemies of Thomas
Paine, by one who has known him long and intimately, and who is
convinced that he is the enemy of no man. It is printed to do good, by
a well wisher to the world. By one who thinks that discussion should
be unlimited, that all coercion is error; and that human beings should
adopt no other conduct towards each other but an appeal to truth and
reason."

Paine wrote privately, in the same sense as to Erskine, to his
remonstrating friends. In one such letter (May 12th) he goes again
partly over the ground. "You," he says, "believe in the Bible from the
accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same
accident, and each calls the other _infidel_. This answer to your letter
is not written for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written
to satisfy you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief
of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God." "All
are infidels who believe falsely of God." "Belief in a cruel God makes a
cruel man."

Paine had for some time been attaining unique fame in England. Some
publisher had found it worth while to issue a book, entitled "Tom
Paine's Jests: Being an entirely new and select Collection of Patriotic
Bon Mots, Repartees, Anecdotes, Epigrams, &c, on Political Subjects. By
Thomas Paine." There are hardly a half dozen items by Paine in the book
(72 pages), which shows that his name was considered marketable. The
government had made the author a cause. Erskine, who had lost his office
as Attorney-General for the Prince of Wales by becoming Paine's counsel
in 1792, was at once taken back into favor after prosecuting the "Age of
Reason," and put on his way to become Lord Erskine. The imprisonment of
Williams caused a reaction in the minds of those who had turned
against Paine. Christianity suffered under royal patronage. The terror
manifested at the name of Paine--some were arrested even for showing his
portrait--was felt to be political. None of the aristocratic deists, who
wrote for the upper classes, were dealt with in the same way. Paine had
proclaimed from the housetops what, as Dr. Watson confessed, scholars
were whispering in the ear. There were lampoons of Paine, such as
those of Peter Pindar (Rev. John Wolcott), but they only served to
whet popular curiosity concerning him.* The "Age of Reason" had passed
through several editions before it was outlawed, and every copy of it
passed through many hands. From the prosecution and imprisonment of
Williams may be dated the consolidation of the movement for the
"Rights of Man," with antagonism to the kind of Christianity which
that injustice illustrated. Political liberalism and heresy thenceforth
progressed in England, hand in hand.

     * "I have preserved," says Royall Tyler, "an epigram of
     Peter Pindar's, written originally in a blank leaf of a copy
     of Paine's 'Age of Reason,' and not inserted in any of his
     works.

"'Tommy Paine wrote this book to prove that the bible Was an old woman's
dream of fancies most idle; That Solomon's proverbs were made by low
livers, That prophets were fellows who sang semiquavers; That religion
and miracles all were a jest, And the devil in torment a tale of the
priest. Though Beelzebub's absence from hell I 'll maintain! Yet we all
must allow that the Devil's in Paine.'"




CHAPTER XIV. THE REPUBLICAN ABDIEL

The sight of James Monroe and Thomas Paine in France, representing
Republican America, was more than Gouverneur Morris could stand. He sent
to Washington the abominable slander of Monroe already quoted (ii., p.
173), and the Minister's recall came at the close of 1796.* Monroe
could not sail in midwinter with his family, so they remained until
the following spring. Paine made preparations to return to America
with them, and accompanied them to Havre; but he found so many "british
frigates cruising in sight" (so he writes Jefferson) that he did not
"trust [himself] to their discretion, and the more so as [he] had no
confidence in the Captain of the Dublin Packet" Sure enough this Captain
Clay was friendly enough with the British cruiser which lay in wait
to catch Paine, but only succeeded in finding his letter to Jefferson.
Before returning from Havre to Paris he wrote another letter to
Vice-President Jefferson.

     * This sudden recall involved Monroe in heavy expenses,
     which Congress afterwards repaid. I am indebted to Mr.
     Frederick McGuire, of Washington, for the manuscript of
     Monroe's statement of his expenses and annoyances caused by
     his recall, which he declares due to "the representations
     which were made to him [Washington] by those in whom he
     confided." He states that Paine remained in his house a year
     and a half, and that be advanced him 250 louis d'or. For
     these services to Paine, he adds, "no claims were ever
     presented on my part, nor is any indemnity now desired."
     This money was repaid ($1,188) to Monroe by an Act of
     Congress, April 7, 1831. The advances are stated in the Act
     to have been made "from time to time," and were no doubt
     regarded by both Paine and Monroe as compensated by the many
     services rendered by the author to the Legation.

"Havre, May 14th, 1797.

"Dear Sir,--I wrote to you by the Ship Dublin Packet, Captain Clay,
mentioning my intention to have returned to America by that Vessel, and
to have suggested to some Member of the House of Representatives the
propriety of calling Mr. Monroe before them to have enquired into the
state of their affairs in France. This might have laid the foundation
for some resolves on their part that might have led to an accommodation
with France, for that House is the only part of the American Government
that have any reputation here. I apprised Mr. Monroe of my design, and
he wishes to be called up.

"You will have heard before this reaches you that the Emperor has been
obliged to sue for peace, and to consent to the establishment of the new
republic in Lombardy. How France will proceed with respect to England,
I am not, at this distance from Paris, in the way of knowing, but am
inclined to think she meditates a descent upon that Country, and a
revolution in its Government. If this should be the plan, it will keep
me in Europe at least another year.

"As the british party has thrown the American commerce into wretched
confusion, it is necessary to pay more attention to the appointment of
Consuls in the ports of france, than there was occasion to do in time
of peace; especially as there is now no Minister, and Mr. Skipwith,
who stood well with the Government here, has resigned. Mr. Cutting, the
Consul for Havre, does not reside at it, and the business is altogether
in the hands of De la Motte, the Vice Consul, who is a frenchman, [and]
cannot have the full authority proper for the office in the difficult
state matters are now in. I do not mention this to the disadvantage of
Mr. Cutting, for no man is more proper than himself if he thought it an
object to attend to.

"I know not if you are acquainted with Captain Johnson of
Massachusetts--he is a staunch man and one of the oldest American
Captains in the American employ. He is now settled at Havre and is a
more proper man for a Vice Consul than La Motte. You can learn his
character from Mr. Monroe. He has written to some of his friends to have
the appointment and if you can see an opportunity of throwing in a
little service for him, you will do a good thing. We have had several
reports of Mr. Madison's coming. He would be well received as an
individual, but as an Envoy of John Adams he could do nothing.

"Thomas Paine."

The following, in Paine's handwriting, is copied from the original in
the Morrison papers, at the British Museum. It was written in the summer
of 1797, when Lord Malmsbury was at Lille in negotiation for peace.
The negotiations were broken off because the English commissioners were
unauthorized to make the demanded restorations to Holland and Spain.
Paine's essay was no doubt sent to the Directory in the interests of
peace, suggesting as it does a compromise, as regards the Cape of Good
Hope.

"Cape of Good Hope.--It is very well known that Dun-das, the English
Minister for Indian affairs, is tenacious of holding the Cape of Good
Hope, because it will give to the English East India Company a monopoly
of the commerce of India; and this, on the other hand, is the very
reason that such a claim is inadmissible by France, and by all the
nations trading in India and to Canton, and would also be injurious to
Canton itself.--We pretend not to know anything of the négociations at
Lille, but it is very easy to see, from the nature of the case, what
ought to be the condition of the Cape. It ought to be a free port open
to the vessels of all nations trading to any part of the East Indias. It
ought also to be a neutral port at all times, under the guarantee of
all nations; the expense of keeping the port in constant repair to
be defrayed by a tonnage tax to be paid by every vessel, whether
of commerce or of war, and in proportion to the time of their
stay.--Nothing then remains but with respect to the nation who shall be
the port-master; and this ought to be the Dutch, because they understand
the business best. As the Cape is a half-way stage between Europe and
India, it ought to be considered as a tavern, where travellers on a long
journey put up for rest and refreshment.--T. P."

The suspension of peace negotiations,* and the bloodless defeat of
Pichigru's conspiracy of 18 Fructidor (September 4th) were followed by a
pamphlet addressed to "The People of France and the French Armies." This
little work is of historical value, in connection with 18 Fructidor, but
it was evidently written to carry two practical points. The first was,
that if the war with England must continue it should be directed to the
end of breaking the Anglo-Germanic compact. England has the right to
her internal arrangements, but this is an external matter. While "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," English
intrigues on the continent "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." Paine's other main point is, that the neutral nations should
secure, in time of war, an unarmed neutrality.

     * In a letter to Duane, many years later, Paine relates the
     following story concerning the British Union: "When Lord
     Malmsbury arrived in Paris, in the time of the Directory
     Government, to open a négociation for a peace, his
     credentials ran in the old style of 'George, by the grace of
     God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, king.' Malmsbury
     was informed that although the assumed title of king of
     France, in his credentials, would not prevent France opening
     a négociation, yet that no treaty of peace could be
     concluded until that assumed title was removed. Pitt then
     hit on the Union. Bill, under which the assumed title of
     king of France was discontinued."

"Were the neutral nations to associate, under an honorable injunction of
fidelity to each other, and publickly 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 merchandize, 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 in 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 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."

It is a notable illustration of the wayward course of political
evolution, that the English republic--for it is such--grew largely out
of the very parts of its constitution once so oppressive. The foreign
origin of the royal family helped to form its wholesome timidity about
meddling with politics, allowing thus a development of ministerial
government. The hereditary character of the throne, which George
III.'s half-insane condition associated with the recklessness of
irresponsibility, was by his complete insanity made to serve ministerial
independence. Regency is timid about claiming power, and childhood
cannot exercise it. The decline of royal and aristocratic authority in
England secured freedom to commerce, which necessarily gave hostages to
peace. The protection of neutral commerce at sea, concerning which Paine
wrote so much, ultimately resulted from English naval strength, which
formerly scourged the world.

To Paine, England, at the close of 1797, could appear only as a
dragon-guarded prison of fair Humanity. The press was paralyzed,
thinkers and publishers were in prison, some of the old orators like
Erskine were bought up, and the forlorn hope of liberty rested only with
Fox and his fifty in Parliament, overborne by a majority made brutal by
strength. The groans of imprisoned thought in his native land reached
its outlawed representative in Paris. And at the same time the inhuman
decree went forth from that country that there should be no peace with
France. It had long been his conviction that the readiness of Great
Britain to go to war was due to an insular position that kept the
horrors at a distance. War never came home to her. This conviction,
which we have several times met in these pages, returned to him with new
force when England now insisted on more bloodshed. He was convinced that
the right course of France would be to make a descent on England, ship
the royal family to Hanover, open the political prisons, and secure the
people freedom to make a Constitution. These views, freely expressed
to his friends of the Directory and Legislature, reached the ears of
Napoleon on his triumphal return from Italy.

The great man called upon Paine in his little room, and invited him
to dinner. He made the eloquent professions of republicanism so
characteristic of Napoleons until they became pretenders. He told Paine
that he slept with the "Rights of Man" under his pillow, and that its
author ought to have a statue of gold.*

     * Rickman, p. 164.

He consulted Paine about a descent on England, and adopted the plan. He
invited the author to accompany the expedition, which was to consist of
a thousand gun-boats, with a hundred men each. Paine consented, "as
[so he wrote Jefferson] the intention of the expedition was to give the
people of England an opportunity of forming a government for themselves,
and thereby bring about peace." One of the points to be aimed at was
Norfolk, and no doubt Paine indulged a happy vision of standing once
more in Thetford and proclaiming liberty throughout the land!

The following letter (December 29, 1797) from Paine to Barras is in the
archives of the Directory, with a French translation:

"Citizen President,--A very particular friend of mine, who had a
passport to go to London upon some family affairs and to return in three
months, and whom I had commissioned upon some affairs of my own (for
I find that the English government has seized upon a thousand pounds
sterling which I had in the hands of a friend), returned two days ago
and gave me the memorandum which I enclose:--the first part relates only
to my publication on the event of the 18 Fructidor, and to a letter to
Erskine (who had been counsel for the prosecution against a former
work of mine the 'Age of Reason') both of which I desired my friend to
publish in London. The other part of the memorandum respects the state
of affairs in that country, by which I see they have little or no idea
of a descent being made upon them; tant mieux--but they will be guarded
in Ireland, as they expect a descent there.

"I expect a printed copy of the letter to Erskine in a day or two. As
this is in English, and on a subject that will be amusing to the Citizen
Revellière Le Peaux, I will send it to him. The friend of whom I speak
was a pupil of Dessault the surgeon, and whom I once introduced to
you at a public audience in company with Captain Cooper on his plan
respecting the Island of Bermuda.--Salut et Respect."




{1798}

Thus once again did the great hope of a liberated, peaceful, and
republican Europe shine before simple-hearted Paine. He was rather poor
now, but gathered up all the money he had, and sent it to the Council of
Five Hundred. The accompanying letter was read by Coupe at the sitting
of January 28, 1798:

"Citizens Representatives,--Though it is not convenient to me, in the
present situation of my affairs, to subscribe to the loan towards the
descent upon England, my economy permits me to make a small patriotic
donation. I send a hundred livres, and with it all the wishes of my
heart for the success of the descent, and a voluntary offer of any
service I can render to promote it.

"There will be no lasting peace for France, nor for the world, until
the tyranny and corruption of the English government be abolished, and
England, like Italy, become a sister republic. As to those men, whether
in England, Scotland, or Ireland, who, like Robespierre in France, are
covered with crimes, they, like him, have no other resource than in
committing more. But the mass of the people are the friends of liberty:
tyranny and taxation oppress them, but they deserve to be free.

"Accept, Citizens Representatives, the congratulations of an old
colleague in the dangers we have passed, and on the happy prospect
before us. Salut et respect.

"Thomas Paine."

Coupe added: "The gift which Thomas Paine offers you appears very
trifling, when it is compared with the revolting injustice which this
faithful friend of liberty has experienced from the English government;
but compare it with the state of poverty in which our former colleague
finds himself, and you will then think it considerable." He moved that
the notice of this gift and Thomas Paine's letter be printed. "Mention
honorable et impression," adds the Moniteur.

The President of the Directory at this time was Larevéllière-Lépeaux, a
friend of the Theophilanthropic Society. To him Paine gave, in English,
which the president understood, a plan for the descent, which was
translated into French, and adopted by the Directory. Two hundred and
fifty gun-boats were built, and the expedition abandoned. To Jefferson,
Paine intimates his suspicion that it was all "only a feint to cover the
expedition to Egypt, which was then preparing." He also states that the
British descent on Ostend, where some two thousand of them were made
prisoners, "was in search of the gun-boats, and to cut the dykes, to
prevent their being assembled." This he was told by Vanhuile, of Bruges,
who heard it from the British officers.

After the failure of his attempt to return to America with the Monroes,
Paine was for a time the guest of Nicolas de Bonneville, in Paris,
and the visit ended in an arrangement for his abode with that family.
Bonneville was an editor, thirty-seven years of age, and had been one of
the five members of Paine's Republican Club, which placarded Paris with
its manifesto after the king's flight in 1791. An enthusiastic
devotee of Paine's principles from youth, he had advocated them in
his successive journals, _Le Tribun du Peuple, Bouche de Fer, and
Bien Informé_. He had resisted Marat and Robespierre, and suffered
imprisonment during the Terror. He spoke English fluently, and was
well known in the world of letters by some striking poems, also by his
translation into French of German tales, and parts of Shakespeare. He
had set up a printing office at No. 4 Rue du Théâtre-Français, where he
published liberal pamphlets, also his _Bien Informé_. Then, in 1794, he
printed in French the "Age of Reason." He also published, and probably
translated into French, Paine's letter to the now exiled Camille
Jordan,--"Lettre de Thomas Paine, sur les Cultes." Paine, unable to
converse in French, found with the Bonnevilles a home he needed. M. and
Madame Bonneville had been married three years, and their second child
had been named after Thomas Paine, who stood as his godfather. Paine,
as we learn from Rickman, who knew the Bonnevilles, paid board, but no
doubt he aided Bonneville more by his pen.

With public affairs, either in France or America, Paine now mingled but
little. The election of John Adams to the presidency he heard of with
dismay. He wrote to Jefferson that since he was not president, he was
glad he had accepted the vice-presidency, "for John Adams has such a
talent for blundering and offending, it will be necessary to keep an eye
over him." Finding, by the abandonment of a descent on. England for
one on Egypt, that Napoleon was by no means his ideal missionary of
republicanism, he withdrew into his little study, and now remained so
quiet that some English papers announced his arrival and cool reception
in America. He was, however, fairly bored with visitors from all parts
of the world, curious to see the one international republican left.
It became necessary for Madame Bonneville, armed with polite
prevarications, to defend him from such sight-seers. For what with
his visits to and from the Barlows, the Smiths, and his friends of the
Directory, Paine had too little time for the inventions in which he was
again absorbed,--his "Saints." Among his intimate friends at this time
was Robert Fulton, then residing in Paris. Paine's extensive studies
of the steam-engine, and his early discovery, of its adaptability to
navigation, had caused Rumsey to seek him in England, and Fitch to
consult him both in America and Paris. Paine's connection with the
invention of the steamboat was recognized by Fulton, as indeed by all of
his scientific contemporaries.* To Fulton he freely gave his ideas,
and may perhaps have had some hope that the steamboat might prove a
missionary of international republicanism, though Napoleon had failed.

     * Sir Richard Phillips says: "In 1778 Thomas Paine proposed,
     in America, this application of steam." ("Million of Facts,"
     p. 776.) As Sir Richard assisted Fulton in his experiments
     on the Thames, he probably heard from him the fact about
     Paine, though, indeed, in the controversy between Rumsey and
     Fitch, Paine's priority to both was conceded. In America,
     however, the priority really belonged to the eminent
     mechanician William Henry, of Lancaster, Pa. When Fitch
     visited Henry, in 1785, he was told by him that he was not
     the first to devise steam-navigation; that he himself had
     thought of it in 1776, and mentioned it to Andrew Ellicott;
     and that Thomas Paine, while a guest at his house in 1778,
     had spoken to him on the subject I am indebted to Mr. John
     W. Jordan, of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for
     notes from the papers of Henry, his ancestor, showing that
     Paine's scheme was formed without knowledge of others, and
     that it contemplated a turbine application of steam to a
     wheel. Both he and Henry, as they had not published their
     plans, agreed to leave Fitch the whole credit. Fitch
     publicly expressed his gratitude to Paine. Thurston adds
     that Paine, in 1788, proposed that Congress should adopt the
     whole matter for the national benefit. ("History of the
     Growth of the Steam Engine," pp. 252, 253.)

It will not be forgotten that in the same year in which Paine startled
William Henry with a plan for steam-navigation, namely in 1778, he wrote
his sublime sentence about the "Religion of Humanity." The steamships,
which Emerson described as enormous shuttles weaving the races of
men into the woof of humanity, have at length rendered possible that
universal human religion which Paine foresaw. In that old Lancaster
mansion of the Henrys, which still stands, Paine left his spectacles,
now in our National Museum; they are strong and far-seeing; through them
looked eyes held by visions that the world is still steadily following.
One cannot suppress some transcendental sentiment in view of
the mystical harmony of this man's inventions for human
welfare,--mechanical, political, religious. Of his gunpowder motor,
mention has already been made (i., p. 240). On this he was engaged
about the time that he was answering Bishop Watson's book on the "Age of
Reason." The two occupations are related. He could not believe, he said,
that the qualities of gunpowder--the small and light grain with maximum
of force--were meant only for murder, and his faith in the divine
humanity is in the sentence. To supersede destroying gunpowder with
beneficent gunpowder, and to supersede the god of battles with the God
of Love, were kindred aims in Paine's heart Through the fiery furnaces
of his time he had come forth with every part of his being welded and
beaten and shaped together for this Human Service. Patriotism, in the
conventional sense, race-pride, sectarianism, partizanship, had been
burnt out of his nature. The universe could not have wrung from his
tongue approval of a wrong because it was done by his own country.

It might be supposed that there were no heavier trials awaiting Paine's
political faith than those it had undergone. But it was becoming evident
that liberty had not the advantage he once ascribed to truth over
error,--"it cannot be unlearned." The United States had unlearned it as
far as to put into the President's hands a power of arbitrarily crushing
political opponents, such as even George III. hardly aspired to. The
British Treaty had begun to bear its natural fruits. Washington signed
the Treaty to avoid war, and rendered war inevitable with both France
and England. The affair with France was happily a transient squall, but
it was sufficient to again bring on Paine the offices of an American
Minister in France. Many an American in that country had occasion to
appreciate his powerful aid and unfailing kindness. Among these was
Captain Rowland Crocker of Massachusetts, who had sailed with a letter
of marque. 'His vessel was captured by the French, and its wounded
commander brought to Paris, where he was more agreeably conquered by
kindness. Freeman's "History of Cape Cod" (of which region Crocker was a
native) has the following:

"His [Captain Crocker's] reminiscences of his residence in that country,
during the most extraordinary period of its history, were of a highly
interesting character. He had taken the great Napoleon by the hand; he
had familiarly known Paine, at a time when his society was sought for
and was valuable. Of this noted individual, we may in passing say, with
his uniform and characteristic kindness, he always spoke in terms which
sounded strange to the ears of a generation which has been taught, with
or without justice, to regard the author of 'The Age of Reason' with
loathing and abhorrence. He remembered Paine as a well-dressed and most
gentlemanly man, of sound and orthodox republican principles, of a good
heart, a strong intellect, and a fascinating address."




{1799}

The _coup d'état_ in America, which made President Adams virtual
emperor, pretended constitutionality, and was reversible. That which
Napoleon and Sievès--who had his way at last--effected in France
(November 9, 1799) was lawless and fatal. The peaceful Bonneville home
was broken up. Bonneville, in his _Bien Informé_ described Napoleon as
"a Cromwell," and was promptly imprisoned. Paine, either before or soon
after this catastrophe, went to Belgium, on a visit to his old friend
Vanhuile, who had shared his cell in the Luxembourg prison. Vanhuile
was now president of the municipality of Bruges, and Paine got from him
information about European affairs. On his return he found Bonneville
released from prison, but under severe surveillance, his journal being
suppressed. The family was thus reduced to penury and anxiety, but there
was all the more reason that Paine should stand by them. He continued
his abode in their house, now probably supported by drafts on his
resources in America, to which country they turned their thoughts.




{1800}

The European Republic on land having become hopeless, Paine turned
his attention to the seas. He wrote a pamphlet on "Maritime Compact,"
including in it ten articles for the security of neutral commerce, to
be signed by the nations entering the "Unarmed Association," which he
proposed. This scheme was substantially the same as that already quoted
from his letter "To the People of France, and to the French Armies."
It was translated by Bonneville, and widely circulated in Europe. Paine
sent it in manuscript to Jefferson, who at once had it printed. His
accompanying letter to Jefferson (October i, 1800) is of too much
biographical interest to be abridged.

     * Oliver Ellsworth, William V. Murray, and William R. Davie,
     were sent by President Adams to France to negotiate a
     treaty. There is little doubt that the famous letter of Joel
     Barlow to Washington, October 2, 1798, written in the
     interest of peace, was composed after consultation with
     Paine. Adams, on reading the letter, abused Barlow.    "Tom
     Paine," he said, "is not a more worthless fellow." But he
     obeyed the letter. The Commissioners he sent were associated
     with the anti-French and British party in America, but peace
     with America was of too much importance to the new despot of
     France for the opportunity to be missed of forming a Treaty.

"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). 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." 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. Upon my return to Paris I learned 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 Sam.
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.

"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 Ingolstad), as security that he would sign them.
This is the state things [they] 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 Luneville, 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 knew 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. 1, 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. 1.
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.

"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. The french revolution and Mr. Burke's attack
upon it, drew me off from any pontifical Works. Since my coming from
England in '92, an Iron Bridge of a single arch 236 feet span versed
sine 34 feet, has been cast at the Iron Works of the Walkers where my
model was, and erected over the river Wear at Sunderland in the county
of Durham in England. The two members in Parliament for the County,
Mr. Bourdon and Mr. Milbank, were the principal subscribers; but the
direction was committed to Mr. Bourdon. A very sincere friend of mine,
Sir Robert Smyth, who lives in france, and whom Mr. Monroe well knows,
supposing they had taken their plan from my model wrote to Mr. Milbank
upon the subject. Mr. Milbank answered the letter, which answer I have
by me and I give you word for word the part concerning the Bridge: 'With
respect to the Bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland it certainly is
a Work well deserving admiration both for its structure, durability
and utility, and I have good grounds for saying that the first Idea was
taken from Mr. Paine's bridge exhibited at Paddington. But with respect
to any compensation to Mr. Paine, however desirous of rewarding the
labours of an ingenious man, I see not how it is in my power, having had
nothing to do with his bridge after the payment of my subscription, Mr.
Bourdon being accountable for the whole. But if you can point out
any mode by which I can be instrumental in procuring for Mr. P. any
compensation for the advantages which the public may have derived from
his ingenious model, from which certainly the outlines of the Bridge
at Sunderland was taken, be assured it will afford me very great
satisfaction.'

"I have now made two other models, 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 Métal following the construction of that
in pasteboard 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. 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.

"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 tomorrow. 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."

As the Commissioners did not leave when they expected, Paine added
several other letters to Jefferson, on public affairs. In one (October
1st) he says he has information of increasing aversion in the English
people to their government. "It was the hope of conquest, and is now the
hope of peace that keeps it [Pitt's administration] up." Pitt is anxious
about his paper money. "The credit of Paper is suspicion asleep. When
suspicion wakes the credit vanishes as the dream would." "England has a
large Navy, and the expense of it leads to her ruin." The English nation
is tired of war, longs for peace, "and calculates upon defeat as
it would upon victory." On October 4th, after the Commissioners had
concluded a treaty, Paine alludes to an article said to be in it,
requiring certain expenditures in France, and says that if he,
Jefferson, be "in the chair, and not otherwise," he should offer himself
for this business, should an agent be required "It will serve to defray
my expenses until I can return, but I wish it may be with the condition
of returning. I am not tired of working for nothing, but I cannot afford
it. This appointment will aid me in promoting the object I am now upon
of a law of nations for the protection of neutral commerce." On October
6th he reports to Jefferson that at an entertainment given the American
envoys, Consul Le Brun gave the toast: "A l'union de l'Amérique avec les
puissances du Nord pour faire respecter la liberté des mers." On October
15th the last of his enclosures to Jefferson is written. He says that
Napoleon, when asked if there would be more war, replied: "Nous
n'aurions plus qu'une guerre d'écritoire." In all of Paine's writing
about Napoleon, at this time, he seems as if watching a thundercloud,
and trying to make out meteorologically its drift, and where it will
strike.




CHAPTER XXV. THE LAST YEAR IN EUROPE.




{1801}

On July 15, 1801, Napoleon concluded with Pius VII. the Concordat.
Naturally, the first victim offered on the restored altar was
Theophilan-thropy. I have called Paine the founder of this Society,
because it arose amid the controversy excited by the publication of "Le
Siècle de la Raison," its manual and tracts reproducing his ideas and
language; and because he gave the inaugural discourse. Theism was little
known in France save as iconoclasm, and an assault on the Church: Paine
treated it as a Religion. But, as he did not speak French, the practical
organization and management of the Society were the work of others, and
mainly of a Russian named Hauëy. There had been a good deal of odium
incurred at first by a society which satisfied neither the pious nor the
freethinkers, but it found a strong friend on the Directory. This
was Larévellière-Lépeaux, whose secretary, Antoine Vallée, and young
daughter, had become interested in the movement. This statesman never
joined the Society, but he had attended one of its meetings, and, when
a distribution of religious edifices was made, Theophilanthropy was
assigned ten parish churches. It is said that when Larevéllière-Lépeaux
mentioned to Talleyrand his desire for the spread of this Society, the
diplomat said: "All you have to do is to get yourself hanged, and revive
the third day." Paine, who had pretty nearly fulfilled that requirement,
saw the Society spread rapidly, and he had great hopes of its future.
But Pius: VII. also had an interested eye on it, and though the
Concordat did not go into legal operation until 1802, Theophilanthropy
was offered as a preliminary sacrifice in October, 1801.

The description of Paine by Walter Savage Landor, and representations
of his talk, in the "Imaginary Conversations," so mix up persons, times,
and places, that I was at one time inclined to doubt whether the two had
met. But Mr. J. M. Wheeler, a valued correspondent in London, writes
me: "Landor told my friend Mr. Birch of Florence that he particularly
admired Paine, and that he visited him, having first obtained an
interview at the house of General Dumouriez. Landor declared that Paine
was always called 'Tom,' not out of disrespect, but because he was a
jolly good fellow." An interview with Paine at the house of Dumouriez
could only have occurred when the General was in Paris, in 1793. This
would account for what Landor says of Paine taking refuge from trouble
in brandy. There had been, as, Rickman testifies, and as all the facts
show, nothing of this kind since that period. It would appear therefore
that Landor must have mixed up at least two interviews with Paine, one
in the time of Dumouriez, the other in that of Napoleon. Not even
such an artist as Landor could invent the language ascribed to Paine
concerning the French and Napoleon.

"The whole nation may be made as enthusiastic about a salad as about a
constitution; about the colour of a cockade as about a consul or a king.
You will shortly see the real strength and figure of Bonaparte. He is
wilful, headstrong, proud, morose, presumptuous; he will be guided no
longer; he has pulled the pad from his forehead, and will break his nose
or bruise his cranium against every table, chair, and brick in the room,
until at last he must be sent to the hospital."

Paine prophesies that Napoleon will make himself emperor, and that "by
his intemperate use of power and thirst of dominion" he will cause the
people to "wish for their old kings, forgetting what beasts they were."
Possibly under the name "Mr. Normandy" Landor disguises Thomas Poole,
referred to on a preceding page. Normandy's sufferings on account of one
of Paine's books are not exaggerated. In Mrs. Sanford's work is printed
a letter from Paris, July 20, 1802, in which Poole says: "I called one
Morning on Thomas Paine. He is an original, amusing fellow. Striking,
strong physiognomy. Said a great many quaint things, and read us part of
a reply which he intends to publish to Watson's 'Apology.'"

     * "Thomas Poole and His Friends," ii., p. 85.

Paine seems to have had no relation with the ruling powers at this time,
though an Englishman who visited him is quoted by Rickman (p. 198) as
remarking his manliness and fearlessness, and that he spoke as freely as
ever after Bonaparte's supremacy. One communication only to any member
of the government appears; this was to the Minister of the Interior
concerning a proposed iron bridge over the Seine.* Political France and
Paine had parted.

Under date of March 18, 1801, President Jefferson informs Paine that he
had sent his manuscripts (Maritime Compact) to the printer to be made
into a pamphlet, and that the American people had returned from their
frenzy against France. He adds:

"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 short warning. Rob. 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 labored, and with
as much effect as any man living. That you may long live to continue
your useful labors and to reap the reward in the thankfulness of
nations, is my sincere prayer. Accept assurances of my high esteem and
affectionate attachment."

     *  "The Minister of the Interior to Thomas Paine: I have
     received, Citizen, the observations that you have been so
     good as to address to me upon the construction of iron
     bridges. They will be of the greatest utility to us when the
     new kind of construction goes to be executed for the first
     time. With pleasure I assure you, Citizen, that you have
     rights of more than one kind to the gratitude of nations,
     and I give you, cordially, the expression of my particular
     esteem.--Chaptal."

     It is rather droll, considering the appropriation of his
     patent in England, and the confiscation of a thousand pounds
     belonging to him, to find Paine casually mentioning that at
     this time a person came from London with plans and drawings
     to consult with him about an iron arch of 600 feet, over the
     Thames, then under consideration by a committee of the House
     of Commons.

     **  "Beau Dawson," an eminent Virginia Congressman.

The subjoined notes are from letters of Paine to Jefferson:

_Paris, June 9, 1801_. "Your very friendly letter by Mr. Dawson gave me
the real sensation of happy satisfaction, and what served to increase
it was that he brought it to me himself before I knew of his arrival.
I congratulate America on your election. There has been no circumstance
with respect to America since the times of her revolution that excited
so much attention and expectation in France, England, Ireland, and
Scotland as the pending election for President of the United States, nor
any of which the event has given more general joy:

"I thank you for the opportunity you give me of returning by the
Maryland, but I shall wait the return of the vessel that brings Mr.
Livingston."

_Paris, June 25,1801_. "The Parliamentaire, from America to Havre,
was taken in going out, and carried into England. The pretence, as the
papers say, was that a Swedish Minister was on board for America. If
I had happened to have been there, I suppose they would have made no
ceremony in conducting me on shore."*




{1802}

_Paris, March 17,1802_. "As it is now Peace, though the definitive
Treaty is not yet signed, I shall set off by the first opportunity from
Havre or Dieppe, after the equinoctial gales are over. I continue in
excellent health, which I know your friendship will be glad to hear
of.--Wishing you and America every happiness, I remain your former
fellow-labourer and much obliged fellow-citizen."

Paine's determination not to return to America in a national vessel was
owing to a paragraph he saw in a Baltimore paper, headed "Out at Last."
It stated that Paine had written to the President, expressing a wish to
return by a national ship, and that "permission was given." There was
here an indication that Jefferson's invitation to Paine by the Hon. John
Dawson had become known to the President's enemies, and that Jefferson,
on being attacked, had apologized by making the matter appear an act
of charity. Paine would not believe that the President was personally
responsible for the apologetic paragraph, which seemed inconsistent with
the cordiality of the letter brought by Dawson; but, as he afterwards
wrote to Jefferson, "it determined me not to come by a national ship."*
His request had been made at a time when any other than a national
American ship was pretty certain to land him in an English prison. There
was evidently no thought of any _éclat_ in the matter, but no doubt a
regard for economy as well as safety.

     * It was cleared up afterwards. Jefferson had been charged
     with sending a national ship to France for the sole purpose
     of bringing Paine home, and Paine himself would have been
     the first to condemn such an assumption of power. Although
     the President's adherents thought it right to deny this,
     Jefferson wrote to Paine that he had nothing to do with the
     paragraph. "With respect to the letter [offering the ship] I
     never hesitate to avow and justify it in conversation. In no
     other way do I trouble myself to contradict anything which
     is said. At that time, however, there were anomalies in the
     motions of some of our friends which events have at length
     reduced to regularity."

The following to the eminent deist lecturer in New York, Elihu Palmer,
bears the date, "Paris, February 21, 1802, since the Fable of Christ":

"Dear Friend, I received, by Mr. Livingston, the letter you wrote me,
and the excellent work you have published ["The Principles of Nature"].
I see you have thought deeply on the subject, and expressed your
thoughts in a strong and clear style. The hinting and intimating manner
of writing that was formerly used on subjects of this kind, produced
skepticism, but not conviction. It is necessary to be bold. Some people
can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it. Say a
bold thing that will stagger them, and they will begin to think.

"There is an intimate friend of mine, Colonel Joseph Kirk-bride of
Bordentown, New Jersey, to whom I would wish you to send your work. He
is an excellent man, and perfectly in our sentiments. You can send it by
the stage that goes partly by land and partly by water, between New York
and Philadelphia, and passes through Bordentown.

"I expect to arrive in America in May next. I have a third part of the
Age of Reason to publish when I arrive, which, if I mistake not, will
make a stronger impression than any thing I have yet published on the
subject.

"I write this by an ancient colleague of mine in the French Convention,
the citizen Lequinio, who is going [as] Consul to Rhode Island, and who
waits while I write.* Yours in friendship."

The following, dated July 8, 1802, to Consul Rotch, is the last letter I
find written by Paine from Paris:

"My Dear Friend,--The bearer of this is a young man that wishes to go
to America. He is willing to do anything on board a ship to lesson the
expense of his passage. If you know any captain to whom such a person
may be usefull I will be obliged to you to speak to him about it.

"As Mr. Otte was to come to Paris in order to go to America, I wanted
to take a passage with him, but as he stays in England to negociate some
arrangements of Commerce, I have given up that idea. I wait now for the
arrival of a person from England whom I want to see,** after which, I
shall bid adieu to restless and wretched Europe. I am with affectionate
esteem to you and Mrs. Rotch,

"Yours,

"Thomas Paine."

     * J. M. Lequinio, author of "Prejudices Destroyed," and
     other rationalistic works, especially dealt with in
     Priestley's "Letters to the Philosophers of France."

     **  No doubt Clio Rickman.

The President's cordial letter had raised a happy vision before the eyes
of one sitting amid the ruins of his republican world. As he said of
Job, he had "determined, in the midst of accumulating ills, to impose
upon himself the hard duty of contentment." Of the comrades with whom he
began the struggle for liberty in France but a small circle remained.
As he wrote to Lady Smith,--from whom he must now part,--"I might almost
say like Job's servant, 'and I only am escaped.'" Of the American and
English friends who cared for him when he came out of prison few remain.

The President's letter came to a poor man in a small room, furnished
only with manuscripts and models of inventions. Here he was found by
an old friend from England, Henry Redhead Yorke, who, in 1795, had been
tried in England for sedition. Yorke has left us a last glimpse of the
author in "wretched and restless Europe." The "rights of man" had become
so antiquated in Napoleon's France, that Yorke found Paine's name odious
on account of his antislavery writings, the people "ascribing to his
espousal of the rights of the negroes of St. Domingo the resistance
which Leclercq had experienced from them." He found Paine in No. 4
Rue du Théâtre Français. A "jolly-looking woman" (in whom we recognize
Madame Bonneville) scrutinized Yorke severely, but was smiling enough
on learning that he was Paine's old friend. He was ushered into a little
room heaped with boxes of documents, a chaos of pamphlets and journals.
While Yorke was meditating on the contrast between this habitation of a
founder of two great republics and the mansions of their rulers, his old
friend entered, dressed in a long flannel gown.

"Time seemed to have made dreadful ravages over his whole frame, and a
settled melancholy was visible on his countenance. He desired me to be
seated, and although he did not recollect me for a considerable time,
he conversed with his usual affability. I confess I felt extremely
surprised that he should have forgotten me; but I resolved not to make
myself known to him, as long as it could be avoided with propriety. In
order to try his memory, I referred to a number of circumstances which
had occurred while we were in company, but carefully abstained from
hinting that we had ever lived together. He would frequently put his
hand to his forehead, and exclaim, 'Ah! I know that voice, but my
recollection fails!' At length I thought it time to remove his suspense,
and stated an incident which instantly recalled me to his mind. It
is impossible to describe the sudden change which this effected; his
countenance brightened, he pressed me by the hand, and a silent tear
stole down his cheek. Nor was I less affected than himself. For some
time we sat without a word escaping from our lips. 'Thus are we met once
more, Mr. Paine,' I resumed, 'after a long separation of ten years,
and after having been both of us severely weather-beaten.' 'Aye,' he
replied, 'and who would have thought that we should meet in Paris?'
He then enquired what motive had brought me here, and on my explaining
myself, he observed with a smile of contempt, 'They have shed blood
enough for liberty, and now they have it in perfection. This is not a
country for an honest man to live in; they do not understand any thing
at all of the principles of free government, and the best way is to
leave them to themselves. You see they have conquered all Europe, only
to make it more miserable than it was before.' Upon this, I remarked
that I was surprised to hear him speak in such desponding language of
the fortune of mankind, and that I thought much might yet be done for
the Republic. 'Republic!' he exclaimed, 'do you call this a Republic?
Why they are worse off than the slaves of Constantinople; for there,
they expect to be bashaws in heaven by submitting to be slaves below,
but here they believe neither in heaven nor hell, and yet are slaves by
choice. I know of no Republic in the world except America, which is the
only country for such men as you and I. It is my intention to get away
from this place as soon as possible, and I hope to be off in the autumn;
you are a young man and may see better times, but I have done with
Europe, and its slavish politics.'

"I have often been in company with Mr. Paine, since my arrival here, and
I was not a little surprised to find him wholly indifferent about the
public spirit in England, or the remaining influence of his doctrines
among its people. Indeed he seemed to dislike the mention of the
subject; and when, one day, in order to provoke discussion, I told him
I had altered my opinions upon many of his principles, he answered, 'You
certainly have the right to do so; but you cannot alter the nature
of things; the French have alarmed all honest men; but still truth is
truth. Though you may not think that my principles are practicable in
England, without bringing on a great deal of misery and confusion, you
are, I am sure, convinced of their justice.' Here he took occasion to
speak in terms of the utmost severity of Mr------, who had obtained
a seat in parliament, and said that 'parsons were always mischievous
fellows when they turned politicians.' This gave rise to an observation
respecting his 'Age of Reason,' the publication of which I said had
lost him the good opinion of numbers of his English advocates. He
became uncommonly warm at this remark, and in a tone of singular energy
declared that he would not have published it if he had not thought it
calculated to 'inspire mankind with a more exalted idea of the Supreme
Architect of the Universe, and to put an end to villainous imposture.'
He then broke out with the most violent invectives against our received
opinions, accompanying them at the same time with some of the most grand
and sublime conceptions of an Omnipotent Being, that I ever heard or
read of. In the support of his opinion, he avowed himself ready to
lay down his life, and said 'the Bishop of Llandaff may roast me in
Smithfield if he likes, but human torture cannot shake my conviction.'
He reached down a copy of the Bishop's work, interleaved with remarks
upon it, which he read me; after which he admitted the liberality of
the Bishop, and regretted that in all controversies among men a similar
temper was not maintained. But in proportion as he appeared listless in
politics, he seemed quite a zealot in his religious creed; of which the
following is an instance. An English lady of our acquaintance, not less
remarkable for her talents than for elegance of manners, entreated me to
contrive that she might have an interview with Mr. Paine. In consequence
of this I invited him to dinner on a day when we were to be favoured
with her company. But as she is a very rigid Roman Catholic I cautioned
Mr. Paine, beforehand, against touching upon religious subjects,
assuring him at the same time that she felt much interested to make his
acquaintance. With much good nature he promised to be _discreet_.... For
above four hours he kept every one in astonishment and admiration of
his memory, his keen observation of men and manners, his numberless
anecdotes of the American Indians, of the American war, of Franklin,
Washington, and even of his Majesty, of whom he told several curious
facts of humour and benevolence. His remarks on genius and taste can
never be forgotten by those present. Thus far everything went on as I
could wish; the sparkling champagne gave a zest to his conversation,
and we were all delighted. But alas! alas! an expression relating to his
'Age of Reason' having been mentioned by one of the company, he broke
out immediately. He began with Astronomy,--addressing himself to Mrs.
Y.,--he declared that the least inspection of the motion of the stars
was a convincing proof that Moses was a liar. Nothing could stop him. In
vain I attempted to change the subject, by employing every artifice in
my power, and even attacking with vehemence his political principles.
He returned to the charge with unabated ardour. I called upon him for a
song though I never heard him sing in my life. He struck up one of
his own composition; but the instant he had finished it he resumed his
favourite topic. I felt extremely mortified, and remarked that he had
forgotten his promise, and that it was not fair to wound so deeply the
opinions of the ladies. 'Oh!' said he, 'they 'll come again. What a pity
it is that people should be so prejudiced!' To which I retorted that
their prejudices might be virtues. 'If so,' he replied, 'the blossoms
may be beautiful to the eye, but the root is weak.' One of the most
extraordinary properties belonging to Mr. Paine is his power of
retaining everything he has written in the course of his life. It is
a fact that he can repeat word for word every sentence in his 'Common
Sense,' 'Rights of Man,' etc., etc. The Bible is the only book which he
has studied, and there is not a verse in it that is not familiar to him.
In shewing me one day the beautiful models of two bridges he had devised
he observed that Dr. Franklin once told him that 'books are written to
please, houses built for great men, churches for priests, but no bridges
for the people.' 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 pasteboard, by the fair hand of his correspondent the 'Little Corner
of the World,' whose indefatigable perseverance is extraordinary. He was
offered £3000 for these models and refused it. The iron bars, which
I before mentioned that I noticed in a corner of his room, were also
forged by himself, as the model of a crane, of a new description. He put
them together, and exhibited the power of the lever to a most surprising
degree."'

     *"Letters from France," etc., London, 1804, 2 vols., 8vo.
     Thirty-three pages of the last letter are devoted to Paine.

About this time Sir Robert Smith died, and another of the ties to Paris
was snapped. His beloved Bonnevilles promised to follow him to the New
World. His old friend Rickman has come over to see him off, and observed
that "he did not drink spirits, and wine he took moderately; he even
objected to any spirits being laid in as a part of his sea-stock." These
two friends journeyed together to Havre, where, on September 1st, the
way-worn man begins his homeward voyage. Poor Rickman, the perpetually
prosecuted, strains his eyes till the sail is lost, then sits on the
beach and writes his poetical tribute to Jefferson and America for
recalling Paine, and a touching farewell to his friend:

     "Thus smooth be thy waves, and thus gentle the breeze,
     As thou bearest my Paine far away;
     O waft him to comfort and regions of ease,
     Each blessing of freedom and friendship to seize,
     And bright be his setting sun's ray."

Who can imagine the joy of those eyes when they once more beheld the
distant coast of the New World! Fifteen years have passed,--years
in which all nightmares became real, and liberty's sun had turned to
blood,--since he saw the happy land fading behind him. Oh, America,
thine old friend who first claimed thy republican independence, who laid
aside his Quaker coat and fought for thy cause, believing it sacred, is
returning to thy breast! This is the man of whom Washington wrote: "His
writings certainly had a powerful effect on the public mind,--ought they
not then to meet an adequate return? He is poor! He is chagrined!" It is
not money he needs now, but tenderness, sympathy; for he comes back from
an old world that has plundered, outlawed, imprisoned him for his love
of mankind. He has seen his dear friends sent to the guillotine, and
others are pining in British prisons for publishing his "Rights of
Man,"--principles pronounced by President Jefferson and Secretary
Madison to be those of the United States. Heartsore, scarred,
white-haired, there remains to this veteran of many struggles for
humanity but one hope, a kindly welcome, a peaceful haven for his
tempest-tossed life. Never for an instant has his faith in the heart
of America been shaken. Already he sees his friend Jefferson's arms
extended; he sees his old comrades welcoming him to their hearths; he
sees his own house and sward at Bordentown, and the beautiful Kirk-bride
mansion beside the Delaware,--river of sacred memories, soon to be
spanned by his graceful arch. How the ladies he left girls,--Fanny.
Kitty, Sally,--will come with their husbands to greet him! How will they
admire the latest bridge-model, with Lady Smith's delicate chain-work
for which (such is his estimate of friendship) he refused three thousand
pounds, though it would have made his mean room palatial! Ah, yes, poor
heart, America will soothe your wounds, and pillow your sinking head on
her breast! America, with Jefferson in power, is herself again. They do
not hate men in America for not believing in a celestial Robespierre.
Thou stricken friend of man, who hast appealed from the god of wrath
to the God of Humanity, see in the distance that Maryland coast, which
early voyagers called Avalon, and sing again your song when first
stepping on that shore twenty-seven years ago:

      "I come to sing that summer is at hand,
      The summer time of wit, you 'll understand;
      Plants, fruits, and flowers, and all the smiling race
      That can the orchard or the garden grace;
      The Rose and Lily shall address the fair,
      And whisper sweetly out, 'My dears, take care:'
      With sterling worth the Plant of Sense shall rise,
      And teach the curious to philosophize.

      "The frost returns?
      We 'll garnish out the scenes
      With stately rows of Evergreens,
      Trees that will bear the frost, and deck their tops
      With everlasting flowers, like diamond drops."

     * "The Snowdrop and Critic," Pennsylvania Magazine, 1775.
     Couplets are omitted between those given.




CHAPTER XVI. THE AMERICAN INQUISITION

On October 30th Paine landed at Baltimore. More than two and a half
centuries had elapsed since the Catholic Lord Baltimore appointed a
Protestant Governor of Maryland, William Stone, who proclaimed in that
province (1648) religious freedom and equality. The Puritans, crowding
thither, from regions of oppression, grew strong enough to exterminate
the religion of Lord Baltimore who had given them shelter, and
imprisoned his Protestant Governor. So, in the New World, passed the
Inquisition from Catholic to Protestant hands.

In Paine's first American pamphlet, he had repeated and extolled the
principle of that earliest proclamation of religious liberty. "Diversity
of religious opinions affords a larger field for Christian kindness."
The Christian kindness now consists in a cessation of sectarian strife
that they may unite in stretching the author of the "Age of Reason"
on their common rack, so far as was possible under a Constitution
acknowledging no deity. This persecution began on the victim's arrival.

Soon after landing Paine wrote to President Jefferson:

"I arrived here on Saturday from Havre, after a passage of sixty days.
I have several cases of models, wheels, etc., and as soon as I can get
them from the vessel and put them on board the packet for Georgetown
I shall set off to pay my respects to you. Your much obliged
fellow-citizen,--Thomas Paine."

On reaching Washington City Paine found his dear friend Monroe starting
off to resume his ministry in Paris, and by him wrote to Mr. Este,
banker in Paris (Sir Robert Smith's son-in-law), enclosing a letter to
Rickman, in London. "You can have no idea," he tells Rickman, "of the
agitation which my arrival occasioned." Every paper is "filled with
applause or abuse."

"My property in this country has been taken care of by my friends, and
is now worth six thousand pounds sterling; which put in the funds will
bring me £400 sterling a year. Remember me in friendship and affection
to your wife and family, and in the circle of our friends. I am but just
arrived here, and the minister sails in a few hours, so that I have just
time to write you this. If he should not sail this tide I will write to
my good friend Col. Bosville, but in any case I request you to wait on
him for me.* Yours in friendship."

     * Paine still had faith in Bosville. He was slow in
     suspecting any man who seemed enthusiastic for liberty. In
     this connection it may be mentioned that it is painful to
     find in the "Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris," (ii.,
     p. 426) a confidential letter to Robert R. Livingston,
     Minister in France, which seems to assume that Minister's
     readiness to receive slanders of Jefferson, who appointed
     him, and of Paine whose friendship he seemed to value.
     Speaking of the President, Morris says: "The employment of
     and confidence in adventurers from abroad will sooner or
     later rouse the pride and indignation of this country."
     Morris' editor adds: "This was probably an allusion to
     Thomas Paine, who had recently returned to America and was
     supposed to be an intimate friend of Mr. Jefferson, who, it
     was said, received him warmly, dined him at the White House,
     and could be seen walking arm in arm with him on the street
     any fine afternoon." The allusion to "adventurers" was no
     doubt meant for Paine, but not to his reception by
     Jefferson, for Morris' letter was written on August 27th,
     some two months before Paine's arrival. It was probably
     meant by Morris to damage Paine in Paris, where it was known
     that he was intimate with Livingston, who had been
     introduced by him to influential men, among others to Sir
     Robert Smith and Este, bankers. It is to be hoped that
     Livingston resented Morris' assumption of his treacherous
     character. Morris, who had shortly before dined at the White
     House, tells Livingston that Jefferson is "descending to a
     condition which I find no decent word to designate." Surely
     Livingston's descendants should discover his reply to that
     letter.

The defeated Federalists had already prepared their batteries to assail
the President for inviting Paine to return on a national ship, under
escort of a Congressman. It required some skill for these adherents of
John Adams, a Unitarian, to set the Inquisition in motion. It had to be
done, however, as there was no chance of breaking down Jefferson but
by getting preachers to sink political differences and hound the
President's favorite author. Out of the North, stronghold of the
"British Party," came this partisan crusade under a pious flag. In
Virginia and the South the "Age of Reason" was fairly discussed, its
influence being so great that Patrick Henry, as we have seen, wrote and
burnt a reply. In Virginia, Deism, though largely prevailing, had not
prevented its adherents from supporting the Church as an institution.
It had become their habit to talk of such matters only in private.
Jefferson had not ventured to express his views in public, and was
troubled at finding himself mixed up with the heresies of Paine.*

     * To the Rev. Dr. Waterhouse (Unitarian) who had asked
     permission to publish a letter of his, Jefferson, with a
     keen remembrance of Paine's fate, wrote (July 19, 1822):
     "No, my dear Sir, not for the world. Into what a hornet's
     nest would it thrust my head!--The genus irritabile vatmm,
     on whom argument is lost, and reason is by themselves
     disdained in matters of religion. Don Quixote undertook to
     redress the bodily wrongs of the world, but the redressaient
     of mental vagaries would be an enterprise more than Quixotic
     I should as soon undertake to bring the crazy skulls of
     Bedlam to sound understanding as to inculcate reason into
     that of an Athanasian. I am old, and tranquillity is now my
     summum bonum. Keep me therefore from the fire and faggot of
     Calvin and his victim Servetus. Happy in the prospect of a
     restoration of a primitive Christianity, I must leave to
     younger athletes to lop off the false branches which have
     been engrafted into it by the mycologists of the middle and
     modern ages."--MS. belonging to Dr. Fogg of Boston.

The author on reaching Lovell's Hotel, Washington, had made known
his arrival to the President, and was cordially received; but as the
newspapers came in with their abuse, Jefferson may have been somewhat
intimidated. At any rate Paine so thought. Eager to disembarrass the
administration, Paine published a letter in the _National Intelligencer_
which had cordially welcomed him, in which he said that he should not
ask or accept any office.*

     * The National Intelligencer (Nov. 3d), announcing Paine's
     arrival at Baltimore, said, among other things: "Be his
     religious sentiments what they may, it must be their [the
     American people's] wish that he may live in the undisturbed
     possession of our common blessings, and enjoy them the more
     from his active participation in their attainment." The same
     paper said, Nov. 10th: "Thomas Paine has arrived in this
     city [Washington] and has received a cordial reception from
     the Whigs of Seventy-six, and the republicans of 1800, who
     have the independence to feel and avow a sentiment of
     gratitude for his eminent revolutionary services."

He meant to continue writing and bring forward his mechanical projects.
None the less did the "federalist" press use Paine's infidelity to
belabor the President, and the author had to write defensive letters
from the moment of his arrival. On October 29th, before Paine had
landed, the _National Intelligencer_ had printed (from a Lancaster,
Pa., journal) a vigorous letter, signed "A Republican," showing that the
denunciations of Paine were not religious, but political, as John Adams
was also unorthodox. The "federalists" must often have wished that they
had taken this warning, for Paine's pen was keener than ever, and the
opposition had no writer to meet him. His eight "Letters to the
Citizens of the United States" were scathing, eloquent, untrammelled by
partisanship, and made a profound impression on the country,--for even
the opposition press had to publish them as part of the news of the
day.*

     * They were published in the National Intelligencer of
     November 15th, 22d. 29th, December 6th, January 25th, and
     February 2d, 1803. Of the others one appeared in the Aurora
     (Philadelphia), dated from Bordentown, N. J., March 12th,
     and the last in the Trenton True American % dated April
     21st.

On Christmas Day Paine wrote the President a suggestion for the purchase
of Louisiana. The French, to whom Louisiana had been ceded by Spain,
closed New Orleans (November 26th) against foreign ships (including
American), and prohibited deposits there by way of the Mississippi. This
caused much excitement, and the "federalists" showed eagerness to push
the administration into a belligerent attitude toward France. Paines
"common sense" again came to the front, and he sent Jefferson the
following paper:

"OF LOUISIANA.

"Spain has ceded Louisiana to france, and france has excluded the
Americans from N. Orleans and the navigation of the Mississippi;
the people of the Western Territory have complained of it to their
Government, and the governt. 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
repurchase 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 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."

Jefferson next day told Paine, what was as yet a profound secret, that
he was already contemplating the purchase of Louisiana.*

     * "The idea occurred to me," Paine afterwards wrote to the
     President, "without knowing it had occurred to any other
     person, and I mentioned it to Dr. Leib who lived in the same
     house (Lovell's); and, as he appeared pleased with it, I
     wrote the note and showed it to him before I sent it. The
     next morning you said to me that measures were already taken
     in that business. When Leib returned from Congress I told
     him of it. 'I knew that,' said he. 'Why then,' said I, 'did
     you not tell me so, because in that case I would not have
     sent the note.' 'That is the very reason,' said he; 'I would
     not tell you, because two opinions concurring on a case
     strengthen it.' I do not, however, like Dr. Leib's motion
     about Banks. Congress ought to be very cautious how it gives
     encouragement to this speculating project of banking, for it
     is now carried to an extreme. It is but another kind of
     striking paper money. Neither do I like the notion
     respecting the recession of the territory [District of
     Columbia.]." Dr. Michael Leib was a representative from
     Pennsylvania.




{1803}

The "New Sun" was destined to bring his sunstrokes on Paine. The
pathetic story of his wrongs in England, his martyrdom in France,
was not generally known, and, in reply to attacks, he had to tell
it himself. He had returned for repose and found himself a sort of
battlefield. One of the most humiliating circumstances was the discovery
that in this conflict of parties the merits of his religion were of
least consideration. The outcry of the country against him, so far as
it was not merely political, was the mere ignorant echo of pulpit
vituperation. His well-considered theism, fruit of so much thought,
nursed amid glooms of the dungeon, was called infidelity or atheism.
Even some from whom he might have expected discriminating criticism
accepted the vulgar version and wrote him in deprecation of a work
they had not read. Samuel Adams, his old friend, caught in this
_schwârmerei_, wrote him from Boston (November 30th) that he had "heard"
that he had "turned his mind to a defence of infidelity." Paine copied
for him his creed from the "Age of Reason," and asked, "My good friend,
do you call believing in God infidelity?"

This letter to Samuel Adams (January 1, 1803) has indications that Paine
had developed farther his theistic ideal.

"We cannot serve the Deity in the manner we serve those who cannot do
without that service. He needs no service from us. We can add nothing to
eternity. But it is in our power to render a service acceptable to him,
and that is, not by praying, but by endeavoring to make his creatures
happy. A man does not serve God by praying, for it is himself he is
trying to serve; and as to hiring or paying men to pray, as if the Deity
needed instruction, it is in my opinion an abomination. I have been
exposed to and preserved through many dangers, but instead of buffeting
the Deity with prayers, as if I distrusted him, or must dictate to him,
I reposed myself on his protection; and you, my friend, will find, even
in your last moments, more consolation in the silence of resignation
than in the murmuring wish of a prayer."

Paine must have been especially hurt by a sentence in the letter of
Samuel Adams in which he said: "Our friend, the president of the United
States, has been calumniated for his liberal sentiments, by men who have
attributed that liberality to a latent design to promote the cause of
infidelity." To this he did not reply, but it probably led him to feel a
deeper disappointment at the postponement of the interviews he had hoped
to enjoy with Jefferson after thirteen years of separation. A feeling
of this kind no doubt prompted the following note (January 12th) sent to
the President:

"I will be obliged to you to send back the Models, as I am packing up
to set off for Philadelphia and New York. My intention in bringing them
here in preference to sending them from Baltimore to Philadelphia, was
to have some conversation with you on those matters and others I have
not informed you of. But you have not only shown no disposition towards
it, but have, in some measure, by a sort of shyness, as if you stood in
fear of federal observation, precluded it. I am not the only one, who
makes observations of this kind."

Jefferson at once took care that there should be no misunderstanding
as to his regard for Paine. The author was for some days a guest in the
President's family, where he again met Maria Jefferson (Mrs. Eppes) whom
he had known in Paris. Randall says the devout ladies of the family had
been shy of Paine, as was but natural, on account of the President's
reputation for rationalism, but "Paine's discourse was weighty, his
manners sober and inoffensive; and he left Mr. Jefferson's mansion the
subject of lighter prejudices than he entered it."*

     * "Life of Jefferson," ii., 642 sec. Randall is mistaken in
     some statements. Paine, as we have seen, did not return on
     the ship placed at his service by the President; nor did
     the President's letter appear until long after his return,
     when he and Jefferson felt it necessary in order to disabuse
     the public mind of the most absurd rumors on the subject.

Paine's defamers have manifested an eagerness to ascribe his
maltreatment to personal faults. This is not the case. For some years
after his arrival in the country no one ventured to hint anything
disparaging to his personal habits or sobriety. On January 1, 1803, he
wrote to Samuel Adams: "I have a good state of health and a happy mind;
I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance, and the
latter with abundance."

Had not this been true the "federal" press would have noised it abroad.
He was neat in his attire. In all portraits, French and American, his
dress is in accordance with the fashion. There was not, so far as I can
discover, a suggestion while he was at Washington, that he was not a
suitable guest for any drawing-room in the capital On February 23,
1803, probably, was written the following which I find among the Cobbett
papers:

From Mr. Paine to Mr. Jefferson, on the occasion of a toast being given
at a federal dinner at Washington, of "May they

     NEVER KNOW PLEASURE WHO LOVE PAINE."

     "I send you, Sir, a tale about some Feds,
     Who, in their wisdom, got to loggerheads.
     The case was this, they felt so flat and sunk,
     They took a glass together and got drunk.
     Such things, you know, are neither new nor rare,
     For some will hary themselves when in despair.
     It was the natal day of Washington,
     And that they thought a famous day for fun;
     For with the learned world it is agreed,
     The better day the better deed.
     They talked away, and as the glass went round
     They grew, in point of wisdom, more profound;
     For at the bottom of the bottle lies
     That kind of sense we overlook when wise.
     Come, here 's a toast, cried one, with roar immense,
     May none know pleasure who love Common Sense.
     Bravo! cried some,--no, no! some others cried,
     But left it to the waiter to decide.
     I think, said he, the case would be more plain,
     To leave out Common Sense, and put in Paine.
     On this a mighty noise arose among
     This drunken, bawling, senseless throng.
     Some said that Common Sense was all a curse,
     That making people wiser made them worse;
     It learned them to be careful of their purse,
     And not be laid about like babes at nurse,
     Nor yet believe in stories upon trust,
     Which all mankind, to be well governed must;
     And that the toast was better at the first,
     And he that did n't think so might be cursed.
     So on they went, till such a fray arose
     As all who know what Feds are may suppose."

On his way northward, to his old home in Bor-dentown, Paine passed many
a remembered spot, but found little or no greeting on his journey. In
Baltimore a "New Jerusalemite," as the Sweden-borgian was then called,
the Rev. Mr. Hargrove, accosted him with the information that the key to
scripture was found, after being lost 4,000 years.

"Then it must be very rusty," answered Paine. In Philadelphia his old
friend Dr. Benjamin Rush never came near him. "His principles," wrote
Rush to Cheetham, "avowed in his 'Age of Reason,' were so offensive to
me that I did not wish to renew my intercourse with him." Paine made
arrangements for the reception of his bridge models at Peale's Museum,
but if he met any old friend there no mention of it appears. Most
of those who had made up the old circle--Franklin, Rittenhouse,
Muhlenberg--were dead, some were away in Congress; but no doubt Paine
saw George Clymer. However, he did not stay long in Philadelphia, for he
was eager to reach the spot he always regarded as his home, Bordentown.
And there, indeed, his hope, for a time, seemed to be fulfilled It need
hardly be said that his old friend Colonel Kirkbride gave him hearty
welcome. John Hall, Paine's bridge mechanician, "never saw him jollier,"
and he was full of mechanical "whims and schemes" they were to pursue
together. Jefferson was candidate for the presidency, and Paine entered
heartily into the canvass; which was not prudent, but he knew nothing of
prudence. The issue not only concerned an old friend, but was turning on
the question of peace with France. On March 12th he writes against the
"federalist" scheme for violently seizing New Orleans. At a meeting in
April, over which Colonel Kirkbride presides, Paine drafts a reply to an
attack on Jefferson's administration, circulated in New York. On April
21 st he writes the refutation of an attack on Jefferson, _apropos_ of
the national vessel offered for his return, which had been coupled
with a charge that Paine had proposed to the Directory an invasion of
America! In June he writes about his bridge models (then at Peale's
Museum, Philadelphia), and his hope to span the Delaware and the
Schuylkill with iron arches.

Here is a letter written to Jefferson from Bordentown

(August 2d) containing suggestions concerning the beginning of
government in Louisiana, from which it would appear that Paine's faith
in the natural inspiration of _vox populi_ was still imperfect:

"I take it for granted that the present inhabitants know little or
nothing of election and representation as constituting government. They
are therefore not in an immediate condition to exercise those powers,
and besides this they are perhaps too much under the influence of their
priests to be sufficiently free.

"I should suppose that a Government _provisoire_ formed by Congress for
three, five, or seven years would be the best mode of beginning. In
the meantime they may be initiated into the practice by electing their
Municipal government, and after some experience they will be in train to
elect their State government. I think it would not only be good policy
but right to say, that the people shall have the right of electing their
Church Ministers, otherwise their Ministers will hold by authority from
the Pope. I do not make it a compulsive article, but to put it in their
power to use it when they please. It will serve to hold the priests in a
stile of good behavior, and also to give the people an idea of elective
rights. Anything, they say, will do to learn upon, and therefore they
may as well begin upon priests.

"The present prevailing language is french and Spanish, but it will be
necessary to establish schools to teach english as the laws ought to be
in the language of the Union.

"As soon as you have formed any plan for settling the Lands I shall be
glad to know it. My motive for this is because there are thousands and
tens of thousands in England and Ireland and also in Scotland who are
friends of mine by principle, and who would gladly change their present
country and condition. Many among them, for I have friends in all ranks
of life in those countries, are capable of becoming monied purchasers to
any amount.

"If you can give me any hints respecting Louisiana, the quantity in
square miles, the population, and amount of the present Revenue I will
find an opportunity of making some use of it. When the formalities of
the cession are compleated, the next thing will be to take possession,
and I think it would be very consistent for the President of the United
States to do this in person.

"What is Dayton gone to New Orleans for? Is he there as an Agent for the
British as Blount was said to be?"

Of the same date is a letter to Senator Breck-enridge, of Kentucky,
forwarded through Jefferson:

"My Dear Friend,--Not knowing your place of Residence in Kentucky I send
this under cover to the President desiring him to fill up the direction.

"I see by the public papers and the Proclamation for calling Congress,
that the cession of Louisiana has been obtained. The papers state the
purchase to be 11,250,000 dollars in the six per cents and 3,750,000
dollars to be paid to American claimants who have furnished supplies to
France and the french Colonies and are yet unpaid, making on the whole
15,000,000 dollars.

"I observe that the faction of the Feds who last Winter were for going
to war to obtain possession of that country and who attached so much
importance to it that no expense or risk ought be spared to obtain it,
have now altered their tone and say it is not worth having, and that
we are better without it than with it. Thus much for their consistency.
What follows is for your private consideration.

"The second section of the 2d article of the constitution says, The
'President shall have Power by and with the consent of the senate to
make Treaties provided two thirds of the senators present concur.'

"A question may be supposed to arise on the present case, which is,
under what character is the cession to be considered and taken up in
congress, whether as a treaty, or in some other shape? I go to examine
this point.

"Though the word, Treaty, as a Word, is unlimited in its meaning
and application, it must be supposed to have a denned meaning in the
constitution. It there means Treaties of alliance or of navigation and
commerce--Things which require a more profound deliberation than
common acts do, because they entail on the parties a future reciprocal
responsibility and become afterwards a supreme law on each of the
contracting countries which neither can annull. But the cession of
Louisiana to the United States has none of these features in it It is a
sale and purchase. A sole act which when finished, the parties have no
more to do with each other than other buyers and sellers have. It has no
future reciprocal consequences (which is one of the marked characters of
a Treaty) annexed to it; and the idea of its becoming a supreme law
to the parties reciprocally (which is another of the characters of a
Treaty) is inapplicable in the present case. There remains nothing for
such a law to act upon.

"I love the restriction in the constitution which takes from the
Executive the power of making treaties of his own will: and also the
clause which requires the consent of two thirds of the Senators, because
we cannot be too cautious in involving and entangling ourselves with
foreign powers; but I have an equal objection against extending the
same power to the senate in cases to which it is not strictly and
constitutionally applicable, because it is giving a nullifying power
to a minority. Treaties, as already observed, are to have future
consequences and whilst they remain, remain always in execution
externally as well as internally, and therefore it is better to run the
risk of losing a good treaty for the want of two thirds of the senate
than be exposed to the danger of ratifying a bad one by a small
majority. But in the present case no operation is to follow but what
acts itself within our own Territory and under our own laws. We are the
sole power concerned after the cession is accepted and the money paid,
and therefore the cession is not a Treaty in the constitutional meaning
of the word subject to be rejected by a minority in the senate.

"The question whether the cession shall be accepted and the bargain
closed by a grant of money for the purpose, (which I take to be the
sole question) is a case equally open to both houses of congress, and
if there is any distinction of _formal right_, it ought according to
the constitution, as a money transaction, to begin in the house of
Representatives.

"I suggest these matters that the senate may not be taken unawares, for
I think it not improbable that some Fed, who intends to negative the
cession, will move to take it up as if it were a Treaty of Alliance or
of Navigation and Commerce.

"The object here is an increase of territory for a valuable
consideration. It is altogether a home concern--a matter of domestic
policy. The only real ratification is the payment of the money, and as
all verbal ratification without this goes for nothing, it would be a
waste of time and expense to debate on the verbal ratification distinct
from the money ratification. The shortest way, as it appears to me,
would be to appoint a committee to bring in a report on the President's
Message, and for that committee to report a bill for the payment of the
money. The french Government, as the seller of the property, will not
consider anything ratification but the payment of the money contracted
for.

"There is also another point, necessary to be aware of, which is, to
accept it in toto. Any alteration or modification in it, or annexed as
a condition is so far fatal, that it puts it in the power of the other
party to reject the whole and propose new Terms. There can be no such
thing as ratifying in part, or with a condition annexed to it and
the ratification to be binding. It is still a continuance of the
négociation.

"It ought to be presumed that the American ministers have done to the
best of their power and procured the best possible terms, and that being
immediately on the spot with the other party they were better Judges of
the whole, and of what could, or could not be done, than any person at
this distance, and unacquainted with many of the circumstances of the
case, can possibly be.

"If a treaty, a contract, or a cession be good upon the whole, it is ill
policy to hazard the whole, by an experiment to get some trifle in it
altered. The right way of proceeding in such case is to make sure of
the whole by ratifying it, and then instruct the minister to propose
a clause to be added to the Instrument to obtain the amendment or
alteration wished for. This was the method Congress took with respect to
the Treaty of Commerce with France in 1778. Congress ratified the whole
and proposed two new articles which were agreed to by France and added
to the Treaty.

"There is according to newspaper account an article which admits french
and Spanish vessels on the same terms as American vessels. But this
does not make it a commercial Treaty. It is only one of the Items in the
payment: and it has this advantage, that it joins Spain with France in
making the cession and is an encouragement to commerce and new settlers.

"With respect to the purchase, admitting it to be 15 millions dollars,
it is an advantageous purchase. The revenue alone purchased as an
annuity or rent roll is worth more--at present I suppose the revenue
will pay five per cent for the purchase money.

"I know not if these observations will be of any use to you. I am in
a retired village and out of the way of hearing the talk of the great
world. But I see that the Feds, at least some of them, are changing
their tone and now reprobating the acquisition of Louisiana; and the
only way they can take to lose the affair will be to take it up as they
would a Treaty of Commerce and annull it by a Minority; or entangle it
with some condition that will render the ratification of no effect.

"I believe in this state (Jersey) we shall have a majority at the next
election. We gain some ground and lose none anywhere. I have half a
disposition to visit the Western World next spring and go on to New
Orleans. They are a new people and unacquainted with the principles of
representative government and I think I could do some good among them.

"As the stage-boat which was to take this letter to the Post-office does
not depart till to-morrow, I amuse myself with continuing the subject
after I had intended to close it.

"I know little and can learn but little of the extent and present
population of Louisiana. After the cession be com-pleated and the
territory annexed to the United States it will, I suppose, be formed
into states, one, at least, to begin with.

"The people, as I have said, are new to us and we to them and a great
deal will depend on a right beginning. As they have been transferred
backward and forward several times from one European Government to
another it is natural to conclude they have no fixed prejudices with
respect to foreign attachments, and this puts them in a fit disposition
for their new condition. The established religion is roman; but in
what state it is as to exterior ceremonies (such as processions and
celebrations), I know not. Had the cession to france continued with her,
religion I suppose would have been put on the same footing as it is
in that country, and there no ceremonial of religion can appear on the
streets or highways; and the same regulation is particularly necessary
now or there will soon be quarrels and tumults between the old settlers
and the new. The Yankees will not move out of the road for a little
wooden Jesus stuck on a stick and carried in procession nor kneel in
the dirt to a wooden Virgin Mary. As we do not govern the territory as
provinces but incorporated as states, religion there must be on the same
footing it is here, and Catholics have the same rights as Catholics have
with us and no others. As to political condition the Idea proper to be
held out is, that we have neither conquered them, nor bought them, but
formed a Union with them and they become in consequence of that union a
part of the national sovereignty.

"The present Inhabitants and their descendants will be a majority for
some time, but new emigrations from the old states and from Europe, and
intermarriages, will soon change the first face of things, and it is
necessary to have this in mind when the first measures shall be taken.
Everything done as an expedient grows worse every day, for in proportion
as the mind grows up to the full standard of sight it disclaims the
expedient. America had nearly been ruined by expedients in the first
stages of the revolution, and perhaps would have been so, had not
'Common Sense' broken the charm and the Declaration of Independence sent
it into banishment.

"Yours in friendship

"Thomas Paine.*

"remember me in the circle of your friends."

     * The original is in possession of Mr. William F.
     Havermeyer, Jr.

Mr. E. M. Woodward, in his account of Bordentown, mentions among the
"traditions" of the place, that Paine used to meet a large number of
gentlemen at the "Washington House," kept by Debora Applegate, where he
conversed freely "with any proper person who approached him."

"Mr. Paine was too much occupied in literary pursuits and writing to
spend a great deal of his time here, but he generally paid several
visits during the day. His drink was invariably brandy. In walking he
was generally absorbed in deep thought, seldom noticed any one as he
passed, unless spoken to, and in going from his home to the tavern was
frequently observed to cross the street several times. It is stated that
several members of the church were turned from their faith by him, and
on this account, and the general feeling of the community against him
for his opinions on religious subjects, he was by the mass of the
people held in odium, which feeling to some extent was extended to Col.
Kirkbride."

These "traditions" were recorded in 1876. Paine's "great power of
conversation" was remembered. But among the traditions, even of the
religious, there is none of any excess in drinking.

Possibly the turning of several church-members from their faith may
not have been so much due to Paine as to the parsons, in showing their
"religion" as a gorgon turning hearts to stone against a benefactor
of mankind. One day Paine went with Colonel Kirkbride to visit Samuel
Rogers, the Colonels brother-in-law, at Bellevue, across the river. As
he entered the door Rogers turned his back, refusing his old friend's
hand, because it had written the "Age of Reason." Presently Borden-town
was placarded with pictures of the Devil flying away with Paine. The
pulpits set up a chorus of vituperation. Why should the victim spare the
altar on which he is sacrificed, and justice also? Dogma had chosen to
grapple with the old man in its own way. That it was able to break a
driven leaf Paine could admit as truly as Job; but he could as bravely
say: Withdraw thy hand from me, and I will answer thee, or thou shalt
answer me! In Paine too it will be proved that such outrages on truth
and friendship, on the rights of thought, proceed from no God, but from
the destructive forces once personified as the adversary of man.

Early in March Paine visited New York, to see Monroe before his
departure for France. He drove with Kirkbride to Trenton; but so furious
was the pious mob, he was refused a seat in the Trenton stage. They
dined at Government House, but when starting for Brunswick were hooted
These were the people for whose liberties Paine had marched that same
road on foot, musket in hand. At Trenton insults were heaped on the
man who by camp-fires had written the _Crisis_, which animated the
conquerors of the Hessians at that place, in "the times that tried men's
souls." These people he helped to make free,--free to cry _Crucify!_

Paine had just written to Jefferson that the Louisianians were "perhaps
too much under the influence of their priests to be sufficiently free."
Probably the same thought occurred to him about people nearer home,
when he presently heard of Colonel Kirkbride's sudden unpopularity, and
death. On October 3d Paine lost this faithful friend.*

     * It should be stated that Burlington County, in which
     Bordentown is situated, was preponderantly Federalist, and
     that Trenton was in the hands of a Federalist mob of young
     well-to-do rowdies. The editor of the _True American_, a
     Republican paper to which Paine had contributed, having
     commented on a Fourth of July orgie of those rowdies in a
     house associated with the revolution, was set upon with
     bludgeons on July 12th, and suffered serious injuries. The
     Grand Jury refused to present the Federalist ruffians,
     though the evidence was clear, and the mob had free course.

The facts of the Paine mob are these: after dining at Government House,
Trenton, Kirkbride applied for a seat on the New York stage for Paine.
The owner, Voorhis, cursed Paine as "a deist," and said, "I 'll be
damned if he shall go in my stage." Another stage-owner also refused,
saying, "My stage and horses were once struck by lightning, and I don't
want them to suffer again." When Paine and Kirkbride had entered their
carriage a mob surrounded them with a drum, playing the "rogue's march."
The local reporter (_True American_) says, "Mr. Paine discovered not the
least emotion of fear or anger, but calmly observed that such conduct
had no tendency to hurt his feelings or injure his fame." The mob then
tried to frighten the horse with the drum, and succeeded, but the two
gentlemen reached a friend's house in Brunswick in safety. A letter
from Trenton had been written to the stage-master there also, to prevent
Paine from securing a seat, whether with success does not appear.




CHAPTER XVII. NEW ROCHELLE AND THE BONNEVILLES

The Bonnevilles, with whom Paine had resided in Paris, were completely
impoverished after his departure. They resolved to follow Paine to
America, depending on his promise of aid should they do so. Foreseeing
perils in France, Nicolas, unable himself to leave at once, hurried off
his wife and children--Benjamin, Thomas, and Louis. Madame Bonneville
would appear to have arrived in August, 1803. I infer this because Paine
writes, September 23d, to Jefferson from Stonington, Connecticut; and
later letters show that he had been in New York, and afterwards placed
Thomas Paine Bonneville with the Rev. Mr. Foster (Universalist) of
Stonington for education. Madame Bonneville was placed in his house at
Bordentown, where she was to teach French.

At New York, Paine found both religious and political parties sharply
divided over him. At Lovett's Hotel, where he stopped, a large dinner
was given him, March 18th, seventy being present One of the active
promoters of this dinner was James Cheetham, editor of the _American
Citizen_, who, after seriously injuring Paine by his patronage, became
his malignant enemy.

In the summer of 1803 the political atmosphere was in a tempestuous
condition, owing to the widespread accusation that Aaron Burr had
intrigued with the Federalists against Jefferson to gain the presidency.
There was a Society in New York called "Republican Greens," who, on
Independence Day, had for a toast "Thomas Paine, the Man of the People,"
and who seem to have had a piece of music called the "Rights of Man."
Paine was also apparently the hero of that day at White Plains, where
a vast crowd assembled, "over 1,000," among the toasts being: "Thomas
Paine--the bold advocate of rational liberty--the People's friend." He
probably reached New York again in August A letter for "Thomas Payne"
is in the advertised Letter-list of August 6th, and in the _American
Citizen_ (August 9th) are printed (and misprinted) "Lines, extempore, by
Thomas Paine, July, 1803."*

     * On July 12th the _Evening Post _(edited by William
     Coleman) tries to unite republicanism and infidelity by
     stating that Part I. of the "Age of Reason" was sent in MS.
     to Mr. Fellows of New York, and in the following year Part
     II. was gratuitously distributed "from what is now the
     office of the Aurora." On September 24th that paper
     publishes a poem about Paine, ending:


     "Quick as the lightning's vivid flash
     The poet's eye o'er Europe rolls;
     Sees battles rage, hears tempests crash,
     And dims at horror's threatening scowls.

     "Mark ambition's ruthless king,
     With crimsoned banners scathe the globe;
     While trailing after conquest's wing,
     Man's festering wounds his demons probe.

     "Palled with streams of reeking gore
     That stain the proud imperial day,
     He turns to view the western shore,
     Where freedom holds her boundless sway.

     "'T is here her sage triumphant sways
     An empire in the people's love;
     'T is here the sovereign will obeys
     No king but Him who rules above."

The verses, crudely expressing the contrast between President Jefferson
and King George--or Napoleon, it is not clear which,--sufficiently show
that Paine's genius was not extempore. His reputation as a patriotic
minstrel was high; his "Hail, great Republic," to the tune of "Rule
Britannia," was the established Fourth-of-July song, and it was even
sung at the dinner of the American consul in London (Erving) March 4,
1803, the anniversary of Jefferson's election. Possibly the extempore
lines were sung on some Fourth-of-July occasion. I find "Thomas Paine"
and the "Rights of Man" favorite toasts at republican celebrations in
Virginia also at this time. In New York we may discover Paine's coming
and going by rancorous paragraphs concerning him in the _Evening Post_.*

     "And having spent a lengthy life in evil,
     Return again unto thy parent Devil!"

Perhaps the most malignant wrong done Paine in this paper was the
adoption of his signature, "Common Sense," by one of its contributors!
Another paragraph says that Franklin hired Paine in London to come to
America and write in favor of the Revolution,--a remarkable example of
federalist heredity from "Toryism." On September 27th the paper prints a
letter purporting to have been found by a waiter in Lovett's Hotel after
Paine's departure,--a long letter to Paine, by some red-revolutionary
friend, of course gloating over the exquisite horrors filling Europe in
consequence of the "Rights of Man." The pretended letter is dated "Jan.
12, 1803," and signed "J. Oldney." The paper's correspondent pretends
to have found out Oldney, and conversed with him. No doubt many simple
people believed the whole thing genuine.

The most learned physician in New York, Dr. Nicholas Romayne, invited
Paine to dinner, where he was met by John Pintard, and other eminent
citizens. Pintard said to Paine: "I have read and re-read your 'Age
of Reason,' and any doubts which I before entertained of the truth
of revelation have been removed by your logic. Yes, sir, your very
arguments against Christianity have convinced me of its truth." "Well
then," answered Paine, "I may return to my couch to-night with the
consolation that I have made at least one Christian."* This authentic
anecdote is significant John Pintard, thus outdone by Paine in
politeness, founded the Tammany Society, and organized the democratic
party. When the "Rights of Man" appeared, the book and its author were
the main toasts of the Tammany celebrations; but it was not so after
the "Age of Reason" had appeared. For John Pintard was all his life
a devotee of Dutch Reformed orthodoxy. Tammany, having begun with the
populace, had by this time got up somewhat in society. As a rule the
"gentry" were Federalists, though they kept a mob in their back yard to
fly at the democrats on occasion. But with Jefferson in the presidential
chair, and Clinton vice-president, Tammany was in power. To hold this
power Tammany had to court the clergy. So there was no toast to Paine in
the Wigwam of 1803.**

     * Dr. Francis' "Old New York," p. 140.

     ** The New York Daily Advertiser published the whole of Part
     I. of the "Rights of Man" in 1791 (May 6-27), the editor
     being then John Pintard. At the end of the publication a
     poetical tribute to Paine was printed. Four of the lines run:

     "Rous'd by the reason of his manly page,
     Once more shall Paine a listening world engage;
     From reason's source a bold reform he brings,
     By raising up mankind he pulls down kings."

President Jefferson was very anxious about the constitutional points
involved in his purchase of Louisiana, and solicited Paine's views on
the whole subject. Paine wrote to him extended communications, among
which was the letter of September 23d, from Stonington. The interest of
the subject is now hardly sufficient to warrant publication of the whole
of this letter, which, however, possesses much interest.

At the great celebration (October 12, 1792) of the third Centenary of
the discovery of America, by the sons of St Tammany, New York, the first
man toasted after Columbus was Paine, and next to Paine "The Rights of
Man." They were also extolled in an ode composed for the occasion, and
sung.

"Your two favours of the 10 and 18 ult. reached me at this place on the
14th inst.; also one from Mr. Madison. I do not suppose that the framers
of the Constitution thought anything about the acquisition of new
territory, and even if they did it was prudent to say nothing about
it, as it might have suggested to foreign Nations the idea that we
contemplated foreign conquest. It appears to me to be one of those cases
with which the Constitution had nothing to do, and which can be judged
of only by the circumstances of the times when such a case shall occur.
The Constitution could not foresee that Spain would cede Louisiana to
France or to England, and therefore it could not determine what our
conduct should be in consequence of such an event. The cession makes
no alteration in the Constitution; it only extends the principles of it
over a larger territory, and this certainly is within the morality of
the Constitution, and not contrary to, nor beyond, the expression or
intention of any of its articles... Were a question to arise it would
apply, not to the Cession, because it violates no article of the
Constitution, but to Ross and Morris's motion. The Constitution empowers
Congress to declare war, but to make war without declaring it is
anti-constitutional. It is like attacking an unarmed man in the dark.
There is also another reason why no such question should arise. The
english Government is but in a tottering condition and if Bonaparte
succeeds, that Government will break up. In that case it is not
improbable we may obtain Canada, and I think that Bermuda ought to
belong to the United States. In its present condition it is a nest for
piratical privateers. This is not a subject to be spoken of, but it may
be proper to have it in mind.

"The latest news we have from Europe in this place is the insurrection
in Dublin. It is a disheartening circumstance to the english Government,
as they are now putting arms into the hands of people who but a few
weeks before they would have hung had they found a pike in their
possession. I think the probability is in favour of the descent [on
England by Bonaparte]...

"I shall be employed the ensuing Winter in cutting two or three thousand
Cords of Wood on my farm at New Rochelle for the New York market distant
twenty miles by water. The Wood is worth 3 1/2 dollars per load as it
stands. This will furnish me with ready money, and I shall then be ready
for whatever may present itself of most importance next spring. I had
intended to build myself a house to my own taste, and a workshop for
my mechanical operations, and make a collection, as authors say, of
my works, which with what I have in manuscript will make four, or five
octavo volumes, and publish them by subscription, but the prospects that
are now opening with respect to England hold me in suspence.

"It has been customary in a President's discourse to say something about
religion. I offer you a thought on this subject. The word, religion,
used as a word _en masse_ has no application to a country like America.
In catholic countries it would mean exclusively the religion of the
romish church; with the Jews, the Jewish religion; in England,
the protestant religion or in the sense of the english church, the
established religion; with the Deists it would mean Deism; with the
Turks, Mahometism &c, &c, As well as I recollect it is _Lego, Religo,
Relegio, Religion_, that is say, tied or bound by an oath or obligation.
The french use the word properly; when a woman enters a convent, she is
called a novitiate; when she takes the oath, she is a _religieuse_, that
is, she is bound by an oath. Now all that we have to do, as a Government
with the word religion, in this country, is with the civil rights of it,
and not at all with its _creeds_. Instead therefore of using the word
religion, as a word en masse, as if it meant a creed, it would be better
to speak only of its civil rights; _that all denominations of religion
are equally protected, that none are dominant, none inferior, that
the rights of conscience are equal to every denomination and to every
individual and that it is the duty of Government to preserve this
equality of conscientious rights_. A man cannot be called a hypocrite
for defending the civil rights of religion, but he may be suspected of
insincerity in defending its creeds.

"I suppose you will find it proper to take notice of the impressment of
American seamen by the Captains of British vessels, and procure a list
of such captains and report them to their government. This pretence
of searching for british seamen is a new pretence for visiting and
searching American vessels....

"I am passing some time at this place at the house of a friend till the
wood cutting time comes on, and I shall engage some cutters here and
then return to New Rochelle. I wrote to Mr. Madison concerning the
report that the british Government had cautioned ours not to pay
the purchase money for Louisiana, as they intended to take it for
themselves. I have received his [negative] answer, and I pray you make
him my compliments.

"We are still afflicted with the yellow fever, and the Doctors are
disputing whether it is an imported or a domestic disease. Would it not
be a good measure to prohibit the arrival of all vessels from the West
Indies from the last of June to the middle of October. If this was
done this session of Congress, and we escaped the fever next summer, we
should always know how to escape it. I question if performing quarantine
is a sufficient guard. The disease may be in the cargo, especially that
part which is barrelled up, and not in the persons on board, and when
that cargo is opened on our wharfs, the hot steaming air in contact with
the ground imbibes the infection. I can conceive that infected air can
be barrelled up, not in a hogshead of rum, nor perhaps sucre, but in
a barrel of coffee. I am badly off in this place for pen and Ink, and
short of paper. I heard yesterday from Boston that our old friend S.
Adams was at the point of death. Accept my best wishes."

When Madame Bonneville left France it was understood that her husband
would soon follow, but he did not come, nor was any letter received from
him. This was probably the most important allusion in a letter of Paine,
dated New York, March 1, 1804, to "Citizen Skipwith, Agent Commercial
d'Amérique, Paris."

"Dear Friend--I have just a moment to write you a line by a friend who
is on the point of sailing for Bordeaux. The Republican interest is now
compleatly triumphant. The change within this last year has been great.
We have now 14 States out of 17,--N. Hampshire, Mass. and Connecticut
stand out. I much question if any person will be started against Mr.
Jefferson. Burr is rejected for the vice-presidency; he is now putting
up for Governor of N. York. Mr. Clinton will be run for vice-president.
Morgan Lewis, Chief Justice of the State of N. Y. is the Republican
candidate for Governor of that State.

"I have not received a line from Paris, except a letter from Este, since
I left it. We have now been nearly 80 days without news from Europe.
What is Barlow about? I have not heard anything from him except that
he is _always_ coming. What is Bonneville about? Not a line has been
received from aim. Respectful compliments to Mr. Livingston and family.
Yours in friendship."

Madame Bonneville, unable to speak English, found Bordentown dull,
and soon turned up in New York. She ordered rooms in Wilburn's
boarding-house, where Paine was lodging, and the author found the
situation rather complicated The family was absolutely without means
of their own, and Paine, who had given them a comfortable home at
Bordentown, was annoyed by their coming on to New York. Anxiety is shown
in the following letter written at 16 Gold St., New York, March 24th, to
"Mr. Hyer, Bordenton, N. J."

"Dear Sir,--I received your letter by Mr. Nixon, and also a former
letter, but I have been so unwell this winter with a fit of gout, tho'
not so bad as I had at Bordenton about twenty years ago, that I could
not write, and after I got better I got a fall on the ice in the garden
where I lodge that threw me back for above a month. I was obliged to get
a person to copy off the letter to the people of England, published
in the Aurora, March 7, as I dictated it verbally, for all the time my
complaint continued. My health and spirits were as good as ever. It
was my intention to have cut a large quantity of wood for the New York
market, and in that case you would have had the money directly, but this
accident and the gout prevented my doing anything. I shall now have to
take up some money upon it, which I shall do by the first of May to put
Mrs. Bonneville into business, and I shall then discharge her bill. In
the mean time I wish you to receive a quarter's rent due on the 1st of
April from Mrs Richardson, at $25 per ann., and to call on Mrs. Read for
40 or 50 dollars, or what you can get, and to give a receipt in my name.
Col. Kirkbride should have discharged your bill, it was what he engaged
to do. Mrs. Wharton owes for the rent of the house while she lived in
it, unless Col. Kirkbride has taken it into his accounts. Samuel Hileyar
owes me 84 dollars lent him in hard money. Mr. Nixon spake to me about
hiring my house, but as I did not know if Mrs. Richardson intended to
stay in it or quit it I could give no positive answer, but said I would
write to you about it. Israel Butler also writes me about taking at the
same rent as Richardson pays. I will be obliged to you to let the house
as you may judge best. I shall make a visit to Bordenton in the spring,
and I shall call at your house first.

"There have been several arrivals here in short passages from England.
P. Porcupine, I see, is become the panegyrist of Bonaparte. You will see
it in the Aurora of March 19, and also the message of Bonaparte to the
french legislature. It is a good thing.

"Mrs. Bonneville sends her compliments. She would have wrote, but she
cannot yet venture to write in English. I congratulate you on your new
appointment.

"Yours in friendship."*

     * I am indebted for this letter to the N. Y. Hist. Society,
     which owns the original ought to be fulfilled." The
     following passages may be quoted:

     "In casting my eye over England and America, and comparing
     them together, the difference is very striking. The two
     countries were created by the same power, and peopled from
     the same stock. What then has caused the difference? Have
     those who emigrated to America improved, or those whom they
     left behind degenerated?... We see America flourishing
     in peace, cultivating friendship with all nations, and
     reducing her public debt and taxes, incurred by the
     revolution. On the contrary we see England almost
     perpetually in war, or warlike disputes, and her debt and
     taxes continually increasing. Could we suppose a stranger,
     who knew nothing of the origin of the two nations, he would
     from observation conclude that America was the old country,
     experienced and sage, and England the new, eccentric and
     wild. Scarcely had England drawn home her troops from
     America, after the revolutionary war, than she was on the
     point of plunging herself into a war with Holland, on
     account of the Stadtholder; then with Russia; then with
     Spain on account of the Nootka cat-skins; and actually with
     France to prevent her revolution. Scarcely had she made
     peace with France, and before she had fulfilled her own part
     of the Treaty, than she declared war again, to avoid
     fulfilling the Treaty. In her Treaty of peace with America,
     she engaged to evacuate the western posts within six months;
     but, having obtained peace, she refused to fulfil the
     conditions, and kept possession of the posts, and embroiled
     herself in an Indian war.* In her Treaty of peace with
     France, she engaged to evacuate Malta within three months;
     but, having obtained peace, she refused to evacuate Malta,
     and began a new war."

     * Paine's case is not quite sound at this point.    The
     Americans had not, on their side, fulfilled the condition of
     paying their English debts.


(1804)

Paine's letter alluded to was printed in the _Aurora_ with the following
note:

"To the Editor.--As the good sense of the people in their elections has
now put the affairs of America in a prosperous condition at home and
abroad, there is nothing immediately important for the subject of a
letter. I therefore send you a piece on another subject."

The piece presently appeared as a pamphlet of sixteen pages with the
following title: "Thomas Paine to the People of England, on the Invasion
of England. Philadelphia: Printed at the Temple of Reason Press, Arch
Street. 1804." Once more the hope had risen in Paine's breast that
Napoleon was to turn liberator, and that England was to be set free. "If
the invasion succeed I hope Bonaparte will remember that this war
has not been provoked by the people. It is altogether the act of the
government without their consent or knowledge; and though the late
peace appears to have been insidious from the first, on the part of the
government, it was received by the people with a sincerity of joy."
He still hopes that the English people may be able to end the trouble
peacefully, by compelling Parliament to fulfil the Treaty of Amiens.

Paine points out that the failure of the French Revolution was due to
"the provocative interference of foreign powers, of which Pitt was
the principal and vindictive agent," and affirms the success of
representative government in the United States after thirty years'
trial. "The people of England have now two revolutions before them,--the
one as an example, the other as a warning. Their own wisdom will direct
them what to choose and what to avoid; and in everything which regards
their happiness, combined with the common good of mankind, I wish them
honor and success."

During this summer, Paine wrote a brilliant paper on a memorial sent
to Congress from the French inhabitants of Louisiana. They demanded
immediate admission to equal Statehood, also the right to continue
the importation of negro slaves. Paine reminds the memorialists of
the "mischief caused in France by the possession of power before they
understood principles." After explaining their position, and the
freedom they have acquired by the merits of others, he points out their
ignorance of human "rights" as shown in their guilty notion that to
enslave others is among them. "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?"

This article (dated September 22d) produced great effect. John Randolph
of Roanoke, in a letter to Albert Gallatin (October 14th), advises
"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 governor may be."

Nicolas Bonneville still giving no sign, and Madame being uneconomical
in her notions of money, Paine thought it necessary--morally and
financially--to let it be known that he was not responsible for her
debts. When, therefore, Wilburn applied to him for her board ($35),
Paine declined to pay, and was sued. Paine pleaded _non assumpsit_, and,
after gaining the case, paid Wilburn the money.

It presently turned out that the surveillance of Nicolas Bonneville did
not permit him to leave France, and, as he was not permitted to resume
his journal or publications, he could neither join his family nor assist
them.

Paine now resolved to reside on his farm. The following note was written
to Col. John Fellows. It is dated at New Rochelle, July 9th:

"Fellow Citizen,--As the weather is now getting hot at New York, and the
people begin to get out of town, you may as well come up here and help
me settle my accounts with the man who lives on the place. You will be
able to do this better than I shall, and in the mean time I can go on
with my literary works, without having my mind taken off by affairs of
a different kind. I have received a packet from Governor Clinton,
enclosing what I wrote for. If you come up by the stage you will stop
at the post-office, and they will direct you the way to the farm. It
is only a pleasant walk. I send a price for the Prospect; if the plan
mentioned in it is pursued, it will open a way to enlarge and give
establishment to the deistical church; but of this and some other things
we will talk when you come up, and the sooner the better. Yours in
friendship."

Paine was presently enjoying himself on his farm at New Rochelle, and
Madame Bonneville began to keep house for him.

"It is a pleasant and healthy situation [he wrote to Jefferson somewhat
later], commanding a prospect always green and peaceable, as New
Rochelle produces a great deal of grass and hay. The farm contains three
hundred acres, about one hundred of which is meadow land, one hundred
grazing and village land, and the remainder woodland. It is an oblong
about a mile and a half in length. I have sold off sixty-one acres and
a half for four thousand and twenty dollars. With this money I shall
improve the other part, and build an addition 34 feet by 32 to the
present dwelling."

He goes on into an architectural description, with drawings, of
the arched roof he intends to build, the present form of roof being
"unpleasing to the eye." He also draws an oak floor such as they make in
Paris, which he means to imitate.

With a black cook, Rachel Gidney, the family seemed to be getting on
with fair comfort; but on Christmas Eve an event occurred which came
near bringing Paine's plans to an abrupt conclusion. This is related
in a letter to William Carver, New York, dated January 16th, at New
Rochelle.

"Esteemed Friend,--I have recd, two letters from you, one giving an
account of your taking Thomas to Mr. Foster*--the other dated Jany.
12--I did not answer the first because I hoped to see you the next
Saturday or the Saturday after.

     * Thomas Bonneville, Paine's godson, at school in Stonington.

What you heard of a gun being fired into the room is true--Robert and
Rachel were both gone out to keep Christmas Eve and about eight o'clock
at Night the gun were fired. I ran immediately out, one of Mr. Dean's
boys with me, but the person that had done it was gone. I directly
suspected who it was, and I halloed to him by name, that _he was
discovered_. I did this that the party who fired might know I was on the
watch. I cannot find any ball, but whatever the gun was charged with
passed through about three or four inches below the window making a hole
large enough to a finger to go through--the muzzle must have been very
near as the place is black with the powder, and the glass of the window
is shattered to pieces. Mr Shute after examining the place and getting
what information could be had, issued a warrant to take up Derrick, and
after examination committed him.

"He is now on bail (five hundred dollars) to take his trial at the
supreme Court in May next. Derrick owes me forty-eight dollars for which
I have his note, and he was to work it out in making stone fence which
he has not even begun and besides this I have had to pay forty-two
pounds eleven shillings for which I had passed my word for him at Mr.
Pelton's store. Derrick borrowed the Gun under pretence of giving Mrs.
Bayeaux a Christmas Gun. He was with Purdy about two hours before the
attack on the house was made and he came from thence to Dean's half
drunk and brought with him a bottle of Rum, and Purdy was with him when
he was taken up.

"I am exceedingly well in health and shall always be glad to see you.
Hubbs tells me that your horse is getting better. Mrs. Shute sent for
the horse and took him when the first snow came but he leaped the fences
and came back. Hubbs says there is a bone broke. If this be the case I
suppose he has broke or cracked it in leaping a fence when he was lame
on the other hind leg, and hung with his hind legs in the fence. I am
glad to hear what you tell me of Thomas. He shall not want for anything
that is necessary if he be a good boy for he has no friend but me. You
have not given me any account about the meeting house. Remember me to
our Friends. Yours in friendship."

The window of the room said to have been Paine's study is close to the
ground, and it is marvellous that he was not murdered.**

     * I am indebted for this letter to Dr. Clair J. Grèce, of
     England, whose uncle, Daniel Constable, probably got it from
     Carver.

     ** Derrick (or Dederick) appears by the records at White
     Plains to have been brought up for trial May 19, 1806, and
     to have been recognized in the sum of $500 for his
     appearance at the next Court of Oyer and Terminer and
     General Gaol Delivery, and in the meantime to keep the peace
     towards the

People, and especially towards Thomas Payne (sic). Paine, Christopher
Hubbs, and Andrew A. Dean were recognized in $50 to appear and give
evidence against Derrick. Nothing further appears in the records
(examined for me by Mr. B. D. Washburn up to 1810). It is pretty certain
that Paine did not press the charges.

The most momentous change which had come over America during Paine's
absence was the pro-slavery reaction. This had set in with the first
Congress. An effort was made by the Virginia representatives to check
the slave traffic by imposing a duty of $10 on each negro imported, but
was defeated by an alliance of members from more Southern States and
professedly antislavery men of the North. The Southern leader in this
first victory of slavery in Congress was Major Jackson of Georgia, who
defended the institution as scriptural and civilizing. The aged Dr.
Franklin published (Federal Gazette, March 25, 1790) a parody of
Jackson's speech, purporting to be a speech uttered in 1687 by a Divan
of Algiers in defence of piracy and slavery, against a sect of Erika,
or Purists, who had petitioned for their suppression. Franklin was now
president of the American Antislavery Society, founded in Philadelphia
in 1775 five weeks after the appearance of Paine's scheme of
emancipation (March 8, 1775). Dr. Rush was also active in the cause, and
to him Paine wrote (March 16, 1790) the letter on the subject elsewhere
quoted (L, p. 271). This letter was published by Rush (Columbian
Magazine, vol. ii., p. 318) while the country was still agitated by the
debate which was going on in Congress at the time when it was written,
on a petition of the Antislavery Society, signed by Franklin,--his
last public act.

Franklin died April 17, 1790, twenty-five days after the close of the
debate, in which he was bitterly denounced by the proslavery party.
Washington had pronounced the petition "inopportune,"--his presidential
mansion in New York was a few steps from the slave-market,--Jefferson
(now Secretary of State) had no word to say for it, Madison had smoothed
over the matter by a compromise. Thenceforth slavery had become a
suppressed subject, and the slave trade, whenever broached in Congress,
had maintained its immunity. In 1803, even under Jefferson's
administration, the negroes fleeing from oppression in Domingo were
forbidden asylum in America, because it was feared that they would
incite servile insurrections. That the United States, under presidency
of Jefferson, should stand aloof from the struggle of the negroes in
Domingo for liberty, cut Paine to the heart. Unperturbed by the attempt
made on his own life a few days before, he wrote to Jefferson on New
Year's Day, 1805, (from New Rochelle,) what may be regarded as an
appeal:




{1805}

"Dear Sir,--I have some thoughts of coming to Washington this winter, as
I may as well spend a part of it there as elsewhere. But lest bad roads
or any other circumstance should prevent me I suggest a thought for
your consideration, and I shall be glad if in this case, as in that of
Louisiana, we may happen to think alike without knowing what each other
had thought of.

"The affair of Domingo will cause some trouble in either of the cases
in which it now stands. If armed merchantmen force their way through the
blockading fleet it will embarrass us with the french Government;
and, on the other hand, if the people of Domingo think that we show a
partiality to the french injurious to them there is danger they will
turn Pirates upon us, and become more injurious on account of vicinity
than the barbary powers, and England will encourage it, as she
encourages the Indians. Domingo is lost to France either as to the
Government or the possession of it, But if a way could be found out to
bring about a peace between france and Domingo through the mediation,
and under the guarantee of the United States, it would be beneficial to
all parties, and give us a great commercial and political standing,
not only with the present people of Domingo but with the West Indies
generally. And when we have gained their confidence by acts of
justice and friendship, they will listen to our advice in matters of
Civilization and Government, and prevent the danger of their becoming
pirates, which I think they will be, if driven to desperation.

"The United States is the only power that can undertake a measure of
this kind. She is now the Parent of the Western world, and her knowledge
of the local circumstances of it gives her an advantage in a matter of
this kind superior to any European Nation. She is enabled by situation,
and grow[ing] importance to become a guarantee, and to see, as far as
her advice and influence can operate, that the conditions on the part
of Domingo be fulfilled. It is also a measure that accords with
the humanity of her principles, with her policy, and her commercial
interest.

"All that Domingo wants of France, is, that France agree to let her
alone, and withdraw her forces by sea and land; and in return for
this Domingo to give her a monopoly of her commerce for a term of
years,--that is, to import from France all the utensils and manufactures
she may have occasion to use or consume (except such as she can more
conveniently procure from the manufactories of the United States), and
to pay for them in produce. France will gain more by this than she can
expect to do even by a conquest of the Island, and the advantage to
America will be that she will become the carrier of both, at least
during the present war.

"There was considerable dislike in Paris against the Expedition to
Domingo; and the events that have since taken place were then often
predicted. The opinion that generally prevailed at that time was that
the commerce of the Island was better than the conquest of it,--that the
conquest could not be accomplished without destroying the negroes, and
in that case the Island would be of no value.

"I think it might be signified to the french Government, yourself is
the best judge of the means, that the United States are disposed to
undertake an accommodation so as to put an end to this otherwise endless
slaughter on both sides, and to procure to France the best advantages in
point of commerce that the state of things will admit of. Such an offer,
whether accepted or not, cannot but be well received, and may lead to a
good end.

"There is now a fine snow, and if it continues I intend to set off
for Philadelphia in about eight days, and from thence to Washington.
I congratulate your constituents on the success of the election for
President and Vice-President.

"Yours in friendship,

"Thomas Paine."

The journey to Washington was given up, and Paine had to content himself
with his pen. He took in several newspapers, and was as keenly alive
as ever to the movements of the world. His chief anxiety was lest some
concession might be made to the Louisianians about the slave trade, that
region being an emporium of the traffic which grew more enterprising and
brutal as its term was at hand. Much was said of the great need of the
newly acquired region for more laborers, and it was known that Jefferson
was by no means so severe in his opposition to slavery as he was once
supposed to be. The President repeatedly invited Paine's views, and they
were given fully and freely. The following extracts are from a letter
dated New York, January 25, 1805:

"Mr. Levy Lincoln and Mr. Wingate called on me at N. York, where I
happened to be when they arrived on their Journey from Washington to
the Eastward: I find by Mr. Lincoln that the Louisiana Memorialists will
have to return as they came and the more decisively Congress put an
end to this business the better. The Cession of Louisiana is a great
acquisition; but great as it is it would be an incumbrance on the Union
were the prayer of the petitioners to be granted, nor would the lauds be
worth settling if the settlers are to be under a french jurisdiction....
When the emigrations from the United States into Louisiana become equal
to the number of french inhabitants it may then be proper and right to
erect such part where such equality exists into a constitutional state;
but to do it now would be sending the american settlers into exile....
For my own part, I wish the name of Louisiana to be lost, and this may
in a great measure be done by giving names to the new states that will
serve as descriptive of their situation or condition. France lost the
names and almost the remembrance of provinces by dividing them into
departments with appropriate names.

"Next to the acquisition of the territory and the Government of it
is that of settling it. The people of the Eastern States are the
best settlers of a new country, and of people from abroad the German
Peasantry are the best. The Irish in general are generous and dissolute.
The Scotch turn their attention to traffic, and the English to
manufactures. These people are more fitted to live in cities than to
be cultivators of new lands. I know not if in Virginia they are much
acquainted with the importation of German redemptioners, that is,
servants indented for a term of years. The best farmers in Pennsylvania
are those who came over in this manner or the descendants of them. The
price before the war used to be twenty pounds Pennsylvania currency for
an indented servant for four years, that is, the ship owner, got twenty
pounds per head passage money, so that upon two hundred persons he would
receive after their arrival four thousand pounds paid by the persons who
purchased the time of their indentures which was generally four
years. These would be the best people, of foreigners, to bring into
Louisiana--because they would grow to be citizens. Whereas bringing poor
negroes to work the lands in a state of slavery and wretchedness, is,
besides the immorality of it, the certain way of preventing population
and consequently of preventing revenue. I question if the revenue
arising from ten Negroes in the consumption of imported articles is
equal to that of one white citizen. In the articles of dress and of the
table it is almost impossible to make a comparison.

"These matters though they do not belong to the class of principles are
proper subjects for the consideration of Government; and it is always
fortunate when the interests of Government and that of humanity act
unitedly. But I much doubt if the Germans would come to be under a
french Jurisdiction. Congress must frame the laws under which they are
to serve out their time; after which Congress might give them a few
acres of land to begin with for themselves and they would soon be able
to buy more. I am inclined to believe that by adopting this method the
Country will be more peopled in about twenty years from the present time
than it has been in all the times of the french and Spaniards. Spain,
I believe, held it chiefly as a barrier to her dominions in Mexico, and
the less it was improved the better it agreed with that policy; and
as to france she never shewed any great disposition or gave any great
encouragement to colonizing. It is chiefly small countries, that are
straitened for room at home, like Holland and England, that go in quest
of foreign settlements....

"I have again seen and talked with the gentleman from Hamburg. He tells
me that some Vessels under pretence of shipping persons to America
carried them to England to serve as soldiers and sailors. He tells me
he has the Edict or Proclamation of the Senate of Hamburg forbidding
persons shipping themselves without the consent of the Senate, and that
he will give me a copy of it, which if he does soon enough I will send
with this letter. He says that the American Consul has been spoken to
respecting this kidnapping business under American pretences, but
that he says he has no authority to interfere. The German members of
Congress, or the Philadelphia merchants or ship-owners who have been
in the practice of importing German redemptioners, can give you better
information respecting the business of importation than I can. But the
redemptioners thus imported must be at the charge of the Captain or
ship owner till their time is sold. Some of the quaker Merchants of
Philadelphia went a great deal into the importation of German servants
or redemptioners. It agreed with the morality of their principles that
of bettering people's condition, and to put an end to the practice of
importing slaves. I think it not an unreasonable estimation to suppose
that the population of Louisiana may be increased ten thousand souls
every year. What retards the settlement of it is the want of labourers,
and until labourers can be had the sale of the lands will be slow. Were
I twenty years younger, and my name and reputation as well known in
European countries as it is now, I would contract for a quantity of land
in Louisiana and go to Europe and bring over settlers....

"It is probable that towards the close of the session I may make an
excursion to Washington. The piece on Gouverneur Morris's Oration
on Hamilton and that on the Louisiana Memorial are the last I have
published; and as every thing of public affairs is now on a good ground
I shall do as I did after the War, remain a quiet spectator and attend
now to my own affairs.

"I intend making a collection of all the pieces I have published,
beginning with Common Sense, and of what I have by me in manuscript,
and publish them by subscription. I have deferred doing this till the
presidential election should be over, but I believe there was not much
occasion for that caution. There is more hypocrisy than bigotry in
America. When I was in Connecticut the summer before last, I fell
in company with some Baptists among whom were three Ministers. The
conversation turned on the election for President, and one of them who
appeared to be a leading man said 'They cry out against Mr. Jefferson
because, they say he is a Deist. Well, a Deist may be a good man, and if
he think it right, it is right to him. For my own part, said he, 'I had
rather vote for a Deist than for a blue-skin presbyterian.' 'You judge
right,' said I, 'for a man that is not of any of the sectaries will hold
the balance even between all; but give power to a bigot of any sectary
and he will use it to the oppression of the rest, as the blue-skins
do in connection,' They all agree in this sentiment, and I have always
found it assented to in any company I have had occasion to use it.

"I judge the collection I speak of will make five volumes octavo of four
hundred pages each at two dollars a volume to be paid on delivery; and
as they will be delivered separately, as fast as they can be printed and
bound the subscribers may stop when they please. The three first volumes
will be political and each piece will be accompanied with an account
of the state of affairs at the time it was written, whether in America,
france, or England, which will also shew the occasion of writing it.
The first expression in the first No. of the Crisis published the 19th
December '76 is '_These are the times that try men's souls,_' It is
therefore necessary as explanatory to the expression in all future times
to shew what those times were. The two last volumes will be theological
and those who do not chuse to take them may let them alone. They will
have the right to do so, by the conditions of the subscription. I shall
also make a miscellaneous Volume of correspondence, Essays, and
some pieces of Poetry, which I believe will have some claim to
originality....

"I find by the Captain [from New Orleans] above mentioned that several
Liverpool ships have been at New Orleans. It is chiefly the people
of Liverpool that employ themselves in the slave trade and they bring
cargoes of those unfortunate Negroes to take back in return the hard
money and the produce of the country. Had I the command of the elements
I would blast Liverpool with fire and brimstone. It is the Sodom and
Gomorrah of brutality....

"I recollect when in France that you spoke of a plan of making the
Negroes tenants on a plantation, that is, allotting each Negroe family
a quantity of land for which they were to pay to the owner a certain
quantity of produce. I think that numbers of our free negroes might be
provided for in this manner in Louisiana. The best way that occurs to me
is for Congress to give them their passage to New Orleans, then for them
to hire themselves out to the planters for one or two years; they would
by this means learn plantation business, after which to place them on a
tract of land as before mentioned. A great many good things may now be
done; and I please myself with the idea of suggesting my thoughts to
you.

"Old Captain Landais who lives at Brooklyn on Long Island opposite
New York calls sometimes to see me. I knew him in Paris. He is a very
respectable old man. I wish something had been done for him in Congress
on his petition; for I think something is due to him, nor do I see how
the Statute of limitation can consistently apply to him. The law in John
Adams's administration, which cut off all commerce and communication
with france, cut him off from the chance of coming to America to put
in his claim. I suppose that the claims of some of our merchants on
England, france and Spain is more than 6 or 7 years standing yet no
law of limitation, that I know of take place between nations or between
individuals of different nations. I consider a statute of limitation to
be a domestic law, and can only have a domestic operation. Dr. Miller,
one of the New York Senators in Congress, knows Landais and can give you
an account of him.

"Concerning my former letter, on Domingo, I intended had I come to
Washington to have talked with Pichon about it--if you had approved that
method, for it can only be brought forward in an indirect way. The two
Emperors are at too great a distance in objects and in colour to have
any intercourse but by Fire and Sword, yet something I think might be
done. It is time I should close this long epistle. Yours in friendship."

Paine made but a brief stay in New York (where he boarded with William
Carver). His next letter (April 22d) is from New Rochelle, written to
John Fellows, an auctioneer in New York City, one of his most faithful
friends.

"Citizen: I send this by the N. Rochelle boat and have desired the
boatman to call on you with it. He is to bring up Bebia and Thomas and I
will be obliged to you to see them safe on board. The boat will leave N.
Y. on friday.

"I have left my pen knife at Carver's. It is, I believe, in the writing
desk. It is a small french pen knife that slides into the handle. I wish
Carver would look behind the chest in the bed room. I miss some papers
that I suppose are fallen down there. The boys will bring up with them
one pair of the blankets Mrs. Bonneville took down and also my best
blanket which is at Carver's.--I send enclosed three dollars for a ream
of writing paper and one dollar for some letter paper, and porterage to
the boat. I wish you to give the boys some good advice when you go with
them, and tell them that the better they behave the better it will be
for them. I am now their only dependance, and they ought to know it.
Yours in friendship."

"All my Nos. of the Prospect, while I was at Carver's, are left there.
The boys can bring them. I have received no No. since I came to New
Rochelle."'

The Thomas mentioned in this letter was Paine's godson, and "Bebia" was
Benjamin,--the late Brigadier-General Bonneville, U. S. A. The third
son, Louis, had been sent to his father in France. The _Prospect_ was
Elihu Palmer's rationalistic paper.

Early in this year a series of charges affecting Jefferson's public and
private character were published by one Hulbert, on the authority of
Thomas Turner of Virginia. Beginning with an old charge of cowardice,
while Governor (of which Jefferson had been acquitted by the Legislature
of Virginia), the accusation proceeded to instances of immorality,
persons and places being named. The following letter from New Rochelle,
July 19th, to John Fellows enclosed Paine's reply, which appeared in the
_American Citizen_, July 23d and 24th:

     * This letter is in the possession of Mr. Grenville Kane,
     Tuxedo, N. Y.

"Citizen--I inclose you two pieces for Cheetham's paper, which I wish
you to give to him yourself. He may publish one No. in one daily paper,
and the other number in the next daily paper, and then both in his
country paper. There has been a great deal of anonimous (sic) abuse
thrown out in the federal papers against Mr. Jefferson, but until some
names could be got hold of it was fighting the air to take any notice
of them. We have now got hold of two names, your townsman Hulbert, the
hypocritical Infidel of Sheffield, and Thomas Turner of Virginia, his
correspondent. I have already given Hulbert a basting with my name
to it, because he made use of my name in his speech in the Mass.
legislature. Turner has not given me the same cause in the letter he
wrote (and evidently) to Hulbert, and which Hulbert, (for it could be
no other person) has published in the Repertory to vindicate himself.
Turner has detailed his charges against Mr. Jefferson, and I have taken
them up one by one, which is the first time the opportunity has offered
for doing it; for before this it was promiscuous abuse. I have not
signed it either with my name or signature (Common Sense) because I
found myself obliged, in order to made such scoundrels feel a little
smart, to go somewhat out of my usual manner of writing, but there are
some sentiments and some expressions that will be supposed to be in my
stile, and I have no objection to that supposition, but I do not wish
Mr. Jefferson to be _obliged_ to know it is from me.

"Since receiving your letter, which contained no direct information of
any thing I wrote to you about, I have written myself to Mr. Barrett
accompanied with a piece for the editor of the Baltimore Evening Post,
who is an acquaintance of his, but I have received no answer from Mr.
B., neither has the piece been published in the Evening Post. I will be
obliged to you to call on him & to inform me about it. You did not
tell me if you called upon Foster; but at any rate do not delay the
enclosed.--I do not trouble you with any messages or compliments, for
you never deliver any. Your's in friendship."'

     * I am indebted for this letter to Mr. John T. Robertson.
     editor of the National Reformer,  London.

By a minute comparison of the two alleged specifications of immorality,
Paine proved that one was intrinsically absurd, and the other without
trustworthy testimony. As for the charge of cowardice, Paine contended
that it was the duty of a civil magistrate to move out of danger, as
Congress had done in the Revolution. The article was signed "A Spark
from the Altar of '76," but the writer was easily recognized. The
service thus done Jefferson was greater than can now be easily realized.

Another paper by Paine was on "Constitutions, Governments and
Charters." It was an argument to prove the unconstitutionality in New
York of the power assumed by the legislature to grant charters. This
defeated the object of annual elections, by placing the act of one
legislature beyond the reach of its successor. He proposes that all
matters of "extraordinary legislation," such as those involving grants
of land and incorporations of companies, "shall be passed only by a
legislature succeeding the one in which it was proposed." Had such an
article been originally in the Constitution [of New York] the bribery
and corruption employed to seduce and manage the members of the late
legislature, in the affair of the Merchants' Bank, could not have taken
place. It would not have been worth while to bribe men to do what they
had no power of doing.

Madame Bonneville hated country life, and insisted on going to New
York. Paine was not sorry to have her leave, as she could not yet talk
English, and did not appreciate Paine's idea of plain living and high
thinking. She apparently had a notion that Paine had a mint of money,
and, like so many others, might have attributed to parsimony efforts
the unpaid author was making to save enough to give her children,
practically fatherless, some start in life. The philosophic solitude in
which he was left at New Rochelle is described in a letter (July 31st)
to John Fellows, in New York.

"It is certainly best that Mrs. Bonneville go into some family as
a teacher, for she has not the least talent of managing affairs for
herself. She may send Bebia up to me. I will take care of him for his
own sake and his father's, but that is all I have to say.... I am
master of an empty house, or nearly so. I have six chairs and a table, a
straw-bed, a featherbed, and a bag of straw for Thomas, a tea kettle, an
iron pot, an iron baking pan, a frying pan, a gridiron, cups, saucers,
plates and dishes, knives and forks, two candlesticks and a pair of
snuffers. I have a pair of fine oxen and an ox-cart, a good horse, a
Chair, and a one-horse cart; a cow, and a sow and 9 pigs. When you come
you must take such fare as you meet with, for I live upon tea, milk,
fruit-pies, plain dumplins, and a piece of meat when I get it; but I
live with that retirement and quiet that suit me. Mrs. Bonneville was
an encumbrance upon me all the while she was here, for she would not do
anything, not even make an apple dumplin for her own children. If you
cannot make yourself up a straw bed, I can let you have blankets, and
you will have no occasion to go over to the tavern to sleep.

"As I do not see any federal papers, except by accident, I know not if
they have attempted any remarks or criticisms on my Eighth Letter, [or]
the piece on Constitutional Governments and Charters, the two numbers
on Turner's letter, and also the piece on Hulbert. As to anonymous
paragraphs, it is not worth noticing them. I consider the generality of
such editors only as a part of their press, and let them pass.--I want
to come to Morrisania, and it is probable I may come on to N. Y., but I
wish you to answer this letter first.--Yours in friendship."

     * I am indebted for an exact copy of the letter from which
     this is extracted to-Dr. Garnett of the British Museum,
     though it is not in that institution.

It must not be supposed from what Paine says of Madame Bonneville that
there was anything acrimonious in their relations. She was thirty-one
years younger than Paine, fond of the world, handsome. The old
gentleman, all day occupied with writing, could give her little
companionship, even if he could have conversed in French, But he
indulged her in every way, gave her more money than he could afford,
devoted his ever decreasing means to her family. She had boundless
reverence for him, but, as we have seen, had no taste for country life.
Probably, too, after Dederick's attempt on Paine's life she became
nervous in the lonely house. So she had gone to New York, where she
presently found good occupation as a teacher of French in several
families. Her sons, however, were fond of New Rochelle, and of Paine,
who had a knack of amusing children, and never failed to win their
affection.*

     * In the Tarrytown Argus, October 18, 1890, appeared an
     interesting notice of the Rev. Alexander Davis (Methodist),
     by C. K. B[uchanan] in which it is stated that Davis, a
     native of New Rochelle, remembered the affection of Paine,
     who "would bring him round-hearts and hold him on his knee."
     Many such recollections of his little neighbors have been
     reported.

The spring of 1805 at New Rochelle was a pleasant one for Paine.
He wrote his last political pamphlet, which was printed by Duane,
Philadelphia, with the title: "Thomas Paine to the Citizens of
Pennsylvania, on the Proposal for Calling a Convention." It opens with a
reference to his former life and work in Philadelphia. "Removed as I
now am from the place, and detached from everything of personal party, I
address this token to you on the ground of principle, and in remembrance
of former times and friendships." He gives an historical account of the
negative or veto-power, finding it the English Parliament's badge of
disgrace under William of Normandy, a defence of personal prerogative
that ought to find no place in a republic. He advises that in the new
Constitution the principle of arbitration, outside of courts, should
be established. The governor should possess no power of patronage; he
should make one in a Council of Appointments. The Senate is an imitation
of the House of Lords. The Representatives should be divided by lot into
two equal parts, sitting in different chambers. One half, by not
being entangled in the debate of the other on the issue submitted, nor
committed by voting, would become silently possessed of the arguments,
and be in a calm position to review the whole. The votes of the two
houses should be added together, and the majority decide. Judges should
be removable by some constitutional mode, without the formality of
impeachment at "stated periods." (In 1807 Paine wrote to Senator
Mitchell of New York suggesting an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States by which judges of the Supreme Court might be removed by
the President for reasonable cause, though insufficient for impeachment,
on the address of a majority of both Houses of Congress.)

In this pamphlet was included the paper already mentioned (on Charters,
etc.), addressed to the people of New York. The two essays prove that
there was no abatement in Paine's intellect, and that despite occasional
"flings" at the "Feds,"--retorts on their perpetual naggings,--he was
still occupied with the principles of political philosophy.

At this time Paine had put the two young Bon-nevilles at a school in
New Rochelle, where they also boarded. He had too much solitude in the
house, and too little nourishment for so much work. So the house was let
and he was taken in as a boarder by Mrs. Bayeaux, in the old Bayeaux
House, which is still standing,*--but Paine's pecuniary situation now
gave him anxiety. He was earning nothing, his means were found to be
far less than he supposed, the needs of the Bonnevilles increasing.
Considering the important defensive articles he had written for the
President, and their long friendship, he ventured (September 30th) to
allude to his situation and to remind him that his State, Virginia,
had once proposed to give him a tract of land, but had not done so. He
suggests that Congress should remember his services.

     * Mrs. Bayeaux is mentioned in Paine's letter about
     Dederick's attempt on his life.

"But I wish you to be assured that whatever event this proposal may take
it will make no alteration in my principles or my conduct I have been
a volunteer to the world for thirty years without taking profits from
anything I have published in America or Europe. I have relinquished all
profits that those publications might come cheap among the people for
whom they were intended--Yours in friendship."

This was followed by another note (November 14th) asking if it had been
received. What answer came from the President does not appear.

About this time Paine published an essay on "The cause of the Yellow
Fever, and the means of preventing it in places not yet infected with
it Addressed to the Board of Health in America." The treatise, which he
dates June 27th, is noticed by Dr. Francis as timely. Paine points out
that the epidemic which almost annually afflicted New York, had been
unknown to the Indians; that it began around the wharves, and did not
reach the higher parts of the city. He does not believe the disease
certainly imported from the West Indies, since it is not carried from
New York to other places. He thinks that similar filthy conditions of
the wharves and the water about them generate the miasma alike in the
West Indies and in New York. It would probably be escaped if the wharves
were built on stone or iron arches, permitting the tides to cleanse the
shore and carry away the accumulations of vegetable and animal matter
decaying around every ship and dock. He particularly proposes the use of
arches for wharves about to be constructed at Corlder's Hook and on the
North River.

Dr. Francis justly remarks, in his "Old New York," that Paine's writings
were usually suggested by some occasion. Besides this instance of the
essay on the yellow fever, he mentions one on the origin of Freemasonry,
there being an agitation in New York concerning that fraternity.
But this essay---in which Paine, with ingenuity and learning, traces
Freemasonry to the ancient solar mythology also identified with
Christian mythology--was not published during his life. It was published
by Madame Bonneville with the passages affecting Christianity omitted.
The original manuscript was obtained, however, and published with an
extended preface, criticizing Paine's theory, the preface being in
turn criticized by Paine's editor. The preface was probably written by
Colonel Fellows, author of a large work on Freemasonry.




CHAPTER XVIII. A NEW YORK PROMETHEUS

When Paine left Bordentown, on March 1st 1803, driving past placards of
the devil flying away with him, and hooted by a pious mob at Trenton,
it was with hope of a happy reunion with old friends in more enlightened
New York. Col. Few, formerly senator from Georgia, his friend of many
years, married Paine's correspondent, Kitty Nicholson, to whom was
written the beautiful letter from London (L, p. 247). Col. Few had
become a leading man in New York, and his home, and that of the
Nicholsons, were of highest social distinction. Paine's arrival at
Lovett's Hotel was well known, but not one of those former friends came
near him. "They were actively as well as passively religious," says
Henry Adams, "and their relations with Paine after his return to America
in 1802 were those of compassion only, for his intemperate and offensive
habits, and intimacy was impossible."* But Mr. Adams will vainly search
his materials for any intimation at that time of the intemperate or
offensive habits.

     * "Life of Albert Gallatin." Gallatin continued to risk
     Paine. 360

The "compassion" is due to those devotees of an idol requiring sacrifice
of friendship, loyalty, and intelligence. What a mistake they made! The
old author was as a grand organ from which a cunning hand might bring
music to be remembered through the generations. In that brain were
stored memories of the great Americans, Frenchmen, Englishmen who acted
in the revolutionary dramas, and of whom he loved to talk. What would a
diary of interviews with Paine, written by his friend Kitty Few, be now
worth? To intolerance, the least pardonable form of ignorance, must be
credited the failure of those former friends, who supposed themselves
educated, to make more of Thomas Paine than a scarred monument of an Age
of Unreason.

But the ostracism of Paine by the society which, as Henry Adams states,
had once courted him "as the greatest literary genius of his day,"
was not due merely to his religious views, which were those of various
statesmen who had incurred no such odium. There was at work a lingering
dislike and distrust of the common people. Deism had been rather
aristocratic. From the scholastic study, where heresies once
written only in Latin were daintily wrapped up in metaphysics, from
drawing-rooms where cynical smiles went round at Methodism, and other
forms of "Christianity in earnest," Paine carried heresy to the people.
And he brought it as a religion,--as fire from the fervid heaven
that orthodoxy had monopolized. The popularity of his writing, the
revivalistic earnestness of his protest against dogmas common to all
sects, were revolutionary; and while the vulgar bigots were binding him
on their rock of ages, and tearing his vitals, most of the educated, the
social leaders, were too prudent to manifest any sympathy they may have
felt.**

     * When Paine first reached New York, 1803, he was (March
     5th) entertained at supper by John Crauford. For being
     present Eliakira Ford, a Baptist elder, was furiously
     denounced, as were others of the company.

     ** An exception was the leading Presbyterian, John Mason,
     who lived to denounce Channing as "the devil's disciple."
     Grant Thorbura was psalm-singer in this Scotch preacher's
     church. Curiosity to see the lion led Thorburn to visit
     Paine, for which he was "suspended." Thorburn afterwards
     made amends by fathering Cheetham's slanders of Paine after
     Cheetham had become too infamous to quote.

It were unjust to suppose that Paine met with nothing but abuse and
maltreatment from ministers of serious orthodoxy in New York. They had
warmly opposed his views, even denounced them, but the controversy seems
to have died away until he took part in the deistic propaganda of Elihu
Palmer.' The following to Col. Fellows (July 31st) shows Paine much
interested in the "cause":

"I am glad that Palmer and Foster have got together. It will greatly
help the cause on. I enclose a letter I received a few days since from
Groton, in Connecticut The letter is well written, and with a good deal
of sincere enthusiasm. The publication of it would do good, but there is
an impropriety in publishing a man's name to a private letter. You
may show the letter to Palmer and Foster.... Remember me to my much
respected friend Carver and tell him I am sure we shall succeed if we
hold on. We have already silenced the clamor of the priests. They act
now as if they would say, let us alone and we will let you alone. You do
not tell me if the Prospect goes on. As Carver will want pay he may have
it from me, and pay when it suits him; but I expect he will take a ride
up some Saturday, and then he can chuse for himself."

The result of this was that Paine passed the winter in New York,
where he threw himself warmly into the theistic movement, and no doubt
occasionally spoke from Elihu Palmer's platform.

The rationalists who gathered around Elihu Palmer in New York were
called the "Columbian Illuminati." The pompous epithet looks like an
effort to connect them with the Columbian Order (Tammany) which was
supposed to represent Jacobinism and French ideas generally. Their
numbers were considerable, but they did not belong to fashionable
society. Their lecturer, Elihu Palmer, was a scholarly gentleman of the
highest character. A native of Canterbury, Connecticut, (born 1754) he
had graduated at Dartmouth. He was married by the Rev. Mr. Watt to
a widow, Mary Powell, in New York (1803), at the time when he was
lecturing in the Temple of Reason (Snow's Rooms, Broadway). This
suggests that he had not broken with the clergy altogether. Somewhat
later he lectured at the Union Hotel, William Street He had studied
divinity, and turned against the creeds what was taught him for their
support.

"I have more than once [says Dr. Francis] listened to Palmer; none could
be weary within the sound of his voice; his diction was classical; and
much of his natural theology attractive by variety of illustration.
But admiration of him sank into despondency at his assumption, and his
sarcastic assaults on things most holy. His boldest phillippic was his
discourse on the title-page of the Bible, in which, with the double
shield of jacobinism and infidelity, he warned rising America against
confidence in a book authorised by the monarchy of England. Palmer
delivered his sermons in the Union Hotel in William Street."

Dr. Francis does not appear to have known Paine personally, but had seen
him. Palmer's chief friends in New York were, he says, John Fellows;
Rose, an unfortunate lawyer; Taylor, a philanthropist; and Charles
Christian. Of Rev. John Foster, another rationalist lecturer, Dr.
Francis says he had a noble presence and great eloquence. Foster's
exordium was an invocation to the goddess of Liberty. He and Palmer
called each other Brother. No doubt Paine completed the Triad.

Col. John Fellows, always the devoted friend of Paine, was an
auctioneer, but in later life was a constable in the city courts. He
has left three volumes which show considerable literary ability, and
industrious research; but these were unfortunately bestowed on such
extinct subjects as Freemasonry, the secret of Junius, and controversies
concerning General Putnam. It is much to be regretted that Colonel
Fellows should not have left a volume concerning Paine, with whom he was
in especial intimacy, during his last years.

Other friends of Paine were Thomas Addis Emmet, Walter Morton, a lawyer,
and Judge Hertell, a man of wealth, and a distinguished member of the
State Assembly. Fulton also was much in New York, and often called on
Paine. Paine was induced to board at the house of William Carver (36
Cedar Street), which proved a grievous mistake. Carver had introduced
himself to Paine, saying that he remembered him when he was an exciseman
at Lewes, England, he (Carver) being a young farrier there. He made loud
professions of deism, and of devotion to Paine. The farrier of Lewes
had become a veterinary practitioner and shopkeeper in New York.
Paine supposed that he would be cared for in the house of this active
rationalist, but the man and his family were illiterate and vulgar.
His sojourn at Carver's probably shortened Paine's life. Carver, to
anticipate the narrative a little, turned out to be a bad-hearted man
and a traitor.

Paine had accumulated a mass of fragmentary writings on religious
subjects, and had begun publishing them in a journal started in 1804
by Elihu Palmer,--_The Prospect; or View of the Moral World_. This
succeeded the paper called _The Temple of Reason_. One of Paine's
objects was to help the new journal, which attracted a good deal of
attention. His first communication (February 18, 1804), was on a sermon
by Robert Hall, on "Modern Infidelity," sent him by a gentleman in New
York. The following are some of its trenchant paragraphs:

"Is it a fact that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, and
how is it proved? If a God he could not die, and as a man he could not
redeem: how then is this redemption proved to be fact? It is said that
Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, commonly called an apple, and thereby
subjected himself and all his posterity forever to eternal damnation.
This is worse than visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generations. But how was the death of Jesus
Christ to affect or alter the case? Did God thirst for blood? If so,
would it not have been better to have crucified Adam upon the forbidden
tree, and made a new man?"

"Why do not the Christians, to be consistent, make Saints of Judas and
Pontius Pilate, for they were the persons who accomplished the act of
salvation. The merit of a sacrifice, if there can be any merit in it,
was never in the thing sacrificed, but in the persons offering up the
sacrifice--and therefore Judas and Pilate ought to stand first in the
calendar of Saints."

Other contributions to the _Prospect_ were: "Of the word Religion";
"Cain and Abel"; "The Tower of Babel"; "Of the religion of Deism
compared with the Christian Religion"; "Of the Sabbath Day in
Connecticut"; "Of the Old and New Testaments"; "Hints towards forming a
Society for inquiring into the truth or falsehood of ancient history,
so far as history is connected with systems of religion ancient and
modern"; "To the members of the Society styling itself the Missionary
Society"; "On Deism, and the writings of Thomas Paine"; "Of the Books
of the New Testament" There were several communications without any
heading. Passages and sentences from these little essays have long been
a familiar currency among freethinkers.

"We admire the wisdom of the ancients, yet they had no bibles, nor
books, called revelation. They cultivated the reason that God gave them,
studied him in his works, and rose to eminence."

"The Cain and Abel of Genesis appear to be no other than the ancient
Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, the darkness and the light, which
answered very well as allegory without being believed as fact."

"Those who most believe the Bible are those who know least about it."

"Another observation upon the story of Babel is the inconsistence of it
with respect to the opinion that the bible is the word of God given for
the information of mankind; for nothing could so effectually prevent
such a word being known by mankind as confounding their language."

"God has not given us reason for the purpose of confounding us."

"Jesus never speaks of Adam, of the Garden of Eden, nor of what is
called the fall of man."

"Is not the Bible warfare the same kind of warfare as the Indians
themselves carry on?" [On the presentation of a Bible to some Osage
chiefs in New York.]

"The remark of the Emperor Julian is worth observing. 'If, said he,
'there ever had been or could be a Tree of Knowledge, instead of God
forbidding man to eat thereof, it would be that of which he would order
him to eat the most.'"

"Do Christians not see that their own religion is founded on a human
sacrifice? Many thousands of human sacrifices have since been offered on
the altar of the Christian Religion."

"For several centuries past the dispute has been about doctrines. It is
now about fact."

"The Bible has been received by Protestants on the authority of the
Church of Rome."

"The same degree of hearsay evidence, and that at third and fourth hand,
would not, in a court of justice, give a man title to a cottage, and
yet the priests of this profession presumptuously promise their deluded
followers the kingdom of Heaven."

"Nobody fears for the safety of a mountain, but a hillock of sand may
be washed away. Blow then, O ye priests, 'the Trumpet in Zion,' for the
Hillock is in danger."

The force of Paine's negations was not broken by any weakness for
speculations of his own. He constructed no system to invite the missiles
of antagonists. It is, indeed, impossible to deny without affirming;
denial that two and two make five affirms that they make four. The basis
of Paine's denials being the divine wisdom and benevolence, there was in
his use of such expressions an implication of limitation in the divine
nature. Wisdom implies the necessity of dealing with difficulties, and
benevolence the effort to make all sentient creatures happy. Neither
quality is predicable of an omniscient and omnipotent being, for whom
there could be no difficulties or evils to overcome. Paine did not.
confuse the world with his doubts or with his mere opinions. He stuck to
his certainties, that the scriptural deity was not the true one, nor
the dogmas called Christian reasonable. But he felt some of the moral
difficulties surrounding theism, and these were indicated in his reply
to the Bishop of Llandaff.

"The Book of Job belongs either to the ancient Persians, the Chaldeans,
or the Egyptians; because the structure of it is consistent with the
dogma they held, that of a good and evil spirit, called in Job God
and Satan, existing as distinct and separate beings, and it is not
consistent with any dogma of the Jews.... The God of the Jews was the
God of everything. All good and evil came from him. According to Exodus
it was God, and not the Devil, that hardened Pharaoh's heart. According
to the Book of Samuel it was an evil spirit from God that troubled
Saul. And Ezekiel makes God say, in speaking of the Jews, 'I gave them
statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they should not
live.'... As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the Book of Job,
they show that the people abusively called the heathen, in the books
of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the Creator, and the most
exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who dishonored God. It was
the Gentiles who glorified him."

Several passages in Paine's works show that he did not believe in a
personal devil; just what he did believe was no doubt written in a part
of his reply to the Bishop, which, unfortunately, he did not live to
carry through the press. In the part that we have he expresses
the opinion that the Serpent of Genesis is an allegory of winter,
necessitating the "coats of skins" to keep Adam and Eve warm, and adds:
"Of these things I shall speak fully when I come in another part to
speak of the ancient religion of the Persians, and compare it with the
modern religion of the New Testament" But this part was never published.
The part published was transcribed by Paine and given, not long before
his death, to the widow of Elihu Palmer, who published it in the
_Theophilanthropist_ in 1810. Paine had kept the other part, no doubt
for revision, and it passed with his effects into the hands of Madame
Bonneville, who eventually became a devotee. She either suppressed it or
sold it to some one who destroyed it. We can therefore only infer from
the above extract the author's belief on this momentous point. It seems
clear that he did not attribute any evil to the divine Being. In the
last article Paine published he rebukes the "Predestinarians" for
dwelling mainly on God's "physical attribute" of power. "The Deists, in
addition to this, believe in his moral attributes, those of justice and
goodness."

Among Paine's papers was found one entitled "My private thoughts of a
Future State," from which his editors have dropped important sentences.

"I have said in the first part of the Age of Reason that 'I hope for
happiness after this life,' This hope is comfortable to me, and I
presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope, with respect to a
future state. I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he
will dispose of me after this life, consistently with his justice and
goodness. I leave all these matters to him as my Creator and friend,
and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to
what the Creator will do with us hereafter. I do not believe, because
a man and a woman make a child, that it imposes on the Creator the
unavoidable obligation of keeping the being so made in eternal existence
hereafter. It is in his power to do so, or not to do so, and it is not
in our power to decide which he will do." [After quoting from Matthew
25th the figure of the sheep and goats he continues:] "The world cannot
be thus divided. The moral world, like the physical world, is composed
of numerous degrees of character, running imperceptibly one into the
other, in such a manner that no fixed point can be found in either. That
point is nowhere, or is everywhere. The whole world might be divided
into two parts numerically, but not as to moral character; and therefore
the metaphor of dividing them, as sheep and goats can be divided, whose
difference is marked by their external figure, is absurd. All sheep are
still sheep; all goats are still goats; it is their physical nature to
be so. But one part of the world are not all good alike, nor the
other part all wicked alike. There are some exceedingly good, others
exceedingly wicked. There is another description of men who cannot be
ranked with either the one or the other--they belong neither to the
sheep nor the goats. And there is still another description of them who
are so very insignificant, both in character and conduct, as not to be
worth the trouble of damning or saving, or of raising from the dead. My
own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing good,
and endeavouring to make their fellow mortals happy, for this is the
only way in which we can serve God, will be happy hereafter; and that
the very wicked will meet with some punishment. But those who are
neither good nor bad, or are too insignificant for notice, will be dropt
entirely. This is my opinion. It is consistent with my idea of God's
justice, and with the reason that God has given me, and I gratefully
know that he has given me a large share of that divine gift."

The closing tribute to his own reason, written in privacy, was, perhaps
pardonably, suppressed by the modern editor, and also the reference to
the insignificant who "will be dropt entirely." This sentiment is not
indeed democratic, but it is significant. It seems plain that Paine's
conception of the universe was dualistic. Though he discards the notion
of a devil, I do not find that he ever ridicules it. No doubt he would,
were he now living, incline to a division of nature into organic and
inorganic, and find his deity, as Zoroaster did, in the living as
distinguished from, and sometimes in antagonism with, the "not-living".
In this belief he would now find himself in harmony with some of the
ablest modern philosophers.*

     * John Stuart Mill, for instance. See also the Rev. Dr.
     Abbott's "Kernel and Husk" (London), and the great work of
     Samuel Laing, "A Modern Zoroastrian."




{1806}

The opening year 1806 found Paine in New Rochelle. By insufficient
nourishment in Carver's house his health was impaired. His means were
getting low, insomuch that to support the Bonnevilles he had to sell the
Bordentown house and property.*

     * It was bought for $300 by his friend John Oliver, whose
     daughter, still residing in the house, told me that her
     father to the end of his life "thought everything of Paine."
     John Oliver, in his old age, visited Colonel Ingersoll in
     order to testify against the aspersions on Paine's character
     and habits.

Elihu Palmer had gone off to Philadelphia for a time; he died there of
yellow fever in 1806. The few intelligent people whom Paine knew were
much occupied, and he was almost without congenial society. His hint to
Jefferson of his impending poverty, and his reminder that Virginia had
not yet given him the honorarium he and Madison approved, had brought
no result. With all this, and the loss of early friendships, and the
theological hornet-nest he had found in New York, Paine began to feel
that his return to America was a mistake.

The air-castle that had allured him to his beloved land had faded. His
little room with the Bonnevilles in Paris, with its chaos of papers, was
preferable; for there at least he could enjoy the society of educated
persons, free from bigotry. He dwelt a stranger in his Land of Promise.

So he resolved to try and free himself from his depressing environment.
He would escape to Europe again. Jefferson had offered him a ship to
return in, perhaps he would now help him to get back. So he writes (Jan.
30th) a letter to the President, pointing out the probabilities of a
crisis in Europe which must result in either a descent on England by
Bonaparte, or in a treaty. In the case that the people of England should
be thus liberated from tyranny, he (Paine) desired to share with his
friends there the task of framing a republic. Should there be, on the
other hand, a treaty of peace, it would be of paramount interest to
American shipping that such treaty should include that maritime compact,
or safety of the seas for neutral ships, of which Paine had written
so much, and which Jefferson himself had caused to be printed in a
pamphlet. Both of these were, therefore, Paine's subjects. "I think," he
says, "you will find it proper, perhaps necessary, to send a person to
France in the event of either a treaty or a descent, and I make you an
offer of my services on that occasion to join Mr. Monroe.... As I think
that the letters of a friend to a friend have some claim to an answer,
it will be agreeable to me to receive an answer to this, but without any
wish that you should commit yourself, neither can you be a judge of what
is proper or necessary to be done till about the month of April or May."

This little dream must also vanish. Paine must face the fact that his
career is ended.

It is probable that Elihu Palmer's visit to Philadelphia was connected
with some theistic movement in that city. How it was met, and what
annoyances Paine had to suffer, are partly intimated in the following
letter, printed in the Philadelphia _Commercial Advertiser_, February
10, 1806.

"To John Inskeep, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia.

"I saw in the Aurora of January the 30th a piece addressed to you and
signed Isaac Hall. It contains a statement of your malevolent conduct in
refusing to let him have Vine-st. Wharf after he had bid fifty
dollars more rent for it than another person had offered, and had been
unanimously approved of by the Commissioners appointed by law for that
purpose. Among the reasons given by you for this refusal, one was, that
'_Mr Hall was one of Paine's disciples_.' If those whom you may chuse to
call my disciples follow my example in doing good to mankind, they will
pass the confines of this world with a happy mind, while the hope of the
hypocrite shall perish and delusion sink into despair.

"I do not know who Mr. Inskeep is, for I do not remember the name of
Inskeep at Philadelphia in '_the time that tried men's souls._* He must
be some mushroom of modern growth that has started up on the soil which
the generous services of Thomas Paine contributed to bless with freedom;
neither do I know what profession of religion he is of, nor do I care,
for if he is a man malevolent and unjust, it signifies not to what class
or sectary he may hypocritically belong.

"As I set too much value on my time to waste it on a man of so little
consequence as yourself, I will close this short address with a
declaration that puts hypocrisy and malevolence to defiance. Here it is:
My motive and object in all my political works, beginning with Common
Sense, the first work I ever published, have been to rescue man from
tyranny and false systems and false principles of government, and enable
him to be free, and establish government for himself; and I have borne
my share of danger in Europe and in America in every attempt I have made
for this purpose. And my motive and object in all my publications on
religious subjects, beginning with the first part of the Age of Reason,
have been to bring man to a right reason that God has given him; to
impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy,
and a benevolent disposition to all men and to all creatures; and to
excite in him a spirit of trust, confidence and consolation in his
creator, unshackled by the fable and fiction of books, by whatever
invented name they may be called. I am happy in the continual
contemplation of what I have done, and I thank God that he gave
me talents for the purpose and fortitude to do it It will make the
continual consolation of my departing hours, whenever they finally
arrive.

"Thomas Paine."

"'_These are the times that try men's souls_.' Crisis No. 1, written
while on the retreat with the army from fort Lee to the Delaware and
published in Philadelphia in the dark days of 1776 December the 19th,
six days before the taking of the Hessians at Trenton."

But the year 1806 had a heavier blow yet to inflict on Paine, and
it naturally came, though in a roundabout way, from his old enemy
Gouverneur Morris. While at New Rochelle, Paine offered his vote at the
election, and it was refused, on the ground that he was not an American
citizen! The supervisor declared that the former American Minister,
Gouverneur Morris, had refused to reclaim him from a French prison
because he was not an American, and that Washington had also refused to
reclaim him. Gouverneur Morris had just lost his seat in Congress,
and was politically defunct, but his ghost thus rose on poor Paine's
pathway. The supervisor who disfranchised the author of "Common Sense"
had been a "Tory" in the Revolution; the man he disfranchised was one to
whom the President of the United States had written, five years before:
"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
labored, and with as much effect as any man living." There was not any
question of Paine's qualification as a voter on other grounds than the
supervisor (Elisha Ward) raised. More must presently be said concerning
this incident. Paine announced his intention of suing the inspectors,
but meanwhile he had to leave the polls in humiliation. It was the fate
of this founder of republics to be a monument of their ingratitude. And
now Paine's health began to fail. An intimation of this appears in a
letter to Andrew A. Dean, to whom his farm at New Rochelle was let,
dated from New York, August, 1806. It is in reply to a letter from Dean
on a manuscript which Paine had lent him.*

     * "I have read," says Dean,  "with good attention your
     manuscript on dreams, and Examination of the Prophecies in
     the Bible. I am now searching the old prophecies, and
     comparing the same to those said to be quoted in the New
     Testament. I confess the comparison is a matter worthy of
     our serious attention; I know not the result till I finish;
     then, if you be living, I shall communicate the same to
     you. I hope to be with you soon." Paine was now living with
     Jarvis, the artist. One evening he fell as if by apoplexy,
     and, as he lay, his first word was (to Jarvis): "My
     corporeal functions have ceased; my intellect is clear;
     this is a proof of immortality."

"Respected Friend: I received your friendly letter, for which I am
obliged to you. It is three weeks ago to day (Sunday, Aug. 15,) that I
was struck with a fit of an apoplexy, that deprived me of all sense
and motion. I had neither pulse nor breathing, and the people about me
supposed me dead. I had felt exceedingly well that day, and had just
taken a slice of bread and butter for supper, and was going to bed. The
fit took me on the stairs, as suddenly as if I had been shot through the
head; and I got so very much hurt by the fall, that I have not been able
to get in and out of bed since that day, otherwise than being lifted
out in a blanket, by two persons; yet all this while my mental faculties
have remained as perfect as I ever enjoyed them. I consider the scene I
have passed through as an experiment on dying, and I find death has
no terrors for me. As to the people called Christians, they have no
evidence that their religion is true. There is no more proof that the
Bible is the word of God, than that the Koran of Mahomet is the word of
God. It is education makes all the difference. Man, before he begins to
think for himself, is as much the child of habit in Creeds as he is in
ploughing and sowing. Yet creeds, like opinions, prove nothing. Where is
the evidence that the person called Jesus Christ is the begotten Son of
God? The case admits not of evidence either to our senses or our mental
faculties: neither has God given to man any talent by which such a thing
is comprehensible. It cannot therefore be an object for faith to
act upon, for faith is nothing more than an assent the mind gives to
something it sees cause to believe is fact. But priests, preachers, and
fanatics, put imagination in the place of faith, and it is the nature
of the imagination to believe without evidence. If Joseph the carpenter
dreamed (as the book of Matthew, chapter 1st, says he did,) that his
betrothed wife, Mary, was with child by the Holy Ghost, and that an
angel told him so, I am not obliged to put faith in his dream; nor do I
put any, for I put no faith in my own dreams, and I should be weak and
foolish indeed to put faith in the dreams of others.--The Christian
religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the
Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian Devil
above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that
outwits the Creator, in the garden of Eden, and steals from him his
favorite creature, man; and, at last, obliges him to beget a son, and
put that son to death, to get man back again. And this the priests of
the Christian religion, call redemption.

"Christian authors exclaim against the practice of offering human
sacrifices, which, they say, is done in some countries; and those
authors make those exclamations without ever reflecting that their own
doctrine of salvation is founded on a human sacrifice. They are saved,
they say, by the blood of Christ. The Christian religion begins with a
dream and ends with a murder.

"As I am well enough to sit up some hours in the day, though not well
enough to get up without help, I employ myself as I have always done,
in endeavoring to bring man to the right use of the reason that God has
given him, and to direct his mind immediately to his Creator, and not to
fanciful secondary beings called mediators, as if God was superannuated
or ferocious.

"As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the word of
God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times
and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book. The
fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun
and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of
the eastern world, is the least hurtful part. Every thing told of Christ
has reference to the sun. His reported resurrection is at sunrise,
and that on the first day of the week; that is, on the day anciently
dedicated to the sun, and from thence called Sunday; in latin Dies
Solis, the day of the sun; as the next day, Monday, is Moon day. But
there is no room in a letter to explain these things. While man keeps
to the belief of one God, his reason unites with his creed. He is not
shocked with contradictions and horrid stories. His bible is the heavens
and the earth. He beholds his Creator in all his works, and every thing
he beholds inspires him with reverence and gratitude. From the goodness
of God to all, he learns his duty to his fellow-man, and stands
self-reproved when he transgresses it. Such a man is no persecutor. But
when he multiplies his creed with imaginary things, of which he can have
neither evidence nor conception, such as the tale of the garden of
Eden, the talking serpent, the fall of man, the dreams of Joseph the
carpenter, the pretended resurrection and ascension, of which there is
even no historical relation, for no historian of those times mentions
such a thing, he gets into the pathless region of confusion, and turns
either frantic or hypocrite. He forces his mind, and pretends to
believe what he does not believe. This is in general the case with the
Methodists. Their religion is all creed and no morals.

"I have now my friend given you a fac-simile of my mind on the subject
of religion and creeds, and my wish is, that you may make this letter as
publicly known as you find opportunities of doing. Yours in friendship."




{1807}

The "Essay on Dream" was written early in 1806 and printed in May,
1807. It was the last work of importance written by Paine. In the same
pamphlet was included a part of his reply to the Bishop of Llandaff,
which was written in France: "An Examination of the Passages in the New
Testament, quoted from the Old, and called Prophecies of the Coming
of Jesus Christ" The Examination is widely known and is among Paine's
characteristic works,--a continuation of the "Age of Reason." The "Essay
on Dream" is a fine specimen of the author's literary art. Dream is the
imagination awake while the judgment is asleep. "Every person is mad
once in twenty-four hours; for were he to act in the day as he dreams
in the night, he would be confined for a lunatic." Nathaniel Hawthorne
thought spiritualism "a sort of dreaming awake." Paine explained in the
same way some of the stories on which popular religion is founded. The
incarnation itself rests on what an angel told Joseph in a dream, and
others are referred to. "This story of dreams has thrown Europe into
a dream for more than a thousand years. All the efforts that nature,
reason, and conscience have made to awaken man from it have been
ascribed by priestcraft and superstition to the workings of the devil,
and had it not been for the American revolution, which by establishing
the universal right of conscience, first opened the way to free
discussion, and for the French revolution which followed, this religion
of dreams had continued to be preached, and that after it had ceased to
be believed."

But Paine was to be reminded that the revolution had not made conscience
free enough in America to challenge waking dreams without penalties. The
following account of his disfranchisement at New Rochelle, was written
from Broome St., New York, May 4, 1807, to Vice-President Clinton.

"Respected Friend,--Elisha Ward and three or four other Tories who
lived within the british lines in the revolutionary war, got in to
be inspectors of the election last year at New Rochelle. Ward was
supervisor. These men refused my vote at the election, saying to me:
'You are not an American; our minister at Paris, Gouverneur Morris,
would not reclaim you when you were emprisoned in the Luxembourg prison
at Paris, and General Washington refused to do it.' Upon my telling
him that the two cases he stated were falsehoods, and that if he did me
injustice I would prosecute him, he got up, and calling for a constable,
said to me, 'I will commit you to prison.' He chose, however, to sit
down and go no farther with it.

"I have written to Mr. Madison for an attested copy of Mr. Monro's
letter to the then Secretary of State Randolph, in which Mr. Monro gives
the government an account of his reclaiming me and my liberation in
consequence of it; and also for an attested copy of Mr. Randolph's
answer, in which he says: 'The President approves what you have done in
the case of Mr. Paine.' The matter I believe is, that, as I had not
been guillotined, Washington thought best to say what he did. As
to Gouverneur Morris, the case is that he did reclaim me; but his
reclamation did me no good, and the probability is, he did not intend it
should. Joel Barlow and other Americans in Paris had been in a body to
reclaim me, but their application, being unofficial, was not regarded.
I then applied to Morris. I shall subpoena Morris, and if I get attested
copies from the Secretary of State's office it will prove the lie on the
inspectors.

"As it is a new generation that has risen up since the declaration
of independence, they know nothing of what the political state of
the country was at the time the pamphlet 'Common Sense' appeared; and
besides this there are but few of the old standers left, and none that I
know of in this city.

"It may be proper at the trial to bring the mind of the court and the
jury back to the times I am speaking of, and if you see no objection in
your way, I wish you would write a letter to some person, stating, from
your own knowledge, what the condition of those times were, and the
effect which the work 'Common Sense,' and the several members (numbers)
of the 'Crisis' had upon the country. It would, I think, be best that
the letter should begin directly on the subject in this manner: Being
informed that Thomas Paine has been denied his rights of citizenship by
certain persons acting as inspectors at an election at New Rochelle, &c.

"I have put the prosecution into the hands of Mr. Riker, district
attorney, who can make use of the letter in his address to the Court and
Jury. Your handwriting can be sworn to by persons here, if necessary.
Had you been on the spot I should have subpoenaed you, unless it had
been too inconvenient to you to have attended. Yours in friendship."

To this Clinton replied from Washington, 12th May, 1807:

"Dear Sir,--I had the pleasure to receive your letter of the 4th
instant, yesterday; agreeably to your request I have this day written a
letter to Richard Riker, Esquire, which he will show you. I doubt much,
however, whether the Court will admit it to be read as evidence.

"I am indebted to you for a former letter. I can make no other apology
for not acknowledging it before than inability to give you such an
answer as I could wish. I constantly keep the subject in mind, and
should any favorable change take place in the sentiments of the
Legislature, I will apprize you of it.

"I am, with great esteem, your sincere friend."

In the letter to Madison, Paine tells the same story. At the end he says
that Morris' reclamation was not out of any good will to him. "I know
not what he wrote to the french minister; whatever it was he concealed
it from me." He also says Morris could hardly keep himself out of
prison.*

     * The letter is in Mr. Frederick McGuire's collection of
     Madison papers.

A letter was also written to Joel Barlow, at Washington, dated Broome
Street, New York, May 4th. He says in this:

"I have prosecuted the Board of Inspectors for disfranchising me. You
and other Americans in Paris went in a body to the Convention to reclaim
me, and I want a certificate from you, properly attested, of this fact.
If you consult with Gov. Clinton he will in friendship inform you who to
address it to.

"Having now done with business I come to meums and tuums. What are you
about? You sometimes hear of me but I never hear of you. It seems as if
I had got to be master of the feds and the priests. The former do not
attack my political publications; they rather try to keep them out of
sight by silence. And as to the priests, they act as if they would say,
let us alone and we will let you alone. My Examination of the passages
called prophecies is printed, and will be published next week. I have
prepared it with the Essay on Dream. I do not believe that the priests
will attack it, for it is not a book of opinions but of facts. Had the
Christian Religion done any good in the world I would not have exposed
it, however fabulous I might believe it to be. But the delusive idea of
having a friend at court whom they call a redeemer, who pays all their
scores, is an encouragement to wickedness.

"What is Fulton about? Is he taming a whale to draw his submarine
boat? I wish you would desire Mr. Smith to send me his country National
Intelligencer. It is printed twice a week without advertisement. I
am somewhat at a loss for want of authentic intelligence. Yours in
friendship."

It will be seen that Paine was still in ignorance of the conspiracy
which had thrown him in prison, nor did he suspect that Washington
had been deceived by Gouverneur Morris, and that his private letter to
Washington might have been given over to Pickering.*

     * In Chapter X. of this volume, as originally printed, there
     were certain passages erroneously suggesting that Pickering
     might have even intercepted this important letter of
     September 20, 1795. I had not then observed a reference to
     that letter by Madison, in writing to Monroe (April 7,
     1796), which proves that Paine's communication to Washington
     had been read by Pickering. Monroe was anxious lest some
     attack on the President should be written by Paine while
     under his roof,--an impropriety avoided by Paine as we have
     seen,--and had written to Madison on the subject. Madison
     answers: "I have given the explanation you desired to F. A.
     M[uhlenberg], who has not received any letter as yet, and
     has promised to pay due regard to your request. It is proper
     you should know that Thomas Paine wrote some time ago a
     severe letter to the President which Pickering mentioned to
     me in harsh terms when I delivered a note from Thomas Paine
     to the Secretary of State, inclosed by T. P. in a letter to
     me. Nothing passed, however, that betrayed the least
     association of your patronage or attention to Thomas Paine
     with the circumstance; nor am I apprehensive that any real
     suspicion can exist of your countenancing or even knowing
     the steps taken by T. P. under the influence of his personal
     feelings or political principles. At the same time the
     caution you observe is by no means to be disapproved. Be so
     good as to let T. P. know that I have received his letter
     and handed his note to the Secretary of State, which
     requested copies of such letters as might have been written
     hence in his behalf. The note did not require any answer
     either to me or through me, and I have heard nothing of it
     since I handed it to Pickering." At this time the Secretary
     of State's office contained the President's official
     recognition of Paine's citizenship; but this application
     for the papers relating to his imprisonment by a foreign
     power received no reply, though it was evidently couched in
     respectful terms; as the letter was open for the eye of
     Madison, who would not have conveyed it otherwise. It is
     incredible that Washington could have sanctioned such an
     outrage on one he had recognized as an American citizen,
     unless under pressure of misrepresentations. Possibly
     Paine's Quaker and republican direction of his letter to
     "George Washington, President of the United States," was
     interpreted by his federalist ministers as an insult.

It will be seen, by Madame Bonneville's and Jarvis' statements
elsewhere, that Paine lost his case against Elisha Ward, on what ground
it is difficult to imagine. The records of the Supreme Court, at Albany,
and the Clerk's office at White Plains, have been vainly searched for
any trace of this trial. Mr. John H. Riker, son of Paine's counsel, has
examined the remaining papers of Richard Riker (many were accidentally
destroyed) without finding anything related to the matter. It is so
terrible to think that with Jefferson, Clinton, and Madison at the head
of the government, and the facts so clear, the federalist Elisha Ward
could vindicate his insult to Thomas Paine, that it may be hoped the
publication of these facts will bring others to light that may put a
better face on the matter.*

     * Gilbert Vale relates an anecdote which suggests that a
     reaction may have occurred in Elisha Ward's family: "At the
     time of Mr. Paine's residence at his farm, Mr. Ward, now a
     coffee-roaster in Gold Street, New York, and an assistant
     alderman, was then a little boy and residing at New
     Rochelle. He remembers the impressions his mother and some
     religious people made on him by speaking of Tom Paine, so
     that he concluded that Tom Paine must be a very bad and
     brutal man. Some of his elder companions proposed going into
     Mr. Paine's orchard to obtain some fruit, and he, out of
     fear, kept at a distance behind, till he beheld, with
     surprise, Mr. Paine come out and assist the boys in getting
     apples, patting one on the head and caressing another, and
     directing them where to get the best. He then advanced and
     received his share of encouragement, and the impression this
     kindness made on him determined him at a very early period
     to examine his writings. His mother at first took the books
     from him, but at a later period restored them to him,
     observing that he was then of an age to judge for himself;
     perhaps she had herself been gradually undeceived, both as
     to his character and writings."

Madame Bonneville may have misunderstood the procedure for which she
had to pay costs, as Paine's legatee. Whether an ultimate decision was
reached or not, the sufficiently shameful fact remains that Thomas Paine
was practically disfranchised in the country to which he had rendered
services pronounced pre-eminent by Congress, by Washington, and by every
soldier and statesman of the Revolution.

Paine had in New York the most formidable of enemies,--an enemy with a
newspaper. This was James Cheetham, of whom something has been said in
the preface to this work (p. xvi.). In addition to what is there stated,
it may be mentioned that Paine had observed, soon after he came to New
York, the shifty course of this man's paper, _The American Citizen_.
But it was the only republican paper in New York, supported Governor
Clinton, for which it had reason, since it had the State printing,--and
Colonel Fellows advised that Cheetham should not be attacked. Cheetham
had been an attendant on Elihu Palmer's lectures, and after his
participation in the dinner to Paine, his federalist opponent, the
_Evening Post_, alluded to his being at Palmer's. Thereupon Cheetham
declared that he had not heard Palmer for two years. In the winter
of 1804 he casually spoke of Paine's "mischievous doctrines." In the
following year, when Paine wrote the defence of Jefferson's personal
character already alluded to, Cheetham omitted a reference in it
to Alexander Hamilton's pamphlet, by which he escaped accusation of
official defalcation by confessing an amorous intrigue.*

     *  "I see that Cheetham has left out the part respecting
     Hamilton and Mrs. Reynolds, but for my own part I wish it
     had been in.    Had the story never been publicly told I
     would not have been the first to tell it; but Hamilton had
     told it himself, and therefore it was no secret; but my
     motive in introducing it was because it was applicable to
     the subject I was upon, and to show the revilers of Mr.
     Jefferson that while they are affecting a morality of horror
     at an unproved and unfounded story about Mr. Jefferson, they
     had better look at home and give vent to their horror, if
     they had any, at a real case of their own Dagon (sic) and
     his Delilah."--Paine to Colonel Fellows, July 31, 1805.

Cheetham having been wont to write of Hamilton as "the gallant of Mrs.
Reynolds," Paine did not give much credit to the pretext of respect for
the dead, on which the suppression was justified. He was prepared to
admit that his allusion might be fairly suppressed, but perceived that
the omission was made merely to give Cheetham a chance for vaunting his
superior delicacy, and casting a suspicion on Paine. "Cheetham," wrote
Paine, "might as well have put the part in, as put in the reasons for
which he left it out. Those reasons leave people to suspect that the
part suppressed related to some new discovered immorality in Hamilton
worse than the old story."

About the same time with Paine, an Irishman came to America, and, after
travelling about the country a good deal, established a paper in New
York called _The People's Friend_. This paper began a furious onslaught
on the French, professed to have advices that Napoleon meant to retake
New Orleans, and urged an offensive alliance of the United States with
England against France and Spain. These articles appeared in the early
autumn of 1806, when, as we have seen, Paine was especially beset by
personal worries. They made him frantic. His denunciations, merited as
they were, of this assailant of France reveal the unstrung condition of
the old author's nerves. Duane, of the Philadelphia _Aurora_, recognized
in Carpenter a man he had seen in Calcutta, where he bore the name of
Cullen. It was then found that he had on his arrival in America borne
the _alias_ of Mac-cullen. Paine declared that he was an "emissary"
sent to this country by Windham, and indeed most persons were at length
satisfied that such was the case. Paine insisted that loyalty to our
French alliance demanded Cullen's expulsion. His exposures of "the
emissary Cullen" (who disappeared) were printed in a new republican
paper in New York, _The Public Advertiser_, edited by Mr. Frank. The
combat drew public attention to the new paper, and Cheetham was probably
enraged by Paines transfer of his pen to Frank. In 1807, Paine had a
large following in New York, his friends being none the less influential
among the masses because not in the fashionable world Moreover, the
very popular Mayor of New York, De Witt Clinton, was a hearty admirer
of Paine. So Cheetham's paper suffered sadly, and he opened his guns
on Paine, declaring that in the Revolution he (Paine) "had stuck very
correctly to his pen in a safe retreat," that his "Rights of Man" merely
repeated Locke, and so forth. He also began to denounce France and
applaud England, which led to the belief that, having lost republican
patronage, Cheetham was aiming to get that of England.

In a "Reply to Cheetham" (August 21st), Paine met personalities in kind.
"Mr. Cheetham, in his rage for attacking everybody and everything that
is not his own (for he is an ugly-tempered man, and he carries
the evidence of it in the vulgarity and forbiddingness of his
countenance--God has set a mark upon Cain), has attacked me, etc." In
reply to further attacks, Paine printed a piece headed "Cheetham and his
Tory Paper." He said that Cheetham was discovering symptoms of being
the successor of Cullen, _alias_ Carpenter. "Like him he is seeking to
involve the United States in a quarrel with France for the benefit of
England." This article caused a duel between the rival editors, Cheetham
and Frank, which seems to have been harmless. Paine wrote a letter
to the _Evening Post_, saying that he had entreated Frank to answer
Cheetham's challenge by declaring that he (Paine) had written the
article and was the man to be called to account. In company Paine
mentioned an opinion expressed by the President in a letter just
received. This got into the papers, and Cheetham declared that the
President could not have so written, and that Paine was intoxicated
when he said so. For this Paine instituted a suit against Cheetham for
slander, but died before any trial.

Paine had prevailed with his pen, but a terrible revenge was plotted
against his good name. The farrier William Carver, in whose house he
had lived, turned Judas, and concocted with Cheetham the libels against
Paine that have passed as history.




CHAPTER XIX. PERSONAL TRAITS

On July 1, 1806, two young English gentlemen, Daniel and William
Constable, arrived in New York, and for some years travelled about the
country. The Diary kept by Daniel Constable has been shown me by his
nephew, Clair J. Grèce, LL.D. It contains interesting allusions to
Paine, to whom they brought an introduction from Rickman.

"July 1. To the Globe, in Maiden Lane, to dine. Mr. Segar at the Globe
offered to send for Mr. Paine, who lived only a few doors off: He seemed
a true Painite.

"3d. William and I went to see Thomas Paine. When we first called he was
taking a nap.... Back to Mr. Paine's about 5 o'clock, sat about an
hour with him.... I meant to have had T. Paine in a carriage with me
to-morrow, and went to inquire for one. The price was $1 per hour, but
when I proposed it to T. P. he declined it on account of his health.

"4th. Friday. Fine clear day. The annual Festival of Independence. We
were up by five o'clock, and on the battery saw the cannons fired, in
commemoration of liberty, which had been employed by the English against
the sacred cause. The people seemed to enter into the spirit of the day:
stores &c were generally shut.... In the fore part of the day I had the
honour of walking with T. Paine along the Broadway. The day finished
peaceably, and we saw no scenes of quarreling or drunkenness.

"14. A very hot day. Evening, met T. Paine in the Broadway and walked
with him to his house.

"Oct. 29 [on returning from a journey]. Called to see T. Paine, who was
walking about Carver's shop."

"Nov. 1. Changed snuff-boxes with T. Paine at his lodgings.* The old
philosopher, in bed at 4 o'clock afternoon, seems as talkative and well
as when we saw him in the summer."

     * Dr. Grèce showed me Paine's papier-machë snuff-box, which
     his uncle had fitted with silver plate, inscription,
     decorative eagle, and banner of "Liberty, Equality." It is
     kept in a jewel-box with an engraving of Paine on the lid.

In a letter written jointly by the brothers to their parents, dated July
5th, they say that Paine "begins to feel the effects of age. The print
I left at Horley is a very strong likeness. He lives with a small family
who came from Lewes [Carvers] quite retired, and but little known or
noticed." They here also speak of "the honour of walking with our old
friend T. Paine in the midst of the bustle on Independence Day." There
is no suggestion, either here or in the Diary, that these gentlemen of
culture and position observed anything in the appearance or habits of
Paine that diminished the pleasure of meeting him. In November they
travelled down the Mississippi, and on their return to New York, nine
months later, they heard (July 20, 1807) foul charges against Paine
from Carver. "Paine has left his house, and they have had a violent
disagreement. Carver charges Paine with many foul vices, as debauchery,
lying, ingratitude, and a total want of common honour in all his
actions, says that he drinks regularly a quart of brandy per day." But
next day they call on Paine, in "the Bowery road," and William Constable
writes:

"He looks better than last year. He read us an essay on national
defence, comparing the different expenses and powers of gunboats and
ships of war and, batteries in protecting a sea coast; and gave D. C.
[Daniel Constable] a copy of his Examination of the texts of scriptures
called prophecies, etc. which he published a short time since. He says
that this work is of too high a cut for the priests and that they will
not touch it."

These brothers Constable met Fulton, a friend of Paine's just then
experimenting with his steam-boat on the Hudson. They also found that a
scandal had been caused by a report brought to the British Consul that
thirty passengers on the ship by which they (the Constables) came, had
"the Bible bound up with the 'Age of Reason,' and that they spoke in
very disrespectful terms of the mother country." Paine had left his
farm at New Rochelle, at which place the travellers heard stories of
his slovenliness, also that he was penurious, though nothing was said of
intemperance.

Inquiry among aged residents of New Rochelle has been made from time to
time for a great many years. The Hon. J. B. Stallo, late U. S. Minister
to Italy, told me that in early life he visited the place and saw
persons who had known Paine, and declared that Paine resided there
without fault. Paine lived for a time with Mr. Staple, brother of the
influential Captain Pelton, and the adoption of Paine's religious views
by some of these persons caused the odium.* Paine sometimes preached at
New Rochelle.

     * Mr. Burger, Pelton's clerk, used to drive Paine about
     daily.    Vale says:

     "He [Burger] describes Mr. Paine as really abstemious, and
     when pressed to drink by those on whom he called during his
     rides, he usually refused with great firmness, but politely.
     In one of these rides he was met by De Witt Clinton, and
     their mutual greetings were extremely hearty.    Mr. Paine
     at this time was the reverse of morose, and though careless
     of his dress and prodigal of his snuff, he was always clean
     and well clothed. Mr. Burger describes him as familiar with
     children and humane to animals, playing with the neighboring
     children, and communicating a friendly pat even to a passing
     dog."   Our frontispiece shows Paine's dress in 1803.

Cheetham publishes a correspondence purporting to have passed between
Paine and Carver, in November, 1806, in which the former repudiates
the latter's bill for board (though paying it), saying he was badly
and dishonestly treated in Carver's house, and had taken him out of his
Will. To this a reply is printed, signed by Carver, which he certainly
never wrote; specimens of his composition, now before me, prove him
hardly able to spell a word correctly or to frame a sentence.*

     * In the Concord (Mass.) Public Library there is a copy of
     Cheetham's book, which belonged to Carver, by whom it was
     filled with notes. He says: "Cheetham was a hypocrate turned
     Tory," "Paine was not Drunk when he wrote the thre pedlars
     for me, I sold them to a gentleman, a Jew for a dollar--
     Cheetham knew that he told a lie saying Paine was drunk--any
     person reading Cheetham's life of Paine that [sic] his pen
     was guided by prejudice that was brought on by Cheetham's
     altering a peice that Paine had writen as an answer to a
     peice that had apeared in his paper, I had careyd the peice
     to Cheetham, the next Day the answer was printed with the
     alteration, Paine was angry, sent me to call Cheetham I then
     asked how he undertook to mutilate the peice, if aney thing
     was rong he knew ware to find him & sad he never permitted a
     printer to alter what he had wrote, that the sence of the
     peice was spoiled--by this means their freind ship was
     broken up through life------"   (The marginalia in this
     volume have been copied for me with exactness by Miss E. G.
     Crowell, of Concord.)

The letter in Cheetham shows a practised hand, and was evidently written
for Carver by the "biographer." This ungenuineness of Carver's
letter, and expressions not characteristic in that of Paine render the
correspondence mythical. Although Carver passed many penitential years
hanging about Paine celebrations, deploring the wrong he had done Paine,
he could not squarely repudiate the correspondence, to which Cheetham
had compelled him to swear in court. He used to declare that Cheetham
had obtained under false pretences and printed without authority letters
written in anger. But thrice in his letter to Paine Carver says he means
to publish it. Its closing words are: "There may be many grammatical
errours in this letter. To you I have no apologies to make; but I hope a
candid and impartial public will not view them 'with a critick's eye.'"
This is artful; besides the fling at Paine's faulty grammar, which
Carver could not discover, there is a pretence to faults in his own
letter which do not exist, but certainly would have existed had he
written it The style throughout is transparently Cheethan's.

     * "A Bone to Gnaw for Grant Thorburn."    By W. Carver
     (1836).

In the book at Concord the unassisted Carver writes: "The libel for
wich [sic] he [Cheetham] was sued was contained in the letter I wrote to
Paine." This was the libel on Madame Bonneville, Carver's antipathy
to whom arose from his hopes of Paine's property. In reply to Paine's
information, that he was excluded from his Will, Carver says: "I
likewise have to inform you, that I totally disregard the power of your
mind and pen; for should you, by your conduct, permit this letter to
appear in public, in vain may you attempt to print or publish any thing
afterwards." This is plainly an attempt at blackmail. Carver's letter
is dated December 2, 1806. It was not published during Paine's life,
for the farrier hoped to get back into the Will by frightening Madame
Bonneville and other friends of Paine with the stories he meant to tell.
About a year before Paine's death he made another blackmailing attempt.
He raked up the scandalous stories published by "Oldys" concerning
Paine's domestic troubles in Lewes, pretending that he knew the facts
personally. "Of these facts Mr. Carver has offered me an affidavit,"
says Cheetham. "He stated them all to Paine in a private letter which he
wrote to him a year before his death; to which no answer was returned.
Mr. Carver showed me the letter soon after it was written." On this
plain evidence of long conspiracy with Cheetham, and attempt to
blackmail Paine when he was sinking in mortal illness, Carver never
made any comment. When Paine was known to be near his end Carver made
an effort at conciliation. "I think it a pity," he wrote, "that you
or myself should depart this life with envy in our hearts against each
other--and I firmly believe that no difference would have taken place
between us, had not some of your pretended friends endeavored to have
caused a separation of friendship between us." But abjectness was not
more effectual than blackmail. The property went to the Bonnevilles,
and Carver, who had flattered Paine's "great mind," in the letter
just quoted, proceeded to write a mean one about the dead author for
Cheetham's projected biography. He did not, however, expect Cheetham to
publish his slanderous letter about Paine and Madame Bonneville, which
he meant merely for extortion; nor could Cheetham have got the letter
had he not written it. All of Cheetham's libels on Paine's life in New
York are amplifications of Carver's insinuations. In describing Cheetham
as "an abominable liar," Carver passes sentence on himself. On this
blackmailer, this confessed libeller, rest originally and fundamentally
the charges relating to Paine's last years.

It has already been stated that Paine boarded for a time in the Bayeaux
mansion. With Mrs. Bayeaux lived her daughter, Mrs. Badeau. In 1891 I
visited, at New Rochelle, Mr. Albert Badeau, son of the lady last named,
finding him, as I hope he still is, in good health and memory. Seated
in the arm-chair given him by his mother, as that in which Paine used
to sit by their fireside, I took down for publication some words of
his. "My mother would never tolerate the aspersions on Mr. Paine.
She declared steadfastly to the end of her life that he was a
perfect gentleman, and a most faithful friend, amiable, gentle,
never intemperate in eating or drinking. My mother declared that my
grandmother equally pronounced the disparaging reports about Mr. Paine
slanders. I never remember to have seen my mother angry except when she
heard such calumnies of Mr. Paine, when she would almost insult those
who uttered them. My mother and grandmother were very religious, members
of the Episcopal Church." What Mr. Albert Badeau's religious opinions
are I do not know, but no one acquainted with that venerable gentleman
could for an instant doubt his exactness and truthfulness. It
certainly was not until some years after his return to America that any
slovenliness could be observed about Paine, and the contrary was often
remarked in former times.* After he had come to New York, and was
neglected by the pious ladies and gentlemen with whom he had once
associated, he neglected his personal appearance. "Let those dress who
need it," he said to a friend.

     * "He dined at my table," said Aaron Burr. "I always
     considered Mr. Paine a gentleman, a pleasant companion, and
     a good-natured and intelligent man; decidedly temperate,
     with a proper regard for his personal appearance, whenever I
     have seen him." (Quoted in The Beacon, No. 30, May, 1837.)
     "In his dress." says Joel Barlow, "he was generally very
     cleanly, though careless, and wore his hair queued with side
     curls, and powdered, like a gentleman of the old French
     School. His manners were easy and gracious, his knowledge
     universal."

Paine was prodigal of snuff, but used tobacco in no other form. He had
aversion to profanity, and never told or listened to indecent anecdotes.

With regard to the charges of excessive drinking made against Paine, I
have sifted a vast mass of contrarious testimonies, and arrived at the
following conclusions. In earlier life Paine drank spirits, as was the
custom in England and America; and he unfortunately selected brandy,
which causes alcoholic indigestion, and may have partly produced the
oft-quoted witness against him--his somewhat red nose. His nose was
prominent, and began to be red when he was fifty-five. That was just
after he had been dining a good deal with rich people in England, and
at public dinners. During his early life in England (1737--1774) no
instance of excess was known, and Paine expressly pointed the Excise
Office to his record. "No complaint of the least dishonesty or
intemperance has ever appeared against me." His career in America
(1774-1787) was free from any suspicion of intemperance. John Hall's
daily diary while working with Paine for months is minute, mentioning
everything, but in no case is a word said of Paine's drinking. This was
in 1785-7. Paine's enemy, Chalmers ("Oldys"), raked up in 1791 every
charge he could against Paine, but intemperance is not included. Paine
told Rickman that in Paris, when borne down by public and private
affliction, he had been driven to excess. That period I have identified
on a former page (ii., p. 59) as a few weeks in 1793, when his dearest
friends were on their way to the guillotine, whither he daily expected
to follow them. After that Paine abstained altogether from spirits, and
drank wine in moderation. Mr. Lovett, who kept the City Hotel, New York,
where Paine stopped in 1803 and 1804 for some weeks, wrote a note to
Caleb Bingham, of Boston, in which he says that Paine drank less
than any of his boarders. Gilbert Vale, in preparing his biography,
questioned D. Burger, the clerk of Pelton's store at New Rochelle, and
found that Paine's liquor supply while there was one quart of rum per
week. Brandy he had entirely discarded. He also questioned Jarvis, the
artist, in whose house Paine resided in New York (Church Street) five
months, who declared that what Cheetham had reported about Paine and
himself was entirely false. Paine, he said, "did not and could not drink
much." In July, 1809, just after Paine's death, Cheetham wrote
Barlow for information concerning Paine, "useful in illustrating his
character," and said: "He was a great drunkard here, and Mr. M., a
merchant of this city, who lived with him when he was arrested by order
of Robespierre, tells me he was intoxicated when that event happened."
Barlow, recently returned from Europe, was living just out of
Washington; he could know nothing of Cheetham's treachery, and fell into
his trap; he refuted the story of "Mr. M.," of course, but took it for
granted that a supposed republican editor would tell the truth about
Paine in New York, and wrote of the dead author as having "a mind,
though strong enough to bear him up and to rise elastic under the
heaviest hand of oppression, yet unable to endure the contempt of his
former friends and fellow-laborers, the rulers of the country that had
received his first and greatest services; a mind incapable of looking
down with serene compassion, as it ought, on the rude scoffs of their
imitators, a new generation that knows him not; a mind that shrinks from
their society, and unhappily seeks refuge in low company, or looks for
consolation in the sordid, solitary bottle, etc."! Barlow, misled as he
was, well knew Paine's nature, and that if he drank to excess it was not
from appetite, but because of ingratitude and wrong. The man was not a
stock or a stone. If any can find satisfaction in the belief that Paine
found no Christian in America so merciful as rum, they may perhaps
discover some grounds for it in a brief period of his sixty-ninth year.
While living in the house of Carver, Paine was seized with an illness
that threatened to be mortal, and from which he never fully recovered.
It is probable that he was kept alive for a time by spirits during the
terrible time, but this ceased when in the latter part of 1806 he left
Carver's to live with Jarvis. In the spring of 1808 he resided in the
house of Mr. Hitt, a baker, in Broome Street, and there remained
ten months. Mr. Hitt reports that Paine's weekly supply then--his
seventy-second year, and his last--was three quarts of rum per week.

     * Todd's "Joel Barlow," p. 236.     The "Mr. M." was one
     Murray, an English speculator in France, where he never
     resided with Paine at all.

After Paine had left Carver's he became acquainted with more people.
The late Judge Tabor's recollections have been sent me by his son, Mr.
Stephen Tabor, of Independence, Iowa.

"I was an associate editor of the _New York Beacon_ with Col. John
Fellows, then (1836) advanced in years, but retaining all the vigor and
fire of his manhood. He was a ripe scholar, a most agreeable companion,
and had been the correspondent and friend of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe
and John Quincy Adams, under all of whom he held a responsible office.
One of his productions was dedicated, by permission, to [J. Q.] Adams,
and was republished and favorably received in England. Col. Fellows
was the soul of honor and inflexible in his adherence to truth. He was
intimate with Paine during the whole time he lived after returning to
this country, and boarded for a year in the same house with him.

"I also was acquainted with Judge Hertell, of New York City, a man of
wealth and position, being a member of the New York Legislature, both
in the Senate and Assembly, and serving likewise on the judicial bench.
Like Col. Fellows, he was an author, and a man of unblemished life and
irreproachable character.

"These men assured me of their own knowledge derived from constant
personal intercourse during the last seven years of Paine's life, that
he never kept any company but what was entirely respectable, and that
all accusations of drunkenness were grossly untrue. They saw him under
all circumstances and _knew_ that he was never intoxicated. Nay, more,
they said, for that day, he was even abstemious. That was a drinking age
and Paine, like Jefferson, could 'bear but little spirit,' so that he
was constitutionally temperate.

"Cheetham refers to William Carver and the portrait painter Jarvis. I
visited Carver, in company with Col. Fellows, and naturally conversed
with the old man about Paine. He said that the allegation that Paine was
a drunkard was altogether without foundation. In speaking of his letter
to Paine which Cheetham published, Carver said that he was angry when
he wrote it and that he wrote unwisely, as angry men generally do;
that Cheetham obtained the letter under false pretenses and printed it
without authority.

"Col. Fellows and Judge Hertell visited Paine throughout the whole
course of his last illness. They repeatedly conversed with him
on religious topics and they declared that he died serenely,
philosophically and resignedly. This information I had directly from
their own lips, and their characters were so spotless, and their
integrity so unquestioned, that more reliable testimony it would be
impossible to give."

During Paine's life the world heard no hint of sexual immorality
connected with him, but after his death Cheetham published the
following: "Paine brought with him from Paris, and from her husband in
whose house he had lived, Margaret Brazier Bonneville, and her three
sons. _Thomas_ has the features, countenance, and temper of Paine,"
Madame Bonneville promptly sued Cheetham for slander. Cheetham had
betrayed his "pal," Carver, by printing the letter concocted to
blackmail Paine, for whose composition the farrier no doubt supposed
he had paid the editor with stories borrowed from "Oldys," or not
actionable. Cheetham probably recognized, when he saw Madame Bonneville
in court, that he too had been deceived, and that any illicit relation
between the accused lady and Paine, thirty years her senior, was
preposterous. Cheetham's lawyer (Griffin) insinuated terrible things
that his witnesses were to prove, but they all dissolved into Carver.
Mrs. Ryder, with whom Paine had boarded, admitted trying to make Paine
smile by saying Thomas was like him, but vehemently repudiated the
slander. "Mrs. Bonneville often came to visit him. She never saw but
decency with Mrs. Bonneville. She never staid there but one night, when
Paine was very sick." Mrs. Dean was summoned to support one of Carver's
lies that Madame Bonneville tried to cheat Paine, but denied the whole
story (which has unfortunately been credited by Vale and other writers).
The Rev. Mr. Foster, who had a claim against Paine's estate for tuition
of the Bonnevilles, was summoned. "Mrs. Bonneville," he testified,
"might possibly have said as much as that but for Paine she would not
have come here, and that he was under special obligations to provide for
her children." A Westchester witness, Peter Underbill, testified that
"he one day told Mrs. Bonneville that her child resembled Paine,
and Mrs. Bonneville said it was Paine's child." But, apart from the
intrinsic incredibility of this statement (unless she meant "god-son"),
Underbill's character broke down under the testimony of his neighbors,
Judge Sommerville and Captain Pelton. Cheetham had thus no dependence
but Carver, who actually tried to support his slanders from the dead
lips of Paine! But in doing so he ruined Cheetham's case by saying that
Paine told him Madame Bonneville was never the wife of M. Bonneville;
the charge being that she was seduced from her husband. It was extorted
from Carver that Madame Bonneville, having seen his scurrilous letter to
Paine, threatened to prosecute him; also that he had taken his wife to
visit Madame Bonneville. Then it became plain to Carver that Cheetham's
case was lost, and he deserted it on the witness-stand; declaring that
"he had never seen the slightest indication of any meretricious or
illicit commerce between Paine and Mrs. Bonneville, that they never were
alone together, and that all the three children were alike the objects
of Paine's care." Counsellor Sampson (no friend to Paine) perceived that
Paine's Will was at the bottom of the business. "That is the key to this
mysterious league of apostolic slanderers, mortified expectants and
disappointed speculators." Sampson's invective was terrific; Cheetham
rose and claimed protection of the court, hinting at a duel. Sampson
took a pinch of snuff, and pointing his finger at the defendant, said:

"If he complains of personalities, he who is hardened in every gross
abuse, he who lives reviling and reviled, who might construct himself
a monument with no other materials but those records to which he is a
party, and in which he stands enrolled as an offender*: if he cannot sit
still to hear his accusation, but calls for the protection of the court
against a counsel whose duty it is to make his crimes appear, how does
she deserve protection, whom he has driven to the sad necessity of
coming here to vindicate her honor, from those personalities he has
lavished on her?"

     * Cheetham was at the moment a defendant in  nine or ten
     cases for libel.

The editor of Counsellor Sampson's speech says that the jury "although
composed of men of different political sentiments, returned in a few
minutes a verdict of guilty." It is added:

"The court, however, when the libeller came up the next day to receive
his sentence, highly commended the book which contained the libellous
publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and
imposed no other punishment on the libeller than the payment of $150,
with a direction that the costs be taken out of it. It is fit to remark,
lest foreigners who are unacquainted with our political condition should
receive erroneous impressions, that Mr. Recorder Hoffman does not belong
to the Republican party in America, but has been elevated to office
by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the
councils of state." *

     * "Speech of Counsellor Sampson; with an Introduction to
     the Trial of James Cheetham, Esq., for a libel on Margaret
     Brazier Bonneville, in his Memoirs of Thomas Paine.
     Philadelphia: Printed by John Sweeny, No-357 Arch Street,
     1810." I am indebted for the use of this rare pamphlet and
     for other information, to the industrious collector of
     causes celebres, Mr. E. B. Wynn, of Watertown, N. Y.

Madame Bonneville had in court eminent witnesses to her
character,--Thomas Addis Emmet, Fulton, Jarvis, and ladies whose
children she had taught French. Yet the scandal was too tempting an
illustration of the "Age of Reason" to disappear with Cheetham's defeat.
Americans in their peaceful habitations were easily made suspicious of a
French woman who had left her husband in Paris and followed Paine; they
could little realize the complications into which ten tempestuous years
had thrown thousands of families in France, and how such poor radicals
as the Bonnevilles had to live as they could. The scandal branched into
variants. Twenty-five years later pious Grant Thorburn promulgated that
Paine had run off from Paris with the wife of a tailor named Palmer.
"Paine made no scruples of living with this woman openly." (Mrs. Elihu
Palmer, in her penury, was employed by Paine to attend to his rooms,
etc, during a few months of illness.) As to Madame Bonneville, whose
name Grant Thorburn seems not to have heard, she was turned into a
romantic figure. Thorburn says that Paine escaped the guillotine by the
execution of another man in his place.

"The man who suffered death for Paine, left a widow, with two young
children in poor circumstances. Paine brought them all to this country,
supported them while he lived, and, it is said, left most of his
property to them when he died. The widow and children lived in
apartments up town by themselves. He then boarded with Carver. I believe
his conduct was disinterested and honorable to the widow. She appeared
to be about thirty years of age, and was far from being handsome."*

     * "Forty Years' Residence in America."

Grant Thorburn was afterwards led to doubt whether this woman was
the widow of the man guillotined, but declares that when "Paine first
brought her out, he and his friends passed her off as such." As a myth
of the time (1834), and an indication that Paine's generosity to
the Bonneville family was well known in New York, the story is worth
quoting. But the Bonnevilles never escaped from the scandal. Long years
afterward, when the late Gen. Bonneville was residing in St. Louis, it
was whispered about that he was the natural son of Thomas Paine, though
he was born before Paine ever met Madame Bonneville. Of course it
has gone into the religious encyclopaedias. The best of them, that of
McClintock and Strong, says: "One of the women he supported [in France]
followed him to this country." After the fall of Napoleon, Nicholas
Bonneville, relieved of his surveillance, hastened to New York, where
he and his family were reunited, and enjoyed the happiness provided by
Paine's self-sacrificing economy.

The present writer, having perused some thou-sands of documents
concerning Paine, is convinced that no charge of sensuality could have
been brought against him by any one acquainted with the facts, except
out of malice. Had Paine held, or practised, any latitudinarian theory
of sexual liberty, it would be recorded here, and his reasons for
the same given. I have no disposition to suppress anything. Paine was
conservative in such matters. And as to his sacrificing the happiness of
a home to his own pleasure, nothing could be more inconceivable.

Above all, Paine was a profoundly religious man,--one of the few in our
revolutionary era of whom it can be said that his delight was in the law
of his Lord, and in that law did he meditate day and night Consequently,
he could not escape the immemorial fate of the great believers, to be
persecuted for unbelief--by unbelievers.




CHAPTER XX. DEATH AND RESURRECTION

The blow that Paine received by the refusal of his vote at New Rochelle
was heavy. Elisha Ward, a Tory in the Revolution, had dexterously
gained power enough to give his old patrons a good revenge on the first
advocate of independence. The blow came at a time when his means were
low, and Paine resolved to apply to Congress for payment of an old debt.
The response would at once relieve him, and overwhelm those who were
insulting him in New York. This led to a further humiliation, and one or
two letters to Congress, of which Paine's enemies did not fail to make
the most.

     * Paine had always felt that Congress was in his debt for
     his voyage to France for supplies with Col. Laurens (i., p.
     171). In a letter (Feb. 20, 1782) to Robert Morris, Paine
     mentions that when Col. Laurens proposed that he should
     accompany him, as secretary, he was on the point of
     establishing a newspaper. He had purchased twenty reams of
     paper, and Mr. Izard had sent to St. Eustatia for seventy
     more. This scheme, which could hardly fail of success, was
     relinquished for the voyage. It was undertaken at the urgent
     solicitation of Laurens, and Paine certainly regarded it as
     official. He had ninety dollars when he started, in bills of
     exchange; when Col. Laurens left him, after their return,
     he had but two louis d'or. The Memorial sent by Paine to
     Congress (Jan. 21, 1808) recapitulated facts known to my
     reader. It was presented by the Hon. George Clinton, Jr.,
     February 4, and referred to the Committee of Claims. On
     February 14th Paine wroth a statement concerning the $3,000
     given him (1785) by Congress, which he maintained was an
     indemnity for injustice done him in the Deane case.
     Laurens had long been dead.    The Committee consulted the
     President, whose reply I know not. Vice-President Clinton
     wrote (Mardi 23, 1808) that  from the information I received
     at the time I have reason to believe that Mr. Paine
     accompanied Col. Laurens on his mission to France in the
     course of our revolutionary war, for the purpose of
     negotiating a loan, and that he acted as his secretary on
     that occasion; but although I have no doubt of the truth of
     this fact, I cannot assert it from my own actual knowledge."
     There was nothing found on the journals of Congress to show
     Paine's connection with the mission. The old author was
     completely upset by his longing to hear the fate of his
     memorial, and he Wrote two complaints of the delay, showing
     that his nerves were shattered. "If." he says, March 7th,
     "my memorial was referred to the Committee of Claims for the
     purpose of losing it, it is unmanly policy. After so many
     years of service my heart grows cold towards America."

The letters are those of a broken-hearted man, and it seems marvellous
that Jefferson, Madison, and the Clintons did not intervene and see that
some recognition of Paine's former services, by those who should not
have forgotten them, was made without the ill-judged memorial. While
they were enjoying their grandeur the man who, as Jefferson wrote,
"steadily laboured, and with as much effect as any man living," to
secure America freedom, was living--or rather dying--in a miserable
lodging-house, 63 Partition Street. He had gone there for economy; for
he was exhibiting that morbid apprehension about his means which is
a well-known symptom of decline in those who have suffered poverty in
early life. Washington, with 40,000 acres, wrote in his last year as if
facing ruin. Paine had only a little farm at New Rochelle. He had for
some time suffered from want of income, and at last had to sell the farm
he meant for the Bonnevilles for $10,000; but the purchaser died, and at
his widow's appeal the contract was cancelled. It was at this time that
he appealed to Congress. It appears, however, that Paine was not anxious
for himself, but for the family of Madame Bonneville, whose statement on
this point is important.

The last letter that I can find of Paine's was: written to Jefferson,
July 8, 1808:

"The british Ministry have out-schemed themselves. It is not difficult
to see what the motive and object of that Ministry: were in issuing
the orders of Council. They expected those orders would force all the
commerce of the United States to England, and then, by giving permission
to such cargoes as they did not want for themselves to depart for the
Continent of Europe, to raise a revenue out of those countries and
America.' But instead of this they have lost revenue; that is, they
have-lost the revenue they used to receive from American imports, and
instead of gaining all the commerce they have lost it all.

"This being the case with the british Ministry it is natural to suppose
they would be glad to tread back their steps, if they could do it
without too much exposing their ignorance and obstinacy. The Embargo
law empowers the President to suspend its operation whenever he shall be
satisfied that our ships can pass in safety. It therefore includes the
idea of empowering him to use means for arriving at that event. Suppose
the President were to authorise Mr. Pinckney to propose to the british
Ministry that the United States would negociate with France for
rescinding the Milan Decree, on condition the English Ministry would
rescind their orders of Council; and in that case the United States
would recall their Embargo. France and England stand now at such a
distance that neither can propose any thing to the other, neither are
there any neutral powers to act as mediators. The U. S. is the only
power that can act.

"Perhaps the british Ministry if they listen to the proposal will want
to add to it the Berlin decree, which excludes english commerce from the
continent of Europe; but this we have nothing to do with, neither has it
any thing to do with the Embargo. The british Orders of Council and the
Milan decree are parallel cases, and the cause of the Embargo. Yours in
friendship."

Paines last letters to the President are characteristic. One pleads for
American intervention to stay the hand of French oppression among the
negroes in St. Domingo; for the colonization of Louisiana with free
negro laborers; and his very last letter is an appeal for mediation
between France and England for the sake of peace.

Nothing came of these pleadings of Paine; but perhaps on his last stroll
along the Hudson, with his friend Fulton, to watch the little steamer,
he may have recognized the real mediator beginning its labors for the
federation of the world.

Early in July, 1808, Paine removed to a comfortable abode, that of Mrs.
Ryder, near which Madame Bonneville and her two sons resided. The house
was on Herring Street (afterwards 293 Bleecker), and not far, he might
be pleased to find, from "Reason Street." Here he made one more attempt
to wield his pen,--the result being a brief letter "To the Federal
Faction," which he warns that they are endangering American commerce by
abusing France and Bonaparte, provoking them to establish a navigation
act that will exclude American ships from Europe. "The United States
have flourished, unrivalled in commerce, fifteen or sixteen years. But
it is not a permanent state of things. It arose from the circumstances
of the war, and most probably will change at the close of the present
war. The Federalists give provocation enough to promote it."

Apparently this is the last letter Paine ever sent to the printer. The
year passed peacefully away; indeed there is reason to believe that
from the middle of July, 1808, to the end of January, 1809, he fairly
enjoyed existence. During this time he made acquaintance with the worthy
Willett Hicks, watchmaker, who was a Quaker preacher. His conversations
with Willett Hicks--whose cousin, Elias Hicks, became such an
important figure in the Quaker Society twenty years later--were
fruitful.

Seven serene months then passed away. Towards the latter part of
January, 1809, Paine was very feeble. On the 18th he wrote and signed
his Will, in which he reaffirms his theistic faith. On February 1st
the Committee of Claims reported unfavorably on his memorial, while
recording, "That Mr. Paine rendered great and eminent services to the
United States during their struggle for liberty and independence cannot
be doubted by any person acquainted with his labours in the cause, and
attached to the principles of the contest." On February 25th he had some
fever, and a doctor was sent for. Mrs. Ryder attributed the attack
to Paine's having stopped taking stimulants, and their resumption was
prescribed. About a fortnight later symptoms of dropsy appeared. Towards
the end of April Paine was removed to a house on the spot now occupied
by No. 59 Grove Street, Madame Bonneville taking up her abode under
the same roof. The owner was William A. Thompson, once a law partner
of Aaron Burr, whose wife, _nee_ Maria Holdron, was a niece of Elihu
Palmer. The whole of the back part of the house (which was in a lot, no
street being then cut) was given up to Paine.*

     * The topographical facts were investigated by John Randel,
     Jr., Civil Engineer, at the request of David C. Valentine,
     Clerk of the Common Council, New York, his report being
     rendered April 6, 1864.

Reports of neglect of Paine by Madame Bonneville have been credited by
some, but are unfounded She gave all the time she could to the sufferer,
and did her best for him. Willett Hicks sometimes called, and his
daughter (afterwards Mrs. Cheese-man) used to take Paine delicacies. The
only procurable nurse was a woman named Hedden, who combined piety and
artfulness. Paine's physician was the most distinguished in New York,
Dr. Romaine, but nurse Hedden managed to get into the house one
Dr. Manly, who turned out to be Cheetham's spy. Manly afterwards
contributed to Cheetham's book a lying letter, in which he claimed
to have been Paine's physician. It will be seen, however, by Madame
Bonneville's narrative to Cobbett, that Paine was under the care of
his friend. Dr. Romaine. As Manly, assuming that he called as many did,
never saw Paine alone, he was unable to assert that Paine recanted, but
he converted the exclamations of the sufferer into prayers to Christ.*

     * Another claimant to have been Paine's physician has been
     cited. In 1876 (N. Y, Observer) Feb. 17th) Rev. Dr. Wickham
     reported from a late Dr. Matson Smith, of New Rochelle, that
     he had been Paine's physician, and witnessed his
     drunkenness. Unfortunately for Wickham he makes Smith say it
     was on his farm where Paine "spent his latter days." Paine
     was not on his farm for two years before his death. Smith
     could never have attended Paine unless in 1803, when he had
     a slight trouble with his hands,--the only illness he ever
     had at New Rochelle,--while the guest of a neighbor, who
     attests his sobriety. Finally, a friend of Dr. Smith is
     living, Mr. Albert Willcox, who writes me his recollection
     of what Smith told him of Paine. Neither drunkenness, nor
     any item of Wickham's report is mentioned.    He said Paine
     was afraid of death, but could only have heard it.

The god of wrath who ruled in New York a hundred years, through the
ministerial prerogatives, was guarded by a Cerberean legend. The
three alternatives of the heretic were, recantation, special judgment,
terrible death. Before Paine's arrival in America, the excitement on
his approach had tempted a canny Scot, Donald Fraser, to write an
anticipated "Recantation" for him, the title-page being cunningly
devised so as to imply that there had been an actual recantation. On his
arrival in New York, Paine found it necessary to call Fraser to account,
The Scotchman pleaded that he had vainly tried to earn a living as
fencing-master, preacher, and school-teacher, but had got eighty dollars
for writing the "Recantation." Paine said: "I am glad you found the
expedient a successful shift for your needy family; but write no more
concerning Thomas Paine. I am satisfied with your acknowledgment--try
something more worthy of a man."*

     * Dr. Francis' "Old New York," p. 139.

The second mouth of Cerberus was noisy throughout the land; revivalists
were describing in New Jersey how some "infidel" had been struck blind
in Virginia, and in Virginia how one was struck dumb in New Jersey.
But here was the very head and front of what they called "infidelity,"
Thomas Paine, who ought to have gathered in his side a sheaf of
thunderbolts, preserved by more marvellous "providences" than any
sectarian saint. Out of one hundred and sixty carried to the guillotine
from his prison, he alone was saved, by the accident of a chalk mark
affixed to the wrong side of his cell door. On two ships he prepared
to return to America, but was prevented; one sank at sea, the other was
searched by the British for him particularly. And at the very moment
when New Rochelle disciples were calling down fire on his head,
Christopher Dederick tried vainly to answer the imprecation; within a
few feet of Paine, his gun only shattered the window at which the author
sat. "Providence must be as bad as Thomas Paine," wrote the old deist.
This amounted to a sort of contest like that of old between the
prophets of Baal and those of Jehovah. The deists were crying to their
antagonists: "Perchance he sleepeth." It seemed a test case. If Paine
was spared, what heretic need tremble? But he reached his threescore
years and ten in comfort; and the placard of Satan flying off with him
represented a last hope.

Skepticism and rationalism were not understood by pious people a hundred
years ago. In some regions they are not understood yet. Renan thinks
he will have his legend in France modelled after Judas. But no educated
Christian conceives of a recantation or extraordinary death-bed for a
Darwin, a Parker, an Emerson. The late Mr. Brad-laugh had some fear that
he might be a posthumous victim of the "infidel's legend." In 1875, when
he was ill in St Luke's Hospital, New York, he desired me to question
the physicians and nurses, that I might, if necessary, testify to his
fearlessness and fidelity to his views in the presence of death. But he
has died without the "legend," whose decline dates from Paine's case;
that was its crucial challenge.

The whole nation had recently been thrown into a wild excitement by
the fall of Alexander Hamilton in a duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton's
world-liness had been notorious, but the clergymen (Bishop Moore and the
Presbyterian John Mason) reported his dying words of unctuous piety and
orthodoxy. In a public letter to the Rev. John Mason, Paine said:

"Between you and your rival in communion ceremonies, Dr. Moore of the
Episcopal church, you have, in order to make yourselves appear of
some importance, reduced General Hamilton's character to that of a
feeble-minded man, who in going out of the world wanted a passport from
a priest. Which of you was first applied to for this purpose is a matter
of no consequence. The man, sir, who puts his trust and confidence in
God, that leads a just and moral life, and endeavors to do good, does
not trouble himself about priests when his hour of departure comes, nor
permit priests to trouble themselves about him."

The words were widely commented on, and both sides looked forward,
almost as if to a prize-fight, to the hour when the man who had unmade
thrones, whether in earth or heaven, must face the King of Terrors.
Since Michael and Satan had their legendary combat for the body of
Moses, there was nothing like it. In view of the pious raids on Paine's
death-bed, freethinkers have not been quite fair. To my own mind, some
respect is due to those humble fanatics, who really believed that Paine
was approaching eternal fires, and had a frantic desire to save him.*

     * Nor should it be forgotten that several liberal
     Christians, like Hicks, were friendly towards Paine at the
     close of his life, whereas his most malignant enemies were
     of his own "Painite" household, Carver and Cheetham. Mr.
     William Erving tells me that he remembers an English
     clergyman in New York, named Cunningham, who used to visit
     his (Erving's) father. He heard him say that Paine and he
     were friends; and that "the whole fault was that people
     hectored Paine, and made him say things he would never say
     to those who treated him as a gentleman."

Paine had no fear of death; Madame Bonneville's narrative shows that his
fear was rather of living too long. But he had some such fear as that of
Voltaire when entering his house at Fernay after it began to lighten.
He was not afraid of the lightning, he said, but of what the neighboring
priest would make of it should he be struck. Paine had some reason to
fear that the zealots who had placarded the devil flying away with him
might fulfil their prediction by body-snatching. His unwillingness to be
left alone, ascribed to superstitious terror, was due to efforts to
get a recantation from him, so determined that he dare not be without
witnesses. He had foreseen this. While living with Jarvis, two years
before, he desired him to bear witness that he maintained his theistic
convictions to the last. Jarvis merrily proposed that he should make a
sensation by a mock recantation, but the author said, "Tom Paine never
told a lie." When he knew that his illness was mortal he solemnly
reaffirmed these opinions in the presence of Madame Bonneville, Dr.
Romaine, Mr. Haskin, Captain Pelton, and Thomas Nixon.* The nurse
Hedden, if the Catholic Bishop of Boston (Fenwick) remembered accurately
thirty-seven years later, must have conspired to get him into the
patient's room, from which, of course, he was stormily expelled. But the
Bishop's story is so like a pious novelette that, in the absence of
any mention of his visit by Madame Bonneville, herself a Catholic, one
cannot be sure that the interview he waited so long to report did not
take place in some slumberous episcopal chamber in Boston.**

     * Sec the certificate of Nixon and Pelton to Cobbett (Vale,
     p. 177).

     ** Bishop Fenwick's narrative (U. S. Catholic Magazine,
     1846) is quoted in the N. Y. Observer\ September 27, 1877.
     (Extremes become friends when a freethinker is to be
     crucified.)

It was rumored that Paine's adherents were keeping him under the
influence of liquor in order that he might not recant,--so convinced,
at heart, or enamoured of Calvinism was this martyr of Theism, who
had published his "Age of Reason" from the prison where he awaited the
guillotine.*

     * Engineer Randel (orthodox), in his topographical report to
     the Clerk of the City Council (1864), mentions that the
     "very worthy mechanic," Amasa Wordsworth, who saw Paine
     daily, told him "there was no truth in such report, and that
     Thomas Paine had declined saying anything on that subject
     [religion]." "Paine," testifies Dr. Francis, "clung to his
     infidelity to the last moment of his natural life." Dr.
     Francis (orthodox) heard that Paine yielded to King Alcohol,
     but says Cheetham wrote with "settled malignity," and
     suspects "sinister motives" in his "strictures on the fruits
     of unbelief in the degradation of the wretched Paine."

Of what his principles had cost him Paine had near his end a reminder
that cut him to the heart. Albert Gallatin had remained his friend, but
his connections, the Fews and Nicholsons, had ignored the author they
once idolized. The woman for whom he had the deepest affection, in
America, had been Kitty Nicholson, now Mrs. Few. Henry Adams, in his
biography of Gallatin, says: "When confined to his bed with his last
illness he [Paine] sent for Mrs. Few, who came to see him, and when they
parted she spoke some words of comfort and religious hope. Poor Paine
only turned his face to the wall, and kept silence." What is Mr. Adams'
authority for this? According to Rick-man, Sherwin, and Vale, Mr. and
Mrs. Few came of their own accord, and "Mrs. Few expressed a wish to
renew their former friendship." Paine said to her, "very impressively,
'You have neglected me, and I beg that you will leave the room.' Mrs.
Few went into the garden and wept bitterly." I doubt this tradition
also, but it was cruelly tantalizing for his early friend, after
ignoring him six years, to return with Death.

If, amid tortures of this kind, the annoyance of fanatics and the
"Painites" who came to watch them, and the paroxysms of pain, the
sufferer found relief in stimulants, the present writer can only reflect
with satisfaction that such resource existed. For some time no food
would stay on his stomach. In such weakness and helplessness he was for
a week or so almost as miserable as the Christian spies could desire,
and his truest friends were not sorrowful when the peace of death
approached. After the years in which the stories of Paine's wretched
end have been accumulating, now appears the testimony of the Catholic
lady,--persons who remember Madame Bonneville assure me that she was a
perfect lady,--that Paine's mind was active to the last, that shortly
before death he made a humorous retort to Dr. Romaine, that he died
after a tranquil night.

Paine died at eight o'clock on the morning of June 8, 1809. Shortly
before, two clergymen had invaded his room, and so soon as they spoke
about his opinions Paine said: "Let me alone; good morning!" Madame
Bonneville asked if he was satisfied with the treatment he had received
in her house, and he said "Oh yes." These were the last words of Thomas
Paine.

On June 10th Paine's friends assembled to look on his face for the last
time. Madame Bonneville took a rose from her breast and laid it on that
of her dead benefactor. His adherents were busy men, and mostly poor;
they could not undertake the then difficult journey (nearly twenty-five
miles) to the grave beyond New Rochelle. Of the _cortège_ that followed
Paine a contemptuous account was printed (Aug. 7th) in the London
Packet:

"Extract of a letter dated June 20th, Philadelphia, written by a
gentleman lately returned from a tour: 'On my return from my journey,
when I arrived near Harlem, on York island, I met the funeral of Tom
Paine on the road. It was going on to East Chester. The followers were
two negroes, the next a carriage with six drunken Irishmen, then a
riding chair with two men in it, one of whom was asleep, and then an
Irish Quaker on horseback. I stopped my sulkey to ask the Quaker what
funeral it was; he said it was Paine, and that his friends as well as
his enemies were all glad that he was gone, for he had tired his friends
out by his intemperance and frailties. I told him that Paine had done
a great deal of mischief in the world, and that, if there was any
purgatory, he certainly would have a good share of it before the devil
would let him go. The Quaker replied, he would sooner take his chance
with Paine than any man in New York, on that score. He then put his
horse on a trot, and left me.'"

The funeral was going to West Chester; one of the vehicles contained
Madame Bonneville and her children; and the Quaker was not an Irishman.
I have ascertained that a Quaker did follow Paine, and that it was
Willett Hicks. Hicks, who has left us his testimony that Paine was "a
good man, and an honest man," may have said that Paine's friends were
glad that he was gone, for it was only humane to so feel, but all
said about "intemperance and frailties" is doubtless a gloss of the
correspondent, like the "drunken Irishmen" substituted for Madame
Bonneville and her family.

Could the gentleman of the sulky have appreciated the historic dignity
of that little _cortège_ he would have turned his horse's head and
followed it. Those two negroes, travelling twenty-five miles on foot,
represented the homage of a race for whose deliverance Paine had pleaded
from his first essay written in America to his recent entreaty for
the President's intervention in behalf of the slaughtered negroes of
Domingo.* One of those vehicles bore the wife of an oppressed French
author, and her sons, one of whom was to do gallant service to this
country in the War of 1812, the other to explore the unknown West.
Behind the Quaker preacher, who would rather take his chance in the next
world with Paine than with any man in New York, was following invisibly
another of his family and name, who presently built up Hicksite
Quakerism, the real monument of Paine, to whom unfriendly Friends
refused a grave.

     * "On the last day men shall wear On their heads the dust,
     As ensign and as ornament Of their lowly trust."--Hafis.

The grand people of America were not there, the clergy were not there;
but beside the negroes stood the Quaker preacher and the French Catholic
woman. Madame Bonneville placed her son Benjamin--afterwards General in
the United States army--at one end of the grave, and standing herself at
the other end, cried, as the earth fell on the coffin: "Oh, Mr. Paine,
my son stands here as testimony of the gratitude of America, and I for
France!"

No sooner was Paine dead than the ghoul sat gloating upon him. I found
in the Rush papers a letter from Cheetham (July 31st) to Benjamin Rush:
"Since Mr. Paine's arrival in this city from Washington, when on his way
you very properly avoided him, his life, keeping the lowest company,
has been an uninterrupted scene of filth, vulgarity, and drunkenness. As
to the reports, that on his deathbed he had something like compunctious
visitings of conscience with regard to his deistical writings and
opinions, they are altogether groundless. He resisted very angrily, and
with a sort of triumphant and obstinate pride, all attempts to draw him
from those doctrines. Much as you must have seen in the course of your
professional practice of everything that is offensive in the poorest
and most depraved of the species, perhaps you have met with nothing
excelling the miserable condition of Mr. Paine. He had scarcely any
visitants. It may indeed be said that he was totally neglected and
forgotten. Even Mrs. Bournville (sic) a woman, I cannot say a Lady, whom
he brought with him from Paris, the wife of a Parisian of that name,
seemed desirous of hastening his death. He died at Greenwich, in a small
room he had hired in a very obscure house. He was hurried to his grave
with hardly an attending person. An ill-natured epitaph, written on him
in 1796, when it was supposed he was dead, incorrectly describes the
latter end of his life. He

     "Blasphemes the Almighty, lives in filth like a hog,
     Is abandoned in death and interr'd like a dog."

The object of this letter was to obtain from Rush, for publication, some
abuse of Paine; but the answer honored Paine, save for his heresy, and
is quoted by freethinkers as a tribute.

Within a year the grave opened for Cheetham also, and he sank into it
branded by the law as the slanderer of a woman's honor, and scourged by
the community as a traitor in public life.

The day of Paine's death was a day of judgment. He had not been struck
blind or dumb; Satan had not carried him off; he had lived beyond
his threescore years and ten and died peacefully in his bed. The
self-appointed messengers of Zeus had managed to vex this Prometheus who
brought fire to men, but could not persuade him to whine for mercy,
nor did the predicted thunderbolts come. This immunity of Thomas Paine
brought the deity of dogma into a dilemma. It could be explained only
on the the theory of an apology made and accepted by the said deity.
Plainly there had to be a recantation somewhere. Either Paine had to
recant or Dogma had to recant.

The excitement was particularly strong among the Quakers, who regarded
Paine as an apostate Quaker, and perhaps felt compromised by his desire
to be buried among them. Willett Hicks told Gilbert Vale that he had
been beset by pleading questions. "Did thee never hear him call on
Christ?" "As for money," said Hicks, "I could have had any sum." There
was found, later on, a Quakeress, formerly a servant in the family of
Willett Hicks, not proof against such temptations. She pretended that
she was sent to carry some delicacy to Paine, and heard him cry "Lord
Jesus have mercy upon me"; she also heard him declare "if the Devil has
ever had any agency in any work he has had it in my writing that book
[the 'Age of Reason']."* Few souls are now so belated as to credit such
stories; but my readers may form some conception of the mental condition
of the community in which Paine died from the fact that such absurdities
were printed, believed, spread through the world. The Quaker servant
became a heroine, as the one divinely appointed witness of Tom Paine's
recantation.

     * "Life and Gospel Labors of Stephen Grellet." This
     "valuable young Friend," as Stephen Grellet calls her, had
     married a Quaker named Hinsdale. Grellet, a native of
     France, convert from Voltaire, led the anti-Hicksites, and
     was led by his partisanship to declare that Elias promised
     him to suppress his opinions! The cant of the time was that
     "deism might do to live by but not to die by." But it had
     been announced in Paine's obituaries that "some days
     previous to his demise he had an interview with some Quaker
     gentlemen on the subject [of burial in their graveyard] but
     as he declined a renunciation of his deistical opinions his
     anxious wishes were not complied with." But ten years later,
     when Hicks's deism was spreading, death-bed terrors seemed
     desirable, and Mary (Roscoe) Hinsdale, formerly Grellet's
     servant also, came forward to testify that the recantation
     refused by Paine to the "Quaker gentlemen," even for a much
     desired end, had been previously confided to her for no
     object at all! The story was published by one Charles
     Collins, a Quaker, who afterwards admitted to Gilbert Vale
     his doubts of its truth, adding "some of our friends believe
     she indulges in opiates." (Vale, p. 186).

But in the end it was that same Mary that hastened the resurrection
of Thomas Paine. The controversy as to whether Mary was or was not a
calumniator; whether orthodoxy was so irresistible that Paine must needs
surrender at last to a servant-girl who told him she had thrown his book
into the fire; whether she was to be believed against her employer, who
declared she never saw Paine at all; all this kept Paine alive.
Such boiling up from the abysses, of vulgar credulity, grotesque
superstition, such commanding illustrations of the Age of Unreason,
disgusted thoughtful Christians.*

     * The excitement of the time was well illustrated in a
     notable caricature by the brilliant artist John Wesley
     Jarvis. Paine is seen dead, his pillow "Common Sense," his
     hand holding a manuscript, "A rap on the knuckles for John
     Mason." On his arm is the label, "Answer to Bishop Watson."
     Under him is written: "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!" The Catholic Father O'Brian (a
     notorious drunkard), with very red nose, kneels over Paine,
     exclaiming, "Oh you ugly drunken beast!" The Rev. John
     Mason (Presbyterian) stamps on Paine, exclaiming, "Ah, Tom!
     Tom! thou 't get thy frying in hell; they 'll roast thee
     like a herring.

     "They 'll put thee in the furnace hot,
     And on thee bar the door:
     How the devils all will laugh
     To hear thee burst and roar!"

     The Rev. Dr. Livingston kicks at Paine's head, exclaiming,

     "How are the mighty fallen,
     Right fol-de-riddle-lol!"
     Bishop Hobart kicks the feet, tinging:
     "Right fol-de-rol, let's dance and sing,
     Tom is dead, God save the king--
     The infidel now low doth lie--
     Sing Hallelujah--hallelujah!"
     A Quaker turns away with a shovel, saying,
     "I 'll not bury thee."

Such was the religion which was supposed by some to have won Paine's
heart at last, but which, when mirrored in the controversy over his
death, led to a tremendous reaction. The division in the Quaker Society
swiftly developed. In December, 1826, there was an afternoon meeting of
Quakers of a critical kind, some results of which led directly to the
separation. The chief speaker was Elias Hicks, but it is also recorded
that "Willet Hicks was there, and had a short testimony, which seemed to
be impressive on the meeting." He had stood in silence beside the grave
of the man whose chances in the next world he had rather take than those
of any man in New York; but now the silence is broken.*

     * Curiously enough, Mary (Roscoe) Hinsdale turned up again.
     She had broken down under the cross-examination of William
     Cobbett, but he had long been out of the country when the
     Quaker separation took place. Mary now reported that a
     distinguished member of the Hicksite Society, Mary Lock
     wood, had recanted in the same way as Paine. This being
     proved false, the hysterical Mary sank and remained in
     oblivion, from which she is recalled only by the Rev. Rip
     Van Winkle. It was the unique sentence on Paine to recant
     and yet be damned. This honor belies the indifference
     expressed in the rune taught children sixty years ago:

     "Poor Tom Paine! there he lies:
     Nobody laughs and nobody cries:
     Where he has gone or how he fares,
     Nobody knows and nobody cares!"

I told Walt Whitman, himself partly a product of Hicksite Quakerism,
of the conclusion to which I had been steadily drawn, that Thomas Paine
rose again in Elias Hicks, and was in some sort the origin of our one
American religion. I said my visit was mainly to get his "testimony" on
the subject for my book, as he was born in Hicks' region, and mentions
in "Specimen Days" his acquaintance with Paine's friend, Colonel
Fellows. Walt said, for I took down his words at the time:

"In my childhood a great deal was said of Paine in our neighborhood, in
Long Island. My father, Walter Whitman, was rather favorable to Paine.
I remember hearing Elias Hicks preach; and his look, slender figure,
earnestness, made an impression on me, though I was only about eleven.
He died in 1830. He is well represented in the bust there, one of my
treasures. I was a young man when I enjoyed the friendship of Col.
Fellows,--then a constable of the courts; tall, with ruddy face,
blue eyes, snowy hair, and a fine voice; neat in dress, an old-school
gentleman, with a military air, who used to awe the crowd by his looks;
they used to call him 'Aristides.' I used to chat with him in Tammany
Hall. It was a time when, in religion, there was as yet no philosophical
middle-ground; people were very strong on one side or the other; there
was a good deal of lying, and the liars were often well paid for
their work. Paine and his principles made the great issue. Paine was
double-damnably lied about. Col. Fellows was a man of perfect truth
and exactness; he assured me that the stories disparaging to Paine
personally were quite false. Paine was neither drunken nor filthy; he
drank as other people did, and was a high-minded gentleman. I incline to
think you right in supposing a connection between the Paine excitement
and the Hicksite movement. Paine left a deep, clear-cut impression on
the public mind. Col. Fellows told me that while Paine was in New York
he had a much larger following than was generally supposed. After his
death a reaction in his favor appeared among many who had opposed him,
and this reaction became exceedingly strong between 1820 and 1830, when
the division among the Quakers developed. Probably William Cobbett's
conversion to Paine had something to do with it. Cobbett lived in the
neighborhood of Elias Hicks, in Long Island, and probably knew him.
Hicks was a fair-minded man, and no doubt read Paine's books carefully
and honestly. I am very glad you are writing the Life of Paine. Such a
book has long been needed. Paine was among the best and truest of men."

Paine's risen soul went marching on in England also. The pretended
recantation proclaimed there was exploded by William Cobbett, and the
whole controversy over Paine's works renewed. One after another deist
was sent to prison for publishing Paine's works, the last being Richard
Carlile and his wife. In 1819, the year in which William Cobbett
carried Paine's bones to England, Richard Carlile and his wife, solely
for this offence, were sent to prison,--he for three years, with fine of
£1,500, she for two years, with fine of £500,* This was a suicidal
victory for bigotry. When these two came out of prison they found that
wealthy gentlemen had provided for them an establishment in Fleet
Street, where these books were thenceforth sold unmolested. Mrs.
Carlile's petition to the House of Commons awakened that body and the
whole country. When Richard Carlile entered prison it was as a captive
deist; when he came out the freethinkers of England were generally
atheists.

     * I have before me an old fly-leaf picture, issued by
     Carlile in the same year. It shows Paine in his chariot
     advancing against Superstition. Superstition is a snaky-
     haired demoness, with poison-cup in one hand and dagger in
     the other, surrounded by instruments of torture, and
     treading on a youth. Behind her are priests, with mask,
     crucifix, and dagger. Burning faggots surround them with a
     cloud, behind which are worshippers around an idol, with a
     priest near by, upholding a crucifix before a man burning at
     the stake. Attended by fair genii, who uphold a banner
     inscribed, "Moral Rectitude." Paine advances, uplifting in
     one hand the mirror of Truth, in the other his "Age of
     Reason." There are ten stanzas describing the conflict,
     Superstition being described as holding

     "in vassalage a doating World,
     Till Paine and Reason burst upon the mind,
     And Truth and Deism their flag unfurled."

But what was this atheism? Merely another Declaration of Independence.
Common sense and common justice were entering into religion as they were
entering into government. Such epithets as "atheism," "infidelity,"
were but labels of outlawry which the priesthood of all denominations
pronounced upon men who threatened their throne, precisely as "sedition"
was the label of outlawry fixed by Pitt on all hostility to George III.
In England, atheism was an insurrection of justice against any deity
diabolical enough to establish the reign of terror in that country
or any deity worshipped by a church which imprisoned men for their
opinions. Paine was a theist, but he arose legitimately in his admirer
Shelley, who was punished for atheism. Knightly service was done by
Shelley in the struggle for the Englishman's right to read Paine. If
any enlightened religious man of to-day had to choose between the
godlessness of Shelley and the godliness that imprisoned good men for
their opinions, he would hardly select the latter. The genius of Paine
was in every word of Shelley's letter to Lord Ellenborough on the
punishment of Eaton for publishing the "Age of Reason."*

     * "Whence is any right derived, but that which power
     confers, for persecution? Do you think to convert Mr. Eaton
     to your religion by embittering his existence? You might
     force him by torture to profess your tenets, but he could
     not believe them except you should make them credible, which
     perhaps exceeds your power. Do you think to please the God
     you worship by this exhibition of your zeal? If so the
     demon to whom some nations offer human hecatombs is less
     barbarous than the Deity of civilized society.... Does
     the Christian God, whom his followers eulogize as the deity
     of humility and peace--he, the regenerator of the world, the
     meek reformer--authorise one man to rise against another,
     and, because lictors are at his beck, to chain and torture
     him as an infidel? When the Apostles went abroad to convert
     the nations, were they enjoined to stab and poison all who
     disbelieved the divinity of Christ's mission?... The
     time is rapidly approaching--I hope that you, my Lord, may
     live to behold its arrival--when the Mahometan, the Jew, the
     Christian, the Deist, and the Atheist will live together in
     one community, equally sharing the benefits which arrive
     from its association, and united in the bonds of charity and
     brotherly love."

In America "atheism" was never anything but the besom which again and
again has cleared the human mind of phantasms represented in outrages on
honest thinkers. In Paine's time the phantasm which was called Jehovah
represented a grossly ignorant interpretation of the Bible; the
revelation of its monstrous character, represented in the hatred,
slander, falsehood, meanness, and superstition, which Jarvis represented
as crows and vultures hovering near the preachers kicking Paine's dead
body, necessarily destroyed the phantasm, whose pretended power was
proved nothing more than that of certain men to injure a man who
out-reasoned them. Paine's fidelity to his unanswered argument was
fatal to the consecrated phantasm. It was confessed to be ruling without
reason, right, or humanity, like the King from whom "Common Sense,"
mainly, had freed America, and not by any "Grace of God" at all, but
through certain reverend Lord Norths and Lord Howes. Paine's peaceful
death, the benevolent distribution of his property by a will affirming
his Theism, represented a posthumous and potent conclusion to the "Age
of Reason."

Paine had aimed to form in New York a Society for Religious Inquiry,
also a Society of Theophilan-thropy. The latter was formed, and his
posthumous works first began to appear, shortly after his death, in an
organ called _The Theophilanthropist_.

But his movement was too cosmopolitan to be contained in any local
organization. "Thomas Paine," said President Andrew Jackson to Judge
Hertell, "Thomas Paine needs no monument made by hands; he has erected
a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty." The like may be
said of his religion: Theophilanthropy, under a hundred translations and
forms, is now the fruitful branch of every religion and every sect. The
real cultivators of skepticism,--those who ascribe to deity biblical
barbarism, and the savagery of nature,--have had their day.

The removal and mystery of Paine's bones appear like some page of Mosaic
mythology.* An English caricature pictured Cobbett seated on Paine's
coffin, in a boat named Rights of Man, rowed by Negro Slaves.

     * The bones of Thomas Paine were landed in Liverpool
     November 21, 1819. The monument contemplated by Cobbett was
     never raised. There was much parliamentary and municipal
     excitement. A Bolton town-crier was imprisoned nine weeks
     for proclaiming the arrival. In 1836 the bones passed with
     Cobbett's effects into the hands of a Receiver (West). The
     Lord Chancellor refusing to regard them as an asset, they
     were kept by an old day-laborer until 1844, when they passed
     to B. Tilley, 13 Bedford Square, London, a furniture dealer.
     In 1849 the empty coffin was in possession of J. Chennell,
     Guildford. The silver plate bore the inscription "Thomas
     Paine, died June 8, 1809, aged 72." In 1854, Rev. R. Ainslie
     (Unitarian) told E. Truelove that he owned "the skull and
     the right hand of Thomas Paine," but evaded subsequent
     inquiries. The removal caused excitement in America. Of
     Paine's gravestone the last fragment was preserved by his
     friends of the Bayeaux family, and framed on their wall. In
     November, 1839, the present marble monument at New Rochelle
     was erected.

"A singular coincidence [says Dr. Francis] led me to pay a visit to
Cobbett at his country seat, within a couple of miles of the city, on
the island, on the very day that he had exhumed the bones of Paine, and
shipped them for England. I will here repeat the words which Cobbett
gave utterance to at the friendly interview our party had with him. 'I
have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed:
you have neglected too long the remains of Thomas Paine. I have done
myself the honor to disinter his bones. I have removed them from New
Rochelle. I have dug them up; they are now on their way to England. When
I myself return, I shall cause them to speak the common sense of
the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and
Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will
effect the reformation of England in Church and State.'"

Mr. Badeau, of New Rochelle, remembers standing near Cobbett's workmen
while they were digging up the bones, about dawn. There is a legend that
Paine's little finger was left in America, a fable, perhaps, of his once
small movement, now stronger than the loins of the bigotry that refused
him a vote or a grave in the land he so greatly served. As to his bones,
no man knows the place of their rest to this day. His principles rest
not. His thoughts, untraceable like his dust, are blown about the world
which he held in his heart. For a hundred years no human being has been
born in the civilized world without some spiritual tincture from that
heart whose every pulse was for humanity, whose last beat broke a fetter
of fear, and fell on the throne of thrones.




APPENDIX A. THE COBBETT PAPERS.

In the autumn of 1792 William Cobbett arrived in America. Among the
papers preserved by the family of Thomas Jefferson is a letter from
Cobbett, enclosing an introduction from Mr. Short, U. S. Secretary
of Legation at Paris. In this letter, dated at Wilmington, Delaware,
November 2, 1792, the young Englishman writes: "Ambitious to become
the citizen of a free state I have left my native country, England, for
America. I bring with me youth, a small family, a few useful literary
talents, and that is all."

Cobbett had been married in the same year, on February 5th, and visited
Paris, perhaps with an intention of remaining, but becoming disgusted
with the revolution he left for America. He had conceived a dislike of
the French revolutionary leaders, among whom he included Paine. He
thus became an easy victim of the libellous Life of Paine, by George
Chalmers, which had not been reprinted in America, and reproduced the
statements of that work in a brief biographical sketch published in
Philadelphia, 1796. In later life Cobbett became convinced that he had
been deceived into giving fresh currency to a tissue of slanders.

In the very year of this publication, afterwards much lamented, Paine
published in Europe a work that filled Cobbett with admiration. This was
"The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," which predicted
the suspension of gold payments by the Bank of England that followed the
next year. The pamphlet became Cobbett's text-book, and his _Register_
was eloquent in Paine's praise, the more earnestly, he confessed,
because he had "been one of his most violent assailants." "Old age
having laid his hand upon this truly great man, this truly philosophical
politician, at his expiring flambeau I lighted my taper."

A sketch of Thomas Paine and some related papers of Cobbett are
generously confided to me by his daughter, Eleanor Cobbett, through her
nephew, William Cobbett, Jr., of Woodlands, near Manchester, England.
The public announcement (1818) by Cobbett, then in America, of his
intention to write a Life-of Paine, led to his negotiation with
Madame Bonneville, who, with her husband, resided in New York. Madame
Bonneville had been disposing of some of Paine's manuscripts, such as
that on "Freemasonry," and the reply to Bishop Watson, printed in
_The Theophilanthropist_ (1810). She had also been preparing, with her
husband's assistance, notes for a biography of Paine, because of the
"unjust efforts to tarnish the memory of Mr. Paine"; adding, "_Et
l'indignation ma fait prendre la plume_." Cobbett agreed to give her
a thousand dollars for the manuscript, which was to contain important
letters from and to eminent men. She stated (September 30, 1819)
her conditions, that it should be published in England, without any
addition, and separate from any other writings. I suppose it was one or
all of these conditions that caused the non-completion of the bargain.
Cobbett re-wrote the whole thing, and it is now all in his writing
except a few passages by Madame Bonneville, which I indicate by
brackets, and two or three by his son, J. P. Cobbett. Although Madame
Bonneville gave some revision to Cobbett's manuscript, most of the
letters to be supplied are merely indicated. No trace of them exists
among the Cobbett papers. Soon afterward the Bonnevilles went to Paris,
where they kept a small book shop. Nicolas died in 1828. His biography
in Michaud's Dictionary is annotated by the widow, and states that
in 1829 she had begun to edit for publication the Life and posthumous
papers of Thomas Paine. From this it would appear that she had retained
the manuscript, and the original letters. In 1833 Madame Bonneville
emigrated to St. Louis, where her son, the late General Bonneville,
lived. Her Catholicism became, I believe, devout with advancing years,
and to that cause, probably also to a fear of reviving the old scandal
Cheetham had raised, may be due the suppression of the papers, with
the result mentioned in the introduction to this work. She died in St.
Louis, October 30, 1846, at the age of 79. Probably William Cobbett
did not feel entitled to publish the manuscript obtained under such
conditions, or he might have waited for the important documents that
were never sent. He died in 1835. The recollections are those of both M.
and Madame Bonneville. The reader will find no difficulty in making out
the parts that represent Madame's personal knowledge and reminiscences,
as Cobbett has preserved her speech in the first person, and, with
characteristic literary acumen, her expressions in such important
points. His manuscript is perfect, and I have little editing to do
beyond occasional correction of a date, supplying one or two letters
indicated, which I have found, and omitting a few letters, extracts,
etc., already printed in the body of this work, where unaccompanied by
any comment or addition from either Cobbett or the Bonnevilles.

At the time when this Cobbett-Bonneville sketch was written New York was
still a provincial place. Nicolas Bonneville, as Irving describes him,
seated under trees at the Battery, absorbed in his classics, might have
been regarded with suspicion had it been known that his long separation
from his family was due to detention by the police. Madame Bonneville is
reserved on that point. The following incident, besides illustrating the
characters of Paine and Bonneville, may suggest a cause for the rigor
of Bonneville's surveillance. In 1797, while Paine and Bonneville were
editing the _Bien Informe_, a "suspect" sought asylum with them. This
was Count Barruel-Beauvert, an author whose writings alone had caused
his denunciation as a royalist. He had escaped from the Terror, and now
wandered back in disguise, a pauper Count, who knew well the magnanimity
of the two men whose protection he asked. He remained, as proof-reader,
in the Bonneville house for some time, safely; but when the conspiracy
of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797) exasperated the Republic against
royalists, the Count feared that he might be the means of compromising
his benefactors, and disappeared. When the royalist conspiracy against
Bonaparte was discovered, Barruel-Beauvert was again hunted, and
arrested (1802). His trial probably brought to the knowledge of the
police his former sojourn with Paine and Bonneville. Bonaparte sent by
Fouché a warning to Paine that the eye of the police was upon him,
and that "on the first complaint he would be sent to his own country,
America." Whether this, and the closer surveillance on Bonneville, were
connected with the Count, who also suffered for a time, or whether due
to their anti-slavery writings on Domingo, remains conjectural. Towards
the close of life Bonneville received a pension, which was continued to
his widow. So much even a monarchy with an established church could do
for a republican author, and a freethinker; for Bonneville had published
heresies like those of Paine.




THOMAS PAINE, A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.

[More exactly than any other author Thomas Paine delineates every
Circumstantial Events, private or Public in his Writings; nevertheless,
since many pretended Histories of the Life of T. P. have been published,
tracing him back to the day of his]* birth, we shall shortly observe,
that, as was never denied by himself, he was born at Thetford, in the
County of Norfolk, England on the 29. January, in the year 1737; that
his father Joseph Paine was a stay-maker, and by religion a Quaker; that
his mother was the daughter of a country attorney, and that she belonged
to the Church of England; but, it appears, that she also afterwards
became a Quaker; for these parents both belonged to the Meeting in 1787,
as appears from a letter of the father to the son.

     * The bracketed words, Madame Bonneville's, are on a
     separate slip. An opening paragraph by Cobbett is crossed
     out by her pen: "The early years of the life of a Great Man
     are of little consequence to the world. Whether Paine made
     stays or gauged barrels before he became a public character,
     is of no more importance to us than whether he was swaddled
     with woollen or with linen. It is the man, in conjunction
     with those labours which have produced so much effect in the
     world, whom we are to follow and contemplate. Nevertheless,
     since many pretended histories of the life of Paine have
     been published, etc."

The above-mentioned histories relate (and the correctness of the
statement has not been denied by him), that Paine was educated at the
free-school of Thetford; that he left it in 1752, when he was fifteen
years of age, and then worked for some time with his father: that in a
year afterwards, he went to London: that from London he went to Dover:
that about this time he was on the eve of becoming a sailor: that he
afterwards did embark on board a privateer: that, between the years 1759
and 1774 he was a stay maker, an excise officer, a grocer, and an usher
to a school; and that, during the period he was twice married, and
separated by mutual consent, from his second wife.*

     * The dates given by Cobbett from contemporary histories
     require revision by the light of the careful researches made
     by myself and others, as given at the beginning of this
     biography.

In this year 1774 and in the month of September, Paine sailed from
England for Philadelphia, where he arrived safe; and now we begin his
history; for here we have him in connection with his literary labours.

It being an essential part of our plan to let Thomas Paine speak in his
own words, and explain himself the reason for his actions, whenever
we find written papers in his own hand, though in incomplete notes or
fragments, we shall insert such, in order to enable the reader to judge
for himself, and to estimate the slightest circumstances. _Sauvent d'un
grand dessin un mot nous fait juger_. "A word often enables us to judge
of a great design."

"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 everybody 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."*

     * From Crisis vii., dated Philadelphia, November 21, 1778.
     In Cobbett's MS. the extract is only indicated.

His first intention at Philadelphia was to establish an Academy for
young ladies, who were to be taught many branches of learning then
little known in the education of young American ladies. But, in 1775, he
undertook the management of the Pennsylvania Magazine.

About this time he published, in Bradford's journal, an essay on the
slavery, of the negroes, which was universally well received; and also
stanzas on the death of General Wolfe.

In 1776, January 10, he published Common Sense. In the same year he
joined the army as aid-de-camp to General Greene. Gordon, in his history
of the Independence of the United States (vol. ii. p. 78), says:
[Wanting]--Ramsay (Lond. ed. i. p. 336) says: [Wanting!] Anecdote of
Dr. Franklin preserved by Thomas Paine: [Wanting, but no doubt one
else-where given, in the Hall manuscripts]

When Washington had made his retreat from New York Thomas Paine
published the first number of the Crisis, which was read to every
corporal's guard in the camp. It revived the army, reunited the members
of the [New York] Convention, when despair had reduced them to nine in
number, while the militia were abandoning their standards and flying in
all directions. The success of the army at Trenton was, in some degree,
owing to this first number of the Crisis. In 1778 he discovered the
robberies of Silas Deane, an agent of the United States in France.
He gave in his resignation as Secretary, which was accepted by the
Congress. In 1779 he was appointed-Clerk to the General Assembly of
Pennsylvania, which office he retained until 1780. In 1780 he departed
for France with Col. John Laurens, commissioned especially by the
Congress to the Court at Versailles to obtain the aid that was wanted.
(See Gordon's Hist., v. iii., p. 154.) After his return from France he
received the following letter from Col. Laurens:

"Carolina, April 18, 1782.--I received the letter wherein you mention
my horse and trunk, (the latter of which was left at Providence).
The misery which the former has suffered at different times, by
mismanagement, has greatly distressed me. He was wounded in service, and
I am much attached to him. If he can be of any service to you, I entreat
your acceptance of him, more especially if you will make use of him in
bringing you to a country (Carolina) where you will be received with
open arms, and all that affection and respect which our citizens are
anxious to testify to the author of Common Sense, and the Crisis.

"Adieu! I wish you to regard this part of America (Carolina) as your
particular home--and everything that I can command in it to be in common
between us."

On the 10th of April, 1783, the definitive treaty of peace was received
and published. Here insert the letter from Gen. Nathaniel Greene:

"Ashley-Rives (Carolina), Nov. 18, 1782.--Many people wish to get you
into this country.

"I see you are determined to follow your genius and not your fortune.
I have always been in hopes that Congress would have made some handsome
acknowledgement to you for past services. I must confess that I think
you have been shamefully neglected; and that America is indebted to few
characters more than to you. But as your passion leads to fame, and
not to wealth, your mortification will be the less. Your fame for
your writings, will be immortal. At present my expenses are great;
nevertheless, if you are not conveniently situated, I shall take a pride
and pleasure in contributing all in my power to render your situation
happy."'

Then letter from his father.--"Dear Son, &c." [Lost.]

The following letter from William Livingston (Trenton, 4 November, 1784)
will show that Thomas Paine was not only honored with the esteem of the
most famous persons, but that they were all convinced that he had been
useful to the country.**

At this time Thomas Paine was living with Colonel Kirk-bride,
Bordentown, where he remained till his departure for France. He had
bought a house [in], and five acres of marshy land over against,
Bordentown, near the Delaware, which overflowed it frequently. He sold
the land in 1787.

Congress gave an order for three thousand dollars, which Thomas Paine
received in the same month.

Early in 1787 he departed for France. He carried with him the model of
a bridge of his own invention and construction, which he submitted, in
a drawing, to the French Academy, by whom it was approved. From Paris he
went to London on the 3 September 1787; and in the same month he went
to Thetford, where he found his father was dead, from the small-pox; and
where he settled an allowance on his mother of 9 shillings a week.

     * This and the preceding letter supplied by the author.

     * Not found.    Referred to in this work, vol. i., p. 200.

A part of 1788 he passed in Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where his bridge
was cast and erected, chiefly at the expense of the ingenious Mr.
Walker. The experiment, however, cost Thomas Paine a considerable sum.

When Burke published his _Reflexions on the French Revolution_, Thomas
Paine answered him in his First Part of the Rights of Man. In January,
1792, appeared the Second Part of the Rights of Man. The sale of the
Rights of Man was prodigious, amounting in the course of one year to
about a hundred thousand copies.

In 1792 he was prosecuted for his Rights of Man by the Attorney General,
McDonald, and was defended by Mr. Erskine, and found guilty of libel.
But he was now in France, and could not be brought up for judgment.

Each district of France sent electors to the principal seat of the
Department, where the Deputies to the National Assembly were chosen. Two
Departments appointed Thomas Paine their Deputy, those of Oise and
of Pas de Calais, of which he accepted the latter. He received the
following letter from the President of the National Assembly, Hérault de
Séchelles:

"To Thomas Paine:

"France calls you, Sir, to its bosom, to perform one of the most useful
and most honorable functions, that of contributing, by wise legislation,
to the happiness of a people, whose destinies interest all who think and
are united with the welfare of all who suffer in the world.

"It becomes the nation that has proclaimed the Rights of Many to desire
among her legislators him who first dared to estimate the consequences
of those Rights, and who has developed their principles with that
Common Senset which is the only genius inwardly felt by all men, and the
conception of which springs forth from nature and truth.

"The National Assembly gave you the title of Citizen, and had seen
with pleasure that its decree was sanctioned by the only legitimate
authority, that of the people, who had already claimed you, even before
you were nominated.

"Come, Sir, and enjoy in France the most interesting of scenes for an
observer and a philosopher,--that of a confiding and generous people
who, infamously betrayed for three years, and wishing at last to end the
struggle between slavery and liberty, between sincerity and perfidy, at
length arises in its resolute and gigantic force, gives up to the sword
of the law those guilty crowned things who betrayed them, resists the
barbarians whom they raised up to destroy the nation. Her citizens
turned soldiers, her territory into camp and fortress, she yet calls and
collects in congress the lights scattered through the universe. Men of
genius, the most capable for their wisdom and virtue, she now calls to
give to her people a government the most proper to insure their liberty
and happiness.

"The Electoral Assembly of the Department of Oise, anxious to be the
first to elect you, has been so fortunate as to insure to itself that
honour; and when many of my fellow citizens desired me to inform you of
your election, I remembered, with infinite pleasure, having seen you at
Mr. Jefferson's, and I congratulated myself on having had the pleasure
of knowing you.

"Hérault,

"President of the National Assembly."

At the trial of Louis XVI. before the National Convention Thomas Paine
at the Tribune, with the deputy Bancal for translator and interpreter,
gave his opinion, written, on the capital sentence on Louis:--That,
though a Deputy of the National Convention of France, he could not
forget, that, previous to his being that, he was a citizen of the United
States of America, which owed their liberty to Louis, and that gratitude
would not allow him to vote for the death of the benefactor of America.
On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis XVI was beheaded in the Square of
Louis XV. (Letter to Marat.)

Thomas Paine was named by the Assembly as one of the Committee of
Legislation, and, as he could not discuss article by article without the
aid of an interpreter, he drew out a plan of a constitution.**

     * Both missing.   Possibly the second should be to Danton.
     See ii., p. 53.

     **  See ii., p. 37 sec., of this work.

The reign of terror began on the night of the 10th of March!793, when
the greatest number and the best part of the real friends to freedom had
retired [from the Convention]. But, as the intention of the conspiracy
against the Assembly had been suspected, as the greatest part of the
Deputies they wished to sacrifice had been informed of the threatening
danger, as, moreover, a mutual fear [existed] of the cunning tyranny of
some usurper, the conspirators, alarmed, could not this night consummate
their horrible machinations. They therefore, for this time, confined
themselves to single degrees of accusation and arrestation against the
most valuable part of the National Convention. Robespiere had placed
himself at the head of a conspiring Common-Hall, which dared to dictate
_laws of blood_ and proscription to the Convention. All those whom he
could not make bend under a Dictatorship, which a certain number of
anti-revolutionists feigned to grant him, as a tool which they could
destroy at pleasure, were guilty of being suspected, and secretly
destined to disappear from among the living. Thomas Paine, as his marked
enemy and rival, by favour of the decree on the suspected was classed
among the suspected, and, as a foreigner, was imprisoned in the
Luxembourg in December 1793. (See Letter to Washington.) ¦

From this document it will be seen, that, while in the prison, he was,
for a month, afflicted with an illness that deprived him of his memory.
It was during this illness of Thomas Paine that the fall of Robespierre
took place. Mr. Monroe, who arrived at Paris some days afterwards, wrote
to Mr. Paine, assuring him of his friendship, as appears from the letter
to Washington. Fifteen days afterwards Thomas Paine received a letter
from Peter Whiteside.** In consequence of this letter Thomas Paine wrote
a memorial to Mr. Monroe. Mr. Monroe now claimed Thomas Paine, and he
_came out of the prison on the 6th of November, 1794, after ten months
of imprisonment_. He went to live with Mr. Monroe, who had cordially
offered him his house. In a short time after, the Convention called
him to take his seat in that Assembly; which he did, for the reasons he
alleges in his letter to Washington.

The following two pieces Thomas Paine wrote while in Prison: "Essay on
Aristocracy." "Essay on the character of Robespierre." [Both missing.]

     * This is the bitter letter of which when it appeared
     Cobbett had written such a scathing review.

     ** The letter telling him of the allegations made by some
     against his American citizenship.

Thomas Paine received the following letter from Madame Lafayette, whose
husband was then a prisoner of war in Austria:

"19 Brumaire, Paris.--I was this morning so much agitated by the kind
visit from Mr. Monroe, that I could hardly find words to speak; but,
however, I was, my dear Sir, desirous to tell you, that the news of your
being set at liberty, which I this morning learnt from General Kilmaine,
who arrived here at the same time with me, has given me a moment's
consolation in the midst of this abyss of misery, where I shall all my
life remain plunged. Gen. Kilmaine has told me that you recollected
me, and have taken great interest in my situation; for which I am
exceedingly grateful.

"Accept, along with Mr. Monroe, my congratulations upon your being
restored to each other, and the assurances of these sentiments from
her who is proud to proclaim them, and who well deserved the title of
citizen of that second country, though I have assuredly never failed,
nor shall ever fail, to the former. Salut and friendship.

"With all sincerity of my heart,

"N. Lafayette."

On the 27 January, 1794, Thomas Paine published in Paris, the First Part
of the "Age of Reason."

Seeing the state of things in America, Thomas Paine wrote a letter to
Gen. Washington 22 February 1795. Mr. Monroe entreated him not to
send it, and, accordingly it was not sent to Washington; but it was
afterwards published.

A few months after his going out of prison, he had a violent fever. Mrs.
Monroe showed him all possible kindness and attention. She provided him
with an excellent nurse, who had for him all the anxiety and assiduity
of a sister. She neglected nothing to afford him ease and comfort, when
he was totally unable to help himself. He was in the state of a helpless
child who has its face and hands washed by its mother. The surgeon was
the famous Dessault, who cured him of an abscess which he had in his
side. After the horrible 13 Brumaire, a friend of Thomas Paine being
very sick, he, who was in the house, went to bring his own excellent
nurse to take care of his sick friend: a fact of little account
in itself, but a sure evidence of ardent and active friendship and
kindness.

The Convention being occupied with a discussion of the question of what
Constitution ought to be adopted, that of 1791 or that of 1793, Thomas
Paine made a speech (July 7, 1795) as a member of the [original]
Committee [on the Constitution] and Lanthénas translated it and read
it in the Tribune. This speech has been translated into English, and
published in London; but, the language of the author has been changed
by the two translations. It is now given as written by the author.
[Missing.]

In April, 1796, he wrote his _Decline and Fail of the British System of
Finance _; and, on the 30th of July of that year he sent his letter to
Washington off for America by Mr.-------- who sent it to Mr. Bâche, a
newspaper printer of Philadelphia, to be published, and it was published
the same year. The name of the gentleman who conveyed the letter, and
who wrote the following to Thomas Paine, is not essential and therefore
we suppress it. [Missing.]

We here insert a letter from Talleyrand, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, to show that Thomas Paine was always active and attentive in
doing every thing which would be useful to America. [Missing.]

Thomas Paine after he came out of prison and had reentered the
Convention wrote the following letter. [Missing.]

The following is essentially connected with the foregoing: "Paris,
October 4, 1796." [Missing.]

In October, 1796, Thomas Paine published the Second Fart of the Age of
Reason.

This year Mr. Monroe departed from France, and soon after Thomas Paine
went to Havre de Grace, to embark for the United States. But, he did
not, upon inquiry, think it prudent to go, on account of the great
number of English vessels then cruizing in the Channel. He therefore
came back to Paris; but, while at Havre, wrote the following letter, 13
April 1797, to a friend at Paris. [Missing.]

The following letter will not, we hope, seem indifferent to the reader:
"Dear Sir, I wrote to you etc." [Missing.]

At this time it was that Thomas Paine took up his abode at Mr.
Bonneville's, who had known him at the Minister Roland's, and as Mr. B.
spoke English, Thomas Paine addressed himself to him in a more familiar
and friendly manner than to any other persons of the society. It was a
reception of Hospitality which was here given to Thomas Paine for a
week or a fortnight; but, the visit lasted till 1802, when he and Mr.
Bonneville parted,--alas never to meet again!

Our House was at No. 4 Rue du Theatre François. All the first floor was
occupied as a printing office. The whole house was pretty well filled;
and Mr. Bonneville gave up his study, which was not a large one, and a
bed-chamber to Thomas Paine. He was always in his apartments excepting
at meal times. He rose late. He then used to read the newspapers, from
which, though he understood but little of the French language when
spoken, he did not fail to collect all the material information relating
to politics, in which subject he took most delight. When he had his
morning's reading, he used to carry back the journals to Mr. Bonneville,
and they had a chat upon the topicks of the day.

If he had a short jaunt to take, as for instance, to Puteaux just by
the bridge of Neuilly, where Mr. Skipwith lived, he always went on
foot, after suitable preparations for the journey in that way. I do not
believe he ever hired a coach to go out on pleasure during the whole of
his stay in Paris. He laughed at those who, depriving themselves of a
wholesome exercise, could make no other excuse for the want of it than
that they were able to take it whenever they pleased. He was never idle
in the house. If not writing he was busily employed on some mechanical
invention, or else entertaining his visitors. Not a day escaped without
his receiving many visits. Mr. Barlow, Mr. Fulton, Mr. Smith [Sir
Robert] came very often to see him. Many travellers also called on him;
and, often, having no other affair, talked to him only of his great
reputation and their admiration of his works. He treated such visitors
with civility, but with little ceremony, and, when their conversation
was mere chit-chat, and he found they had nothing particular to say to
him, he used to retire to his own pursuits, leaving them to entertain
themselves with their own ideas.

He sometimes spent his evenings at Mr. Barlow's, where Mr. Fulton lived,
or at Mr. Smith's [Sir Robert], and sometimes at an Irish Coffee-house
in Condé Street, where Irish, English, and American people met. He here
learnt the state of politics in England and America. He never went out
after dinner without first taking a nap, which was always of two or
three hours length. And, when he went out to a dinner of _parade_, he
often came home for the purpose of taking his accustomed sleep. It was
seldom he went into the society of French people; except when, by
seeing some one in office or power, he could obtain some favour for his
countrymen who might be in need of his good offices. These he always
performed with pleasure, and he never failed to adopt the most likely
means to secure success. But in one instance he failed. He wrote as
follows to Lord Cornwallis; but, he did not save Napper Tandy. Letter to
Lord Cornwallis. Letter 27 Brumaire, 4 year. Letter 23 Germinal 4 year.
[The three letters missing.]

C. Jourdan made a report to the Convention on the re-establishment
of Bells, which had been suppressed, and, in great part melted. Paine
published, on this occasion, a letter to C. Jourdan.*

     * The words "which will find a place in the Appendix" are
     here crossed out by Madame Bonneville.    See ii., p. 258
     concerning Jourdan.

He had brought with him from America, as we have seen, a model of a
bridge of his own construction and invention, which model had been
adopted in England for building bridges under his own direction. He
employed part of his time, while at our house, in bringing this model to
high perfection, and this accomplished to his wishes. He afterwards,
and according the model, made a bridge of lead, which he accomplished b/
moulding different blocks of lead, which, when joined together, made the
form that he required. This was most pleasant amusement for him. Though
he fully relied on the strength of his new bridge, and would produce
arguments enough in proof of its infallible strength, he often
demonstrated the proof by blows of the sledge-hammer, not leaving anyone
in doubt on the subject. One night he took off the scaffold of his
bridge and seeing that it stood firm under the repeated strokes of
hammer, he was so ravished that an enjoyment so great was not to be
sufficiently felt if confined to his own bosom. He was not satisfied
without admirers of his success. One night we had just gone to bed, and
were surprised at hearing repeated strokes of the hammer. Paine went
into Mr. Bonneville's room and besought him to go and see his bridge:
come and look, said he, it bears all my blows and stands like a rock.
Mr. Bonneville arose, as well to please himself by seeing a happy man as
to please him by looking at his bridge. Nothing would do, unless I saw
the sight as well as Mr. Bonneville. After much exultation: "nothing, in
the world," said he, "is so fine as my bridge"; and, seeing me standing
by without uttering a word, he added, "except a woman!" which happy
compliment to the sex he seemed to think, a full compensation for the
trouble caused by this nocturnal visit to the bridge.

A machine for planing boards was his next invention, which machine he
had executed partly by one blacksmith and partly by another. The machine
being put together by him, he placed it on the floor, and with it planed
boards to any number that he required, to make some models of wheels.
Mr. Bonneville has two of these wheels now. There is a specification
of the wheels, given by Mr. Paine himself. This specification, together
with a drawing of the model, made by Mr. Fulton, were deposited at
Washington, in February 1811; and the other documents necessary to
obtain a patent as an invention of Thomas Paine, for the benefit of
Madam Bonneville. To be presented to the Directory of France, a memorial
on the progress and construction of iron bridges. On this subject the
two pieces here subjoined will throw sufficient light. (Memoir upon
Bridges.--Upon Iron Bridges.--To the Directory.--Memoir on the Progress
and Construction &c.)

Preparations were made, real or simulated, for a Descent upon England.
Thomas Paine was consulted by B. 8. who was then in the house of
Talma, and he wrote the following notes and instructions. Letter at
Brussells.--The Ça-ira of America.--To the Consul Lépeaux.*

     * This paragraph is in the writing of Madame Bonneville. "B.
     8." means Bonaparte, and seems to be some cipher. All of the
     pieces by Paine mentioned are missing; also that addressed
     "To the Directory," for the answer to which see p. 296 of
     this volume.

Chancellor Livingston, after his arrival in France, came a few times to
see Paine. One morning we had him at breakfast, Dupuis, the author of
the Origin of Worship, being of the party; and Mr. Livingston, when he
got up to go away, said to Mr. Paine smiling, "Make your Will; leave
the mechanics, the iron bridge, the wheels, etc. to America, and your
religion to France."

Thomas Paine, while at our house, published in Mr. Bonneville's journal
(the _Bien Informé_) several articles on passing events.*

     * The following words are here crossed out: "Also several
     pieces of poetry, which will be published hereafter, with
     his miscellaneous prose."

A few days before his departure for America, he said, at Mr. Smith's
[Sir Robert] that he had nothing to detain him in France; for that he
was neither in love, debt, nor difficulty. Some lady observed, that it
was not, in the company of ladies, gallant to say he was not in love.
Upon this occasion he wrote the New Covenant, from the Castle in the Air
to the Little Corner of the World, in three stanzas, and sent it with
the following words: "As the ladies are better judges of gallantry
than the men are, I will thank you to tell me, whether the enclosed be
gallantry. If it be, it is truly original; and the merit of it belongs
to the person who inspired it." The following was the answer of Mrs.
Smith. "If the usual style of gallantry was as clever as your new
covenant, many a fair ladies heart would be in danger, but the Little
Corner of the World receives it from the Castle in the Air; it is
agreeable to her as being the elegant fancy of a friend.--C. Smith."
[Stanzas missing.']

At this time, 1802, public spirit was at end in France. The real
republicans were harrassed by eternal prosecutions. Paine was a truly
grateful man: his friendship was active and warm, and steady. During the
six years that he lived in our house, he frequently pressed us to go to
America, offering us all that he should be able to do for us, and saying
that he would bequeath his property to our children. Some affairs of
great consequence made it impracticable for Mr. Bonneville to quit
France; but, foreseeing a new revolution, that would strike, personally,
many of the Republicans, it was resolved, soon after the departure
of Mr. Paine for America, that I should go thither with my children,
relying fully on the good offices of Mr. Paine, whose conduct in America
justified that reliance.

In 1802 Paine left France, regretted by all who knew him. He embarked
at Havre de Grace on board a stout ship, belonging to Mr. Patterson, of
Baltimore, he being the only passenger. After a very stormy passage, he
landed at Baltimore on the 30th of October, 1812. He remained there but
a few days, and then went to Washington, where he published his Letters
to the Americans.

A few months afterwards, he went to Bordentown, to his friend Col.
Kirkbride, who had invited him, on his return, by the following letter
of 12 November, 1802. [Missing.]

He staid at Bordentown about two months, and then went to New York,
where a great number of patriots gave him a splendid dinner at the City
Hotel. In June, 1803, he went to Stonington, New England, to see some
friends; and in the autumn he went to his farm at New Rochelle. (The
letter of Thomas Paine to Mr. Bonneville, 20 Nov., 1803.) [Missing.]

An inhabitant of this village offered him an apartment, of which he
accepted, and while here he was taken ill. His complaint was a sort of
paralytic affection, which took away the use of his hands. He had had
the same while at Mr. Monroe's in Paris, after he was released from
prison. Being better, he went to his farm, where he remained a part of
the winter, and he came to New York to spend the rest of it; but in the
spring (1804) he went back to his farm. The farmer who had had his farm
for 17 or 18 years, instead of paying his rent, brought Mr. Paine a bill
for fencing, which made Paine his debtor! They had a law-suit by which
Paine got nothing but the right of paying the law-expenses! This and
other necessary expenses compelled him to sell sixty acres of his land.
He then gave the honest farmer notice to quit the next April (1805).

Upon taking possession of the farm himself, he hired Christopher Derrick
to cultivate it for him. He soon found that Derrick was not fit for his
place, and he, therefore, discharged him. This was in the summer; and,
on Christmas Eve ensuing, about six o'clock, Mr. Paine being in his
room, on the ground floor, reading, a gun was fired a few yards from the
window. The contents of the gun struck the bottom part of the window,
and all the charge, which was of small shot, lodged, as was next day
discovered, in the window sill and wall. The shooter, in firing the gun,
fell; and the barrel of the gun had entered the ground where he fell,
and left an impression, which Thomas Paine observed the next morning.
Thomas Paine went immediately to the house of a neighboring farmer, and
there (seeing a gun, he took hold of it, and perceived that the
muzzle of the gun was filled with fresh earth.) And then he heard that
Christopher Derick had borrowed the gun about five o'clock the evening
before, and had returned it again before six o'clock the same evening.
Derick was arrested, and Purdy, his brother farmer, became immediately
and voluntarily his bail. The cause was brought forward at New Rochelle;
and Derick was acquitted.*

     * See p. 343 of this volume. Several paragraphs here are in
     the writing of J. P. Cobbett, then with his father in New
     York.

In 1806 Thomas Paine offered to vote at New Rochelle for the election.
But his vote was not admitted; on the pretence only of his not being
a citizen of America; whereon he wrote the following letters. [_The
letters are here missing, but no doubt the same as those on pp. 379-80
of this volume_..]

This case was pleaded before the Supreme Court of New York by Mr.
Riker, then Attorney General, and, though Paine lost his cause, I as
his legatee, did not lose the having to pay for it. It is however, an
undoubted fact, that Mr. Paine was an American Citizen.

He remained at New Rochelle till June 1807; till disgust of every kind,
occasioned by the gross and brutal conduct of some of the people there,
made him resolve to go and live at New York.

On the 4th of April, 1807, he wrote the following letter to Mr.
Bonneville [in Paris]:

"My dear Bonneville: Why don't you come to America Your wife and two
boys, Benjamin and Thomas, are here, and in good health. They all speak
English very well; but Thomas has forgot his French. I intend to provide
for the boys, but, I wish to see you here. We heard of you by letters by
Madget and Captain Hailey. Mrs. Bonneville, and Mrs. Thomas, an English
woman, keep an academy for young ladies.

"I send this by a friend, Mrs. Champlin, who will call on Mercier at the
Institute, to know where you are. Your affectionate friend."

And some time after the following letter:

"My dear Bonneville: I received your letter by Mrs. Champlin, and also
the letter for Mrs. Bonneville, and one from her sister. I have written
to the American Minister in Paris, Mr. Armstrong, desiring him to
interest himself to have your surveillance taken off on condition of
your coming to join your family in the United States.

"This letter, with Mrs. Bonneville's, come to you under cover to the
American Minister from Mr. Madison, Secretary of State. As soon as you
receive it I advise you to call on General Armstrong and inform him of
the proper method to have your surveillance taken off. Mr. Champagny,
who succeeds Talleyrand, is, I suppose, the same who was Minister of the
Interior, from whom I received a handsome friendly letter, respecting
the iron bridge. I think you once went with me to see him.

"Call on Mr Skipwith with my compliments. He will inform you what
vessels will sail for New York and where from. Bordeaux will be the best
place to sail from. I believe Mr. Lee is American Consul at Bordeaux.
When you arrive there, call on him, with my compliments. You may
contrive to arrive at New York in April or May. The passages, in the
Spring, are generally short; seldom more than five weeks, and often
less.

"Present my respects to Mercier, Bernardin St. Pierre, Dupuis,
Grégoire.--When you come, I intend publishing all my works, and those I
have yet in manuscript, by subscription. They will make 4 or 5 vol. 4°,
or 5 vol. 8°, about 400 pages each. Yours in friendship.--T. P."*

     * This letter is entirely in the writing of Madame
     Bonneville.    Beneath it is written: "The above is a true
     copy of the original; I have compared the two together.
     James P. Cobbett."   The allusion to Champagny is either a
     slip of Madame's pen or Paine's memory.    The minister who
     wrote him about his bridge was Chaptal. See ii., p. 296. The
     names in the last paragraph show what an attractive literary
     circle Paine had left in France, for a country unable to
     appreciate him.

While Paine was one day taking his usual after-dinner nap, an old woman
called, and, asking for Mr. Paine, said she had something of great
importance to communicate to him. She was shown into his bed-chamber;
and Paine, raising himself on his elbow, and turning towards the woman,
said: "What do you want with me?" "I came," said she, "from God, to
tell you, that if you don't repent, and believe in Christ, you 'll be
dammed." "Poh, poh, it's not true," said Paine; "you are not sent with
such an impertinent message. Send her away. Pshaw! God would not send
such a foolish ugly old woman as you. Turn this messenger out. Get away;
be off: shut the door." And so the old woman packed herself off.

After his arrival Paine published several articles in the newspapers of
New York and Philadelphia. Subsequent to a short illness which he had
in 1807, he could not walk without pain, and the difficulty of walking
increased every day. On the 21st of January, 1808, he addressed a
memorial to the Congress of the United States, asking remuneration for
his services; and, on the 14th of February, the same year, another on
the same subject. These documents and his letter to the Speaker are as
follows.*

     * "Are as follows" in Madame B.'s writing, after striking
     oat Cobbett's words, "will be found in the Appendix." The
     documents and letters are not given, but they are well
     known.    See ii., p. 405.

The Committee of Claims, to which the memorial had been submitted,
passed the following resolution: "Resolved, that Thomas Paine has leave
to withdraw his memorial and the papers accompanying the same." He
was deeply grieved at this refusal; some have blamed him for exposing
himself to it. But, it should be recollected, that his expenses were
greatly augmented by his illness, and he saw his means daily diminish,
while he feared a total palsy; and while he expected to live to a
very great age, as his ancestors had before him. His money yielded no
interest, always having been unwilling to place money out in that way.

He had made his will in 1807, during the short illness already noticed.
But three months later, he assembled his friends, and read to them
another will; saying that he had believed such and such one to be his
friend, and that now having altered his belief in them, he had also
altered his will. From motives of the same kind, he, three months before
his death, made another will, which he sealed up and directed to me, and
gave it me to keep, observing to me, that I was more interested in it
than any body else.

He wished to be buried in the Quaker burying ground, and sent for a
member of the committee [Willett Hicks] who lived in the neighborhood.
The interview took place on the 19th of March, 1809. Paine said, when we
were looking out for another lodging, we had to put in order the affairs
of our present abode. This was precisely the case with him; all his
affairs were settled, and he had only to provide his burying-ground;
his father had been a Quaker, and he hoped they would not refuse him a
grave; "I will," added he, "pay for the digging of it."

The committee of the Quakers refused to receive his body, at which
he seemed deeply moved, and observed to me, who was present at the
interview, that their refusal was foolish. "You will," said I, "be
buried on your farm" "I have no objection to that," said he "but the
farm will be sold, and they will dig my bones up before they be half
rotten." "Mr. Paine," I replied, "have confidence in your friends. I
assure you, that the place where you will be buried, shall never be
sold." He seemed satisfied; and never spoke upon this subject again. I
have been as good as my word.

Last December (1818) the land of the farm having been divided between
my children, I gave fifty dollars to keep apart and to myself, the place
whereon the grave was.

Paine, doubtless, considered me and my children as strangers in America.
His affection for us was, at any rate, great and sincere. He anxiously
recommended us to the protection of Mr. Emmet, saying to him, "when I
am dead, Madam Bonneville will have no friend here." And a little time
after, obliged to draw money from the Bank, he said, with an air of
sorrow, "you will have nothing left."*

     * Paine's Will appoints Thomas Addis Emmet, Walter Morton
     (with $200 each), and Madame Bonneville executors; gives a
     small bequest to the widow of Elihu Palmer, and a
     considerable one to Rickman of London, who was to divide
     with Nicholas Bonneville proceeds of the sale of the North
     part of his farm. To Madame Bonneville went his manuscripts,
     movable effects, stock in the N. Y. Phoenix Insurance
     Company estimated at $1500, and money in hand. The South
     part of the New Rochelle farm, over 100 acres, were given
     Madame Bonneville in trust for her children, Benjamin and
     Thomas, "their education and maintenance, until they come to
     the age of twenty-one years, in order that she may bring them
     well up, give them good and useful learning, and instruct
     them in their duty to God, and the practice of morality." At
     majority they were to share and share alike in fee simple.
     He desires to be buried in the Quaker ground,--"my father
     belonged to that profession, and I was partly brought up in
     it,"--but if this is not permitted, to be buried on his
     farm. "The place where I am to be buried to be a square of
     twelve feet, to be enclosed with rows of trees, and a stone
     or post and railed fence, with a head-stone with my name and
     age engraved upon it, author of "Common Sense." He confides
     Mrs. Bonneville and her children to the care of Emmet and
     Morton. "Thus placing confidence in their friendship, I
     herewith take my final leave of them and of the world. I
     have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time
     has been spent in doing good; and I die in perfect
     composure and resignation to the will of my Creator God."
     The Will, dated January 18, opens with the words,
     "The last Will and Testament of me, the subscriber, Thomas
     Paine, reposing confidence in my Creator God, and in no
     other being, for I know of no other, and I believe in no
     other."   Mrs. Paine had died July 27th, 1808.

     Mr. William Fayel, to whom I am indebted for much
     information concerning the Bonnevilles in St. Louis, writes
     me that so little is known of Paine's benefactions, that
     "an ex-senator of the United States recently asserted that
     Gen. Bonneville was brought over by Jefferson and a French
     lady; and a French lady, who was intimate with the
     Bonnevilles, assured me that General Bonneville was sent to
     West Point by Lafayette."

He was now become extremely weak. His strength and appetite daily
departed from him; and in the day-time only he was able, when not in
bed, to sit up in his arm-chair to read the newspapers, and sometimes
write. When he could no longer quit his bed, he made some one read the
newspapers to him. His mind was always active. He wrote nothing for the
press after writing his last will, but he would converse, and took
great interest in politics. The vigour of his mind, which had always
so strongly characterized him, did not leave him to the last moment. He
never complained of his bodily sufferings, though they became excessive.
His constitution was strong. The want of exercise alone was the cause of
his sufferings. Notwithstanding the great inconveniences he was obliged
to sustain during his illness, in a carman's house [Ryder's] in a small
village [Greenwich], without any bosom friend in whom he could repose
confidence, without any society he liked, he still did not complain of
his sufferings. I indeed, went regularly to see him twice a week;
but, he said to me one day: "I am here alone, for all these people are
nothing to me, day after day, week after week, month after month, and
you don't come to see me."

In a conversation between him and Mr. [Albert] Gallatin, about this
time, I recollect his using these words: "_I am very sorry that I ever
returned to this country_." As he was thus situated and paying a high
price for his lodgings he expressed a wish to come to my house. This
must be a great inconvenience to me from the frequent visits to Mr.
Thomas Paine; but, I, at last, consented; and hired a house in the
neighborhood, in May 1809, to which he was carried in an arm-chair,
after which he seemed calm and satisfied, and gave himself no trouble
about anything. He had no disease that required a Doctor, though
Dr. Romaine came to visit him twice a week. The swelling, which had
commenced at his feet, had now reached his body, and some one had been
so officious as to tell him that he ought to be tapped. He asked me if
this was necessary. I told him, that I did not know; but, that, unless
he was likely to derive great good from it, it should not be done. The
next [day] Doctor Romaine came and brought a physician with him, and
they resolved that the tapping need not take place.

He now grew weaker and weaker very fast. A very few days before his
death, Dr. Romame said to me, "I don't think he can live till night."
Paine, hearing some one speak, opens his eyes, and said: "'T is
you Doctor: what news?" "Mr. such an one is gone to France on such
business." "He will do nothing there," said Paine. "Your belly
diminishes," said the Doctor. "And yours augments," said Paine.

     * The sentence thus far is struck out by Madame Bonno he had
     not seen for a long while. He was overjoyed at seeing him;
     but, this person began to speak upon religion, and Paine
     turned his head on the other side, and remained silent, even
     to the adieu of the person.

When he was near his end, two American clergymen came to see him, and
to talk with him on religious matters. "Let me alone," said he; "good
morning." He desired they should be admitted no more. One of his friends
came to New York; a person for whom he had a great esteem, and whom
seeing his end fast approaching, I asked him, in presence of a friend,
if he felt satisfied with the treatment he had received at our house,
upon which he could only exclaim, O! yes! He added other words, but
they were incoherent It was impossible for me not to exert myself to
the utmost in taking care of a person to whom I and my children owed
so much. He now appeared to have lost all kind of feeling. He spent
the night in tranquillity, and expired in the morning at eight o'clock,
after a short oppression, at my house in Greenwich, about two miles from
the city of New York. Mr. Jarvis, a Painter, who had formerly made a
portrait of him, moulded his head in plaster, from which a bust was
executed.

He was, according to the American custom, deposited in a mahogany
coffin, with his name and age engraved on a silver-plate, put on the
coffin. His corpse was dressed in a shirt, a muslin gown tied at neck
and wrists with black ribbon, stockings, drawers; and a cap was put
under his head as a pillow. (He never slept in a night-cap.) Before the
coffin was placed on the carriage, I went to see him; and having a rose
in my bosom, I took it out, and placed on his breast. Death had not
disfigured him. Though very thin, his bones were not protuberant. He was
not wrinkled, and had lost very little hair.

His voice was very strong even to his last moments. He often exclaimed,
oh, lord help me! An exclamation the involuntary effect of pain. He
groaned deeply, and when a question was put to him, calling him by his
name, he opened his eyes, as if waking from a dream. He never answered
the question, but asked one himself; as, what is it o'clock, &c.

On the ninth of June my son and I, and a few of Thomas Paine's friends,
set off with the corpse to New Rochelle, a place 22 miles from New York.
It was my intention to have him buried in the Orchard of his own farm;
but the farmer who lived there at that time said, that Thomas Paine,
walking with him one day, said, pointing to another part of the land, he
was desirous of being buried there. "Then," said I, "that shall be
the place of his burial." And, my instructions were accordingly put in
execution. The head-stone was put up about a week afterwards with the
following inscription: "Thomas Paine, Author of "Common Sense," died
the eighth of June, 1809, aged 72 years." According to his will, a wall
twelve feet square was erected round his tomb. Four trees have been
planted outside the wall, two weeping willows and two cypresses. Many
persons have taken away pieces of the tombstone and of the trees, in
memory of the deceased; foreigners especially have been eager to obtain
these memorials, some of which have been sent to England.* They have
been put in frames and preserved. Verses in honor of Paine have been
written on the head stone. The grave is situated at the angle of the
farm, by the entrance to it.

This interment was a scene to affect and to wound any sensible heart.
Contemplating who it was, what man it was, that we were committing to an
obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help
feeling most acutely. Before the earth was thrown down upon the coffin,
I, placing myself at the east end of the grave, said to my son Benjamin,
"stand you there, at the other end, as a witness for grateful America."
Looking round me, and beholding the small group of spectators, I
exclaimed, as the earth was tumbled into the grave, "Oh! Mr. Paine! My
son stands here as testimony of the gratitude of America, and I, for
France!" This was the funeral ceremony of this great politician and
philosopher!**

     * The breaking of the original gravestone has been
     traditionally ascribed to pious hatred. A fragment of it,
     now in New York, is sometimes shown at celebrations of
     Paine's birthday as a witness of the ferocity vented on
     Paine's grave.    It is satisfactory to find another
     interpretation.

     ** Paine's friends, as we have said, were too poor to leave
     their work in the city, which had refused Paine a grave. The
     Rev. Robert Bolton, in his History of Westchester County,
     introduces Cheetham's slanders of Paine with the words: "as
     his own biographer remarks." His own! But even Cheetham
     does not lie enough for Bolton, who says: "His [Paine's]
     body was brought up from New York in a hearse used for
     carrying the dead, to Potter's Field; a white man drove the
     vehicle, accompanied by a negro to dig the grave." The whole
     Judas legend is in that allusion to Potter's Field.    Such
     is history, where Paine is concerned!

The eighty-eight acres of the north part were sold at 25 dollars an
acre. The half of the south (the share of Thomas de Bonneville) has been
sold for the total sum of 1425 dollars. The other part of the south,
which was left to Benjamin de Bonneville, has just (1819) been sold in
lots, reserving the spot in which Thomas Paine was buried, being a piece
of land 45 feet square.

_Thomas Paine's posthumous works_. He left the manuscript of his answer
to Bishop Watson; the Third Part of his Age of Reason; several pieces
on Religious subjects, prose and verse. The great part of his posthumous
political works will be found in the Appendix. Some correspondences
cannot be, as yet, published.*

In _Mechanics_ he has left two models of wheels for carriages, and of
a machine to plane boards. Of the two models of bridges, left at the
Philadelphia Museum, only one has been preserved, and that in great
disorder, one side being taken entirely off. But, I must say here, that
it was then out of the hands of Mr. Peale.'

Though it is difficult, at present, to make some people believe that,
instead of being looked on as a deist and a drunkard, Paine ought to be
viewed as a philosopher and a truly benevolent man, future generations
will make amends for the errors of their forefathers, by regarding
him as a most worthy man, and by estimating his talents and character
according to their real worth.

Thomas Paine was about five feet nine inches high, English measure, and
about five feet six French measure. His bust was well proportioned;
and his face oblong. Reflexion was the great expression of his face;
in which was always seen the calm proceeding from a conscience void of
reproach. His eye, which was black, was lively and piercing, and told
us that he saw into the very heart of hearts [of any one who wished to
deceive him].***

     * All except the first two MSS., of which fragments exist,
     and some poems, were no doubt consumed at St. Louis, as
     stated in the Introduction to this work.

     ** I have vainly searched in Philadelphia for some relic of
     Paine's bridges.

     *** Bracketed words marked out. In this paragraph and some
     that follow the hand of Nicolas Bonneville is, I think,
     discernible.

A most benignant smile expressed what he felt upon receiving an
affectionate salutation, or praise delicately conveyed. His leg and
foot were elegant, and he stood and walked upright, without stiffness or
affectation. [He never wore a sword nor cane], but often walked with
his hat in one hand and with his other hand behind his back. His
countenance, when walking, was generally thoughtful. In receiving
salutations he bowed very gracefully, and, if from an acquaintance, he
did not begin with "how d' ye do?" but, with a "what news?" If they had
none, he gave them his. His beard, his lips, his head, the motion of his
eye-brow, all aided in developing his mind.

Was he where he got at the English or American newspapers, he hastened
to over-run them all, like those who read to make extracts for their
paper. His first glance was for the funds, which, in spite of
jobbing and the tricks of government, he always looked on as the
sure thermometer of public affairs. Parliamentary Debates, the Bills,
concealing a true or sham opposition of such or such orators, the secret
pay and violent theatrical declamation, or the revelations of public or
private meetings at the taverns; these interested him so much that he
longed for an ear and a heart to pour forth all his soul. When he
added that he knew the Republican or the hypocrite, he would affirm,
beforehand, that such or such a bill, such or such a measure, would
take place; and very seldom, in such a case, the cunning politic or the
clear-sighted observer was mistaken in his assertions; for they were not
for him mere conjectures. He spoke of a future event as of a thing past
and consummated. In a country where the slightest steps are expanded to
open day, where the feeblest connexions are known from their beginning,
and with all the views of ambition, of interest or rivalship, it is
almost impossible to escape the eye of such an observer as Thomas Paine,
whom no private interest could blind or bewitch, as was said by the
clear-sighted Michael Montaigne.

His writings are generally perspicuous and full of light, and often they
discover the sardonic and sharp smile of Voltaire. One may see that he
wishes to wound to the quick; and that he hugs himself in his success.
But Voltaire all at once overruns an immense space and resumes his
vehement and dramatic step: Paine stops you, and points to the place
where you ought to smile with him at the ingenious traits; a gift to
envy and stupidity.

Thomas Paine did not like to be questioned. He used to say, that he
thought nothing more impertinent, than to say to any body: "What do
you think of that?" On his arrival at New York, he went to see General
Gates. After the usual words of salutation, the General said: "I have
always had it in mind, if I ever saw you again, to ask you whether you
were married, as people have said." Paine not answering, the General
went on: "Tell me how it is." "I never," said Paine, "answer impertinent
questions."

Seemingly insensible and hard to himself, he was not so to the just
wailings of the unhappy. Without any vehement expression of his sorrow,
you might see him calling up all his powers, walking silently, thinking
of the best means of consoling the unfortunate applicant; and never did
they go from him without some rays of hope. And as his will was firm and
settled, his efforts were always successful. The man hardened in vice
and in courts [of law], yields more easily than one imagines to the
manly entreaties of a disinterested benefactor.

     * At this point are the words: "Barlow's letter [i. e. to
     Cheetham] we agreed to suppress."

Thomas Paine loved his friends with sincere and tender affection.
His simplicity of heart and that happy kind of openness, or rather,
carelessness, which charms our hearts in reading the fables of the good
Lafontaine, made him extremely amiable. If little children were near him
he patted them, searched his pockets for the store of cakes, biscuits,
sugarplums, pieces of sugar, of which he used to take possession as of
a treasure belonging to them, and the distribution of which belonged to
him.* His conversation was unaffectedly simple and frank; his language
natural; always abounding in curious anecdotes. He justly and fully
seized the characters of all those of whom he related any singular
traits. For his conversation was satyrick, instructive, full of
witticisms. If he related an anecdote a second time, it was always in
the same words and the same tone, like a comic actor who knows the place
where he is to be applauded. He neither cut the tale short nor told it
too circumstantially. It was real conversation, enlivened by digressions
well brought in. The vivacity of his mind, and the numerous scenes
of which he had been a spectator, or in which he had been an actor,
rendered his narrations the more animated, his conversation more
endearing. His memory was admirable. Politics were his favorite subject
He never spoke on religious subjects, unless pressed to it, and never
disputed about such matters. He could not speak French: he could
understand it tolerably well when spoken to him, and he understood it
when on paper perfectly well. He never went to the theatre: never spoke
on dramatic subjects. He rather delighted in ridiculing poetry. He did
not like it: he said it was not a serious thing, but a sport of the
mind, which often had not common sense. His common reading was the
affairs of the day; not a single newspaper escaped him; not a political
discussion: he knew how to strike while the iron was hot; and, as he
was always on the watch, he was always ready to write. Hence all his
pamphlets have been popular and powerful. He wrote with composure and
steadiness, as if under the guidance of a tutelary genius. If, for an
instant, he stopped, it was always in the attitude of a man who
listens. The Saint Jerome of Raphael would give a perfect idea of his
contemplative recollection, to listen to the voice from on high which
makes itself heard in the heart.

[It will be proper, I believe, to say here, that shortly after the Death
of Thomas Paine a book appeared, under the Title of: The Life of Thomas
Paine, by Cheethatn. In this libel my character was calumniated. I cited
the Author before the Criminal Court of New York, He was tried and in
spite of all his manuvres, he was found guilty.--M. B. de Bonneville.]

This last paragraph, in brackets, is in the writing of Madame
Bonneville.

I am indebted to Mr. Robert Waters, of Jersey City, a biographer
of Cobbett, for the suggestion, made through a friend, and so amply
justified, that information concerning Paine might be derived from the
Cobbett papers.




APPENDIX B. THE HALL MANUSCRIPTS

In 1785, John Hall, an able mechanician and admirable man, emigrated
from Leicester, England, to Philadelphia, He carried letters to Paine,
who found him a man after his own heart I am indebted to his relatives,
Dr. Dutton Steele of Philadelphia and the Misses Steele, for Hall's
journals, which extend over many years. It will be seen that the papers
are of historical importance apart from their records concerning Paine.
Hall's entries of his daily intercourse with Paine, which he never
dreamed would see the light, represent a portraiture such as has rarely
been secured of any character in history. The extent already reached by
this work compels me to omit much that would impress the reader with the
excellent work of John Hall himself, who largely advanced ironwork in
New Jersey, and whose grave at Flemmington, surrounded by those of the
relatives that followed him, and near the library and workshop he left,
merits a noble monument.

     * Letter.    Philadelphia, August 30, 1785.

"I went a day or two past with the Captain and his lady to see the
exhibition of patriotic paintings. Paine the author of Common Sense is
amongst them. He went from England (had been usher to a school) on board
the same vessel that our Captain [Coltman] went in last time; their
acquaintance then commenced and has continued ever since. He resides
now in Bordentown in the Jerseys, and it is probable that I may see him
before it be long as when he comes to town the Captain says he is
sure to call on him. It is supposed the various States have made his
circumstances easy--General Washington, said if they did not provide for
him he would himself. I think his services were as useful as the sword."

Journal, 1785.

Nov. 16th. Received a Letter from Mr. Pain by his Boy, informing us
of his coming this day. Between 3 and 4 Mr. Pain, Col. Kerbright
[Kirkbride], and another gentleman came to our door in a waggon.

17th. At dinner Mr. Pain told us a tale of the Indians, he being at a
meeting of them with others to settle some affairs in 1776. The Doctor
visited Mr. Pain.

19th. Performed a trifling operation for Mr. Pain.

22d. A remark of Mr. Pain's--not to give a deciding opinion between
two persons you are in friendship with, lest you lose one by it; whilst
doing that between two persons, your supposed enemies, may make one your
friend.

24th. This evening pulled Mr. Pain's Boy a tooth out.

Dec, 12. With much pain drawd the Board in at Hanna's chamber window to
work Mr. Pain's bridge on. I pinned 6 more arches together which makes
the whole 9. I sweat at it; Mr. Pain gives me some wine and water as I
was very dry. Past 9 o'clock Dr. Hutchinson called in on Mr. Paine.

[The December journal is mainly occupied with mention of Paine's
visitors Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, Dr. Rush, Tench Francis, Robert
Morris, Rittenhouse, Redman. A rubber of whist in which Paine won is
mentioned.]

Sunday Jan. 1st 1786. Mr. Paine went to dine with Dr. Franklin today;
staid till after tea in the evening. They tried the burning of our
candles by blowing a gentle current through them. It greatly improved
the light. The draught of air is prevented by passing through a cold
tube of tallow. The tin of the new lamp by internal reflections is
heated and causes a constant current This is the Doctor's conjecture.
[Concerning Paine's candle see i., p. 214.]

Feb. 25th. Mr. Paine not returned. We sent to all the places we could
suppose him to be at and no tidings of him. We became very unhappy
fearing his political enemies should have shown him foul play. Went to
bed at 10 o.c, and about 2 o.c. a knocking at the door proves Mr. Paine.

March 10th. Before 7 o'c a brother saint-maker came with a model of
machine to drive boats against stream.* He had communicated his scheme
to H. who had made alterations and a company had taken it and refused
saint-maker partnership. He would fain have given it to Mr. Paine or me,
but I a stranger refused and Mr. Paine had enough hobbys of his own. Mr.
Paine pointed out a mode to simplify his apparatus greatly. He gave him
5s. to send him one of his maps.

     * Hall calls inventions "saints." This saint-maker is John
     Fitch, the "H." being Henry of Lancaster. This entry is of
     much interest. (See ii.  p. 281.)   The first steamer seems
     to have gone begging!

April 15th. Mr. Paine asked me to go and see Indian Chiefs of Sennaka
Nation, I gladly assented. They have an interpreter. Mr. Paine wished
to see him and made himself known to him by past remembrance as Common
Sense, and was introduced into the room, addressed them as "brothers"
and shook hands cordially Mr. Paine treated them with 2s. bowl of punch.

Bordentown Letter, May 28. Colonel Kirkbride is the gentleman in whose
family I am. My patron [Paine] is likewise a boarder and makes his home
here I am diligently employed in Saint making, now in Iron that I had
before finished in wood, with some improvements, but you may come and
see what it is.

Letter, June 4. Skepticism and Credulity are as general here as
elsewhere, for what I see. In this town is a Quaker meeting and one of
another class--I suppose of the Baptist cast--And a person in town a
Tailor by trade that goes about a-soulmending on Sundays to various
places, as most necessary, or I suppose advantageous, to himself; for by
one trade or the other he has built himself a very elegant frame house
in this town. This man's way to Heaven is somewhat different to the
other. I am informed he makes publick dippings &c. 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. The
Colonel [Kirkbride] is as Free as John Coltman.

[Under date of New York, July 31st, Hall writes an account of a journey
with Paine to Morrisania, to visit Gen. Morris, and afterwards to the
farm at New Rochelle, of which he gives particulars already known to my
reader.]

Letter of Paine to John Hall, at Capt. Coltman's, in Letitia Court,
Market St, between Front and Second St. Philadelphia:

"Bordentown, Sep. 22, 1786.--Old Friend: In the first place I have
settled with Mr. Gordon for the time he has been in the house--in the
second I have put Mrs. Read who, you know has part of our house Col.
Kirkbride's but is at this time at Lancaster, in possession by putting
part of her goods into it.* By this means we shall have room at our
house (Col. Kirkbride) for carrying on our operations. As Philadelphia
is so injurious to your health and as apartments at Wm. Foulke's would
not be convenient to you, we can now conveniently make room for you
here. Mrs. Kirkbride mentioned this to me herself and it is by the
choice of both her and Col. K. that I write it to you. I wish you could
come up to-morrow (Sunday) and bring the iron with you. I shall be
backward and forward between here and Philadelphia pretty often until
the elections are over, but we can make a beginning here and what more
iron we may want we can get at the Delaware Works, and if you should
want to go to Mount hope you can more conveniently go from here than
from Philadelphia--thus you see I have done your business since I
have been up. The enclosed letter is for Mr. Henry who is member for
Lancaster County. I do not know where he lodges, but if William will
be so good as to give it to the door keeper or Clerk of the Assembly it
will be safe. Bring up the walnut strips with you.

     * Mrs. Read was thus transferred to Paine's own house. Her
     husband died next year and Paine declined to receive any
     rent.

Your coming here will give an opportunity to Joseph to get acquainted
with Col. K. who will very freely give any information in his power.
Compts. in the family. Your friend and Hbl. servt"

Undated letter of Paine to John Hall, in Philadelphia:

"Fryday Noon.--Old Friend: Inclosed (as the man said by the horse) I
send you the battau, as I wish to present it as neat and clean as can be
done; I commit it to your care. The sooner it is got on Board the vessel
the better. I shall set off from here on Monday and expect to be in New
York on Tuesday. I shall take all the tools that are here with me and
wish you would take some with you, that if we should get on a working
fit we may have some to work with. Let me hear from you by the Sunday's
boat and send me the name of the vessel and Captain you go with and what
owners they belong to at New York, or what merchants they go to. I wrote
to you by the last boat, and Peter tells me he gave the letter to Capt.
Haines, but Joe says that he enquired for letters and was told there was
none--wishing you an agreeable voyage and meeting at New York, I am your
friend, and humble servant. Present my compliments to Capt. and Mrs.
Coltman and William. Col. and Mrs. Kirkbride's and Polly's compt."

Note of Hall, dated Oct. 3 (1786) "Dashwood Park, of Captain Roberts: On
Thursday morning early Sept. 28th I took the stage wagon for Trenton. Jo
had gone up by water the day before to a sale of land and a very capital
iron works and nailing with a large corn mill. It was a fair sale there
was a forge and rolling and slitting mill upon an extensive scale the
man has failed--The works with about 60 or 70 acres of land were sold
for £9000 currency. Then was put up about 400 acres of land and sold for
£2700 currency and I believe a good bargain; and bought by a friend of
mine called Common Sense--Who I believe had no idea of purchasing it
when he came there. He took Jo to Bordentown with him that night and
they came to look at it the next day; then Jo went into the Jerseys
to find a countryman named Burges but was disappointed Came back to
Bordentown and on Saturday looked all over Mr. Paine's purchase along
with him and believes it bought well worth money.

Nov. 21st Mr. Paine told us an anecdote of a French noble's applying to
Dr. Franklin, as the Americans had put away their King, and that nation
having formerly chosen a King from Normandy, he offered his service and
wished him to lay his letter before Congress. Mr. Paine observed that
Britain is the most expensive government in the world. She gives a King
a million a year and falls down and worships him. I put on Mr. Paine's
hose yesterday. Last night he brought me in my room a pair of warm cloth
overshoes as feel very comfortable this morning Had a wooden pot stove
stand betwixt my feet by Mr. Paine's desire and found it kept my feet
warm.

November 24. As soon as breakfast was over mounted Button [Paine's
horse] and set off for Philadelphia. I brought Mr. Paine $120 in gold
and silver.

Bordentown 27 th, Monday. Day was devoted to rivetting the bars, and
punching the upper bar for the bannisters [of the bridge]. Mr. Kirkbride
and Polly went to hear a David Jones preach a rhodomontade sermon about
the Devil, Mary Magdalen, and against deists, etc.

December 14. This day employed in raising and putting on the abutments
again and fitting them. The smith made the nuts of screws to go easier.
Then set the ribs at proper distance, and after dinner I and Jackaway [?
] put on some temporary pieces on the frame of wood to hold it straight,
and when Mr. Pain came they then tied it on its wooden frame with strong
cords. I then saw that it had bulged full on one side and hollow on the
other. I told him of it, and he said it was done by me--I denied that
and words rose high. I at length swore by God that it was straight when
I left it, he replied as positively the contrary, and I think myself ill
used in this affair.

Philadelphia. Dec. 22nd. Bridge packed and tied on the sled. We arrived
in town about 5 o.clock took our bags to Capt Coltmans, and then went
down to Dr. Franklin's, and helped unload the bridge. Mr. Paine called
on me; gave us an anecdote of Dr. Franklin. On Mr. Paine asking him of
the value of any new European publication; he had not been informed of
any of importance. There were some religious posthumous anecdotes of
Doctor Johnson, of resolves he had made and broken though he had prayed
for power and strength to keep them; which showed the Doctor said that
he had not much interest there. And such things had better be suppressed
as nobody had anything to do betwixt God and man.

December 26. Went with Glentworth to see the Bridge at Dr. Franklin's.
Coming from thence met Mr. Pain and Mr. Rittenhouse; returned with them
and helped move it for all three to stand upon, and then turned it to
examine. Mr. Rittenhouse has no doubt of its strength and sufficiency
for the Schuylkill, but wished to know what quantity of iron [it would
require,] as he seemed to think it too expensive.

December 27. Walk to the State House. The Bank bill called but postponed
until tomorrow. Mr. Pain's letter read, and leave given to exhibit the
Bridge at the State House to be viewed by the members. Left the House
and met Mr. Pain, who told me Donnalson had been to see and [stand]
upon his Bridge, and admitted its strength and powers. Then took a walk
beyond Vine street, and passed by the shop where the steamboat apparatus
is. Mr. Pain at our house, and talking on the Bank affair brought on a
dispute between Mr. Pain and the Captain [Coltman] in which words were
very high. A reflection from Captain C. on publications in favour of the
Bank having lost them considerable, he [Paine] instantly took that as a
reflection on himself, and swore by G--d, let who would, it was a lie.
I then left the room and went up stairs. They quarrelled a considerable
time, but at length parted tolerably coolly. Dinner being ready I went
down; but the Captain continued talking about politics and the Bank, and
what he thought the misconduct of Mr. Pain in his being out and in with
the several parties. I endeavoured to excuse Mr. Pain in some things
relating thereto, by saying it was good sense in changing his ground
when any party was going wrong,--and that he seemed to delight in
difficulties, in Mechanics particularly, and was pleased in them. The
Captain grew warm, and said he knew now he could not eat his dinner.
[Here followed a sharp personal quarrel between Hall and Coltman.] In
the evening Mr. Paine came in and wished me to be assisting in carrying
the model to the State House. We went to Dr. Franklin's and fetched the
Bridge to the Committee Room.

1787. Jan. 1. Our Saint I have assisted in moving to the State House and
there placed in their Committee room, as by a letter addressed to this
Speaker they admitted. And by the desire of my patron (who is not an
early riser) I attended to give any information to inquiries until
he came. And then I was present when the Assembly with their Speaker
inspected it and many other persons as philosophers, Mechanics Statesmen
and even Tailors. I observed their sentiments and opinions of it were as
different as their features. The philosopher said it would add new
light to the great utility. And the tailor (for it is an absolute truth)
remarked it cut a pretty figure. It is yet to be laid (or by the by
stand) before the Council of State. Then the Philosophical Society and
all the other Learned Bodies in this city. And then to be canonised by
an Act of State which is solicited to incorporate a body of men to adopt
and realise or Brobdinag this our Lilliputian handywork, that is now 13
feet long on a Scale of one to 24. And then will be added another to the
world's present Wonders.

January 4. Mr. Pain called in and left me the intended Act of Assembly
for a Bridge Company, who are to subscribe $33,330 50/99 then are to
be put in possession of the present Bridge and premises to answer the
interest of their money until they erect a new one; and after they have
erected a new one, and the money arising from it amounts to more
than pays interest, it is to become a fund to pay off the principal
stockholders, and then the Bridge to become free. Mr. Pain called in;
I gave him my Bill--told him I had charged one day's work and a pair of
gloves.

March 15th Mr. Paine's boy called on time to [inquire] of the money
spent. Mr. Paine called this evening; told me of his being with Dr.
Franklin and about the chess player, or Automaton, and that the Dr.
had no idea of the mode of communication. Mr. Paine has had several
visitors, as Mr. Jowel, Rev. Dr. Logan, &c.

Sunday April 16th Prepared to attend Mr. Paine up to Bordentown. Mr.
Paine's horse and chair came, mounted and drove through a barren sandy
country arrived at Bordentown at half past one-o'clock for dinner. This
is the pleasantest situation I have seen in this country.

Trenton, April 20. Sitting in the house saw a chair pass down the street
with a red coat on, and going out after it believed it to be Mr. Paine,
so followed him up to Collins's, where he was enquiring where I boarded.
I just then called to him, and went with him to Whight's Tavern, and
there he paid me the money I had laid down for him. He is now going
for England by way of France in the French packet which sails the 25th
instant. He asked me to take a ride, and as the stage was not come in
and he going the road I gladly took the opportunity, as I could return
on meeting the stage. On the journey he told me of the Committee's
proceedings on Bridges and Sewers; anecdotes of Dr. Franklin, who had
sent a letter by him to the president, or some person, to communicate to
the Society of Civil Architects, who superintend solely over bridges in
France. The model is packed up to go with him. The Doctor, though full
of employ from the Vice President being ill, and the numerous visitors
on State business, and others that his fame justly procures him,
could hardly be supposed to pay great attention to trifles; but as he
considers Mr. Paine his adopted political Son he would endeavor to
write by him to his friends, though Mr. Paine did not press, for reasons
above. In 2 or 3 days he sent him up to Bordentown no less than a dozen
letters to his acquaintance in France.--He told me many anecdotes of the
Doctor, relating to national and political concerns, and observations of
many aged and sensible men of his acquaintance in that country. And the
treaty that he the Doctor made with the late King of Prussia by adding
an article that, should war ever break out, (though never a probability
of it) Commerce should be left free. The Doctor said he showed it to the
French minister, Vergennes, who said it met his idea, and was such as he
would make even with England, though he knew they would not,--they were
so fond of robbing and plundering. And the Doctor had gathered a hint
from a Du Quesney that no nation could properly expect to gain by
endeavoring to suppress his neighbor, for riches were to be gained from
amongst the rich and not from poor neighbors; and a National reciprocity
was as much necessary as a domestic one, or [inter] national trade as
necessary to be free as amongst the people of a country. Such and many
more hints passed in riding 2 or 3 miles, until we met the stage. I then
shook hands and wished him a good voyage and parted.

Letter from Flemmington, N. J., May 16, 1788, to John Coltman,
Leicester, England:

"Friend John: Tell that disbelieving sceptical Infidel thy Father that
he has wounded my honor, What! Bought the Coat at a rag shop--does he
think I would palm such a falsity both upon Gray and Green heads! did
not I send you word it was General Washington's. And does he think I
shall slanderously brook such a slanderous indignity--No! I tell him
the first Ink that meanders from my pen, which shall be instantly on my
setting foot on Brittains Isle, shall be to call him to account. I 'll
haul out his Callous Leaden soul with its brother!

"In the late revolution the provincial army lying near Princeton New
Jersey one Sunday General Washington and Common Sense each in their
chairs rode down there to Meeting Common Sense put up his at a friend's
one Mrs. Morgan's and pulling off his great coat put it in the care of
a servant man, and as I remember he was of the pure Irish Extraction;
he walked then to meeting and then slipped off with said great coat and
some plate of Mr. Morgan. On their return they found what had been done
in their absence and relating it to the General his answer was it was
necessary to watch as well as pray--but told him he had two and would
lend or give him one--and that is the Coat I sent and the fact as
related to me and others in public by said [Common Sense.] Nor do I
believe that Rome or the whole Romish Church has a better attested
miracle in her whole Catalogue than the above--though I dont wish to
deem it a miracle, nor do I believe there is any miracle upon record for
these 18 hundred years so true as that being General Washington's great
coat.--I, labouring hard for said Common Sense at Bordentown, the said
coat was hung up to keep snow out of the room. I often told him I should
expect that for my pains, but he never would say I should; but having
a chest there I took care and locked it up when I had finished my work,
and sent it to you. So far are these historical facts--Maybe sometime
hence I may collect dates and periods to them--But why should they be
disputed? has not the world adopted as true a-many affairs without date
and of less moment than this, and even pay what is called a holy regard
to them?

"If you communicate this to your Father and he feels a compunction for
the above crime and will signify the same by letter, he will find I
strictly adhere to the precepts of Christianity and shall forgive.--If
not------

"My best wishes to you all,

"John Hall."

Letter of Paine, London, Nov. 25, 1791, to "Mr. John Hall, at Mr. John
Coltman's, Shambles Lane, Leicester, England."

"My old Friend: I am very happy to see a letter from you, and to hear
that our Friends on the other side the water are well. The Bridge has
been put up, but being on wood butments they yielded, and it is now
taken down. The first rib as an experiment was erected between two steel
furnaces which supported it firmly; it contained not quite three tons of
iron, was ninety feet span, height of the arch five feet; it was loaded
with six tons of iron, which remained upon it a twelve month. At present
I am engaged on my political Bridge. I shall bring out a new work
(Second part of the Rights of Man) soon after New Year. It will produce
something one way or other. I see the tide is yet the wrong way, but
there is a change of sentiment beginning. I have so far got the ear of
John Bull that he will read what I write--which is more than ever was
done before to the same extent. Rights of Man has had the greatest
run of anything ever published in this country, at least of late
years--almost sixteen thousand has gone off--and in Ireland above forty
thousand--besides the above numbers one thousand printed cheap are now
gone to Scotland by desire from some of the [friends] there. I have been
applied to from Birmingham for leave to print ten thousand copies, but
I intend, after the next work has had its run among those who will have
handsome printed books and fine paper, to print an hundred thousand
copies of each work and distribute them at sixpence a-piece; but this I
do not at present talk of, because it will alarm the wise mad folks at
St. James's. I have received a letter from Mr. Jefferson who mentioned
the great run it has had there. It has been attacked by John Adams, who
has brought an host about his ears from all parts of the Continent. Mr.
Jefferson has sent me twenty five different answers to Adams who wrote
under the signature of Publicola. A letter is somewhere in the city for
me from Mr. Laurens of S. Carolina. I hope to receive it in a few days.
I shall be glad at all times to see, or hear from you. Write to me
(under cover) to Gordon, Booksellers N: 166 Fleet Street, before
you leave Leicester. How far is it from thence to Rotherham? Yours
sincerely.

"P. S. I have done you the compliment of answering your favor the inst.
I rec'd. it which is more than I have done by any other--were I to ans.
all the letters I receive--I should require half a dozen clerks."

Extracts from John Hall's letters from London, England: London, January
1792 Burke's publication has produced one way or other near 50 different
answers and publications. Nothing of late ever has been so read as
Paine's answer. Sometime shortly he will publish a second part of the
Rights of Man. His first part was scrutinized by the Privy Council
held on purpose and through fear of making him more popular deemed too
contemptible for Government notice. The sale of it for a day or two was
rather retarded or not publickly disposed of until it was known by the
printers that it would not be noticed by Government.

John Hall to a friend in England:

"London, Nov. 6, 1792. I dined yesterday with the Revolution Society at
the London Tavern. A very large company assembled and after dinner
many truly noble and patriotic toasts were drank. The most prominent
were--The Rights of Man--with 3 times &c.--The Revolution of France--The
Revolution of the World--May all the armies of tyrants learn the
Brunswick March--May the tree of Liberty be planted in every tyrant
city, and may it be an evergreen. The utmost unanimity prevailed through
the company, and several very excellent songs in favor of Liberty
were sung. Every bosom felt the divine glow of patriotism and love
of universal freedom. I wish you had been there. For my part I was
transported at the scene. It happened that a company of Aristocratic
french and Spanish merchants were met in the very room under, and
Horne Tooke got up and sarcastically requested the company not to wound
the tender feelings of the gentlemen by too much festivity. This sarcasm
was followed by such a burst of applause as I never before heard."

From J. Redman, London, Tuesday Dec. 18, 5 p. m. to John Hall,
Leicester, England: "Mr. Paine's trial is this instant over. Erskine
shone like the morning-Star. Johnson was there. The instant Erskine
closed his speech the venal jury interrupted the Attorney General, who
was about to make a reply, and without waiting for any answer, or any
summing up by the Judge, pronounced him guilty. Such an instance of
infernal corruption is scarcely upon record. I have not time to express
my indignant feelings on this occasion. At this moment, while I write,
the mob is drawing Erskine's carriage home, he riding in triumph--his
horses led by another party. Riots at Cambridge, Manchester, Bridport
Dorset &c. &c. O England, how art thou fallen! I am just now told that
press warrants are issued today. February, make haste. Mrs R's respects
and mine. Yours truly."

[John Hall's London Journal (1792) records frequent meetings there with
Paine. "March 5. Met Mr. Paine going to dress on an invitation to dine
with the Athenians. He leaves town for a few days to see his aunt."
"April 20. Mr. Paine goes out of town tomorrow to compose what I call
Burke's Funeral Sermon." "Aug. 5. Mr. Paine looking well and in high
spirits." "Sept. 6. Mr. Paine called in a short time. Does not seem to
talk much, rather on a reserve, of the prospect of political affairs.
He had a letter from G. Washington and Jefferson by the ambassador
[Pinckney]." The majority of entries merely mention meeting Paine, whose
name, by the way, after the prosecution was instituted, Hall prudently
writes "P------n." He also tells the story of Burke's pension.]

"April 19, 1803. Had a ride to Bordentown to see Mr. Paine at Mr.
Kirkbride's. He was well and appeared jollyer than I had ever known him.
He is full of whims and schemes and mechanical inventions, and is to
build a place or shop to carry them into execution, and wants my help."




APPENDIX C. PORTRAITS OF PAINE

At the age of thirty Paine was somewhat stout, and very athletic; but
after his arrival in America (1774) he was rather slender. His height
was five feet, nine inches. He had a prominent nose, somewhat like that
of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It may have impressed Bonaparte, who insisted,
it is said, that a marshal must have a large nose. Paine's mouth was
delicate, his chin also; he wore no whiskers or beard until too feeble
with age to shave. His forehead was lofty and unfurrowed; his head
long, the occiput feeble. His complexion was ruddy,--thoroughly English.
Charles Lee, during the American revolution, described him as "the man
who has genius in his eyes;" Carlyle quotes from Foster an observation
on the brilliancy of Paine's eyes, as he sat in the French Convention.
His figure, as given in an early French portrait, is shapely; its
elegance was often remarked. A year or so after his return to America he
is shown in a contemporary picture as somewhat stout again, if one may
judge by the face. This was probably a result of insufficient exercise,
on which he much depended. He was an expert horseman, and, in health, an
unwearied walker. He loved music, and could join well in a chorus.

There are eleven original portraits of Thomas Paine, besides a
death-mask, a bust, and the profile copied in this work from a seal used
on the release at Lewes, elsewhere cited (i., p. 33). That gives some
idea of the head and face at the age of thirty-five. I have a picture
said to be that of Paine in his youth, but the dress is an anachronism.
The earliest portrait of Paine was painted by Charles Willson Peale, in
Philadelphia, probably in some early year of the American Revolution,
for Thomas Brand Hollis, of London,--the benefactor of Harvard
University, one of whose halls bears his name. The same artist painted
another portrait of Paine, now badly placed in Independence Hall. There
must have been an early engraving from one of Peale's pictures, for John
Hall writes October 31, 1786: "A print of Common Sense, if any of my
friends want one, may be had by sending to the printshops in London,
but they have put a wrong name to it, his being Thomas."* The Hollis
portrait was engraved in London, 1791, underlined "by Peel [sic] of
Philadelphia," and published, July 25th, by J. Ridgway, York Street, St.
James's Square. Paine holds an open book bearing the words, "Rights of
Man," where Peale probably had "Common Sense." On a table with inkstand
and pens rests Paine's right elbow, the hand supporting his chin. The
full face appears--young, handsome, gay; the wig is frizzed, a bit of
the queue visible. In all of the original portraits of Paine his dress
is neat and in accordance with fashion, but in this Hollis picture it
is rather fine: the loose sleeves are ornamentally corded, and large
wristbands of white lace fall on the cuffs.

     * This is puzzling. The only engraving I have found with
     "Toia" was published in London in 1800. Can there be a
     portrait lost under some other name?

While Paine and Jefferson were together in Paris (1787) Paine wrote him
a note, August 18th, in which he says: "The second part of your letter,
concerning taking my picture, I must feel as an honor done to me, not
as a favor asked of me--but in this, as in other matters, I am at the
disposal of your friendship." As Jefferson does not appear to have
possessed such a portrait, the request was probably made through him. I
incline to identify this portrait with an extremely interesting one, now
in this country, by an unknown artist. It is one of twelve symmetrical
portraits of revolutionary leaders,--the others being Marat,
Robespierre, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Danton, Brissot, Pétion, Camille
Desmoulins, Billaud de Varennes, Gensonné, Clermont Tonnère. These
pictures were reproduced in cheap woodcuts and distributed about France
during the Revolution. The originals were secured by Col. Lowry, of
South Carolina, and brought to Charleston during the Revolution. At
the beginning of the civil war they were buried in leaden cases at
Williamstown, South Carolina. At the end of the war they were conveyed
to Charleston, where they remained, in the possession of a Mrs. Cole,
until purchased by their present owner, Mr. Alfred Ames Howlett, of
Syracuse, New York. As Mirabeau is included, the series must have been
begun at an early phase of the revolutionary agitation. The face of
Paine here strongly resembles that in Independence Hall. The picture
is about two feet high; the whole figure is given, and is dressed in an
elegant statesmanlike fashion, with fine cravat and silk stockings from
the knee. The table and room indicate official position, but it is the
same room as in nine of the other portraits. It is to be hoped that
further light may be obtained concerning these portraits.

Well-dressed also, but notably unlike the preceding, is the "Bonneville
Paine," one of a celebrated series of two hundred engraved portraits,
the publication of which in quarto volumes was begun in Paris in
1796. "F. Bonneville del. et sculpsit" is its whole history. Paine is
described in it as "Ex Député à la Convention Nationale," which would
mean strictly some time between his expulsion from that assembly
in December, 1793, and his recall to it a year later. It could not,
however, have been then taken, on account of Paine's imprisonment and
illness. It was probably made by F. Bonneville when Paine had gone to
reside with Nicolas Bonneville in the spring of 1797. It is an admirable
picture in every way, but especially in bringing out the large and
expressive eyes. The hair is here free and flowing; the dress identical
with that of the portrait by Jarvis in this work.

The best-known picture of Paine is that painted by his friend George
Romney, in 1792. I have inquired through London _Notes and Queries_
after the original, which long ago disappeared, and a claimant turned up
in Birmingham, England; but in this the hand holds a book, and Sharp's
engraving shows no hand. The face was probably copied from the Romney.
The large engraving by W. Sharp was published April 20, 1793, and the
smaller in 1794. A reproduction by Illman were a fit frontispiece for
Cheetham (what satirical things names are sometimes), but ought not
to have got into Gilbert Vale's popular biography of Paine. That and
a reproduction by Wright in the Mendum edition of Paine's works, have
spread through this country something little better than a caricature;
and one Sweden has subjected Truelove's edition, in England, to a
like misfortune. Paine's friends, Rickman, Constable, and others, were
satisfied by the Romney picture, and I have seen in G. J. Holyoake's
library a proof of the large engraving, with an inscription on the back
by Paine, who presented it to Rickman. It is the English Paine, in all
his vigor, and in the thick of his conflict with Burke, but, noble as
it is, has not the gentler and more poetic expression which Bonneville
found in the liberated prisoner surrounded by affectionate friends.
Romney and Sharp were both well acquainted with Paine.

A picturesque Paine is one engraved for Baxter's "History of England,"
and published by Symonds, July 2, 1796. Dressed with great elegance,
Paine stands pointing to a scroll in his left hand, inscribed "Rights
of Man." Above his head, on a frame design, a pen lies on a roll marked
"Equality." The face is handsome and the likeness good

A miniature by H. Richards is known to me only as engraved by K.
Mackenzie, and published March 31, 1800, by G. Gawthorne, British
Library, Strand, London. It is the only portrait that has beneath it
"Tom Paine." It represents Paine as rather stout, and the face broad.
It is powerful, but the least pleasing of the portraits. The picture in
Vale resembles this more than the Romney it professes to copy.

I have in my possession a wood engraving of Paine, which gives no trace
of its source or period. It is a vigorous profile, which might have
been made in London during the excitement over the "Rights of Man," for
popular distribution. It has no wig, and shows the head extraordinarily
long, and without much occiput It is pre-eminently the English radical
leader.

Before speaking of Jarvis' great portrait of Paine, I mention a later
one by him which Mr. William Erving, of New York, has added to my
collection. It would appear to have been circulated at the time of his
death. The lettering beneath, following a facsimile autograph, is: "J.
W. Jarvis, pinx. 1805. J- R. Ames, del.--L'Homme des Deux Mondes. Born
at Thetford, England, Jan. 29, (O. S.) 1737. Died at Greenwich, New
York, June 8, 1809." Above the cheap wood-cut is: "A tribute to Paine."
On the right, at the top, is a globe, showing the outlines of the
Americas, France, England, and Africa. It is supported by the wing of a
dove with large olive-branch. On the left upper corner is an open book
inscribed: "Rights of Man. Common Sense. Crisis": supported by a scroll
with "Doing justice, loving mercy. Age of Reason." From this book rays
break out and illumine the globe opposite. A lower corner shows the
balances, and the liberty-cap on a pole, the left being occupied by the
United States flag and that of France. Beneath are the broken chain,
crown, sword, and other emblems of oppression. A frame rises showing a
plumb line, at the top of which the key of the Bastille is crossed by
a pen, on Paine's breast. The portrait is surrounded by a "Freedom's
Wreath" in which are traceable the floral emblems of all nations. The
wreath is bound with a fascia, on which appear, by twos, the following
names: "Washington, Monroe; Jefferson, Franklin; J. Stewart, E. Palmer;
Barlow, Rush; M. Wollstone-craft, M. B. Bonneville; Clio Rickman, J.
Home Tooke; Lafayette, Brissot."

The portrait of Paine represents him with an unusually full face,
as compared with earlier pictures, and a most noble and benevolent
expression. The white cravat and dress are elegant. What has become of
the original of this second picture by the elder Jarvis? It might easily
have fallen to some person who might not recognize it as meant for
Paine, though to one who has studied his countenance it conveys the
impression of what he probably would have been at sixty-eight. About two
years later a drawing was made of Paine by William Constable, which I
saw at the house of his nephew, Dr. Clair J. Grèce, Redhill, England. It
reveals the ravages of age, but conveys a vivid impression of the man's
power.

After Paine's death Jarvis took a cast of his face. Mr. Laurence
Hutton has had for many years this death-mask which was formerly in the
establishment of Fowler and Wells, the phrenologists, and probably used
by George Combe in his lectures. This mask has not the large nose of the
bust; but that is known to have been added afterwards. The bust is in
the New York Historical Society's rooms. In an article on Paine in the
_Atlantic Monthly_ (1856) it was stated that this bust had to be hidden
by the Historical Society to prevent its injury by haters of Paine. This
has been quoted by Mr. Robertson, of London, in his "Thomas Paine, an
Investigation." I am assured by Mr. Kelby, of that Society, that the
statement is unfounded. The Society has not room to exhibit its entire
collection, and the bust of Paine was for some time out of sight, but
from no such reason as that stated, still less from any prejudice. The
face is that of Paine in extreme dilapidation, and would be a dismal
misrepresentation if shown in a public place.

Before me are examples of all the portraits I have mentioned (except
that in Birmingham), and I have observed contemporary representations of
Paine in caricatures or in apotheosis of fly-leaves. Comparative studies
convince me that the truest portrait of Paine is that painted by John
Wesley Jarvis in 1803, and now in possession of Mr. J. H. Johnston, of
New York. The picture from which our frontispiece is taken appeared to
be a replica, of somewhat later date, the colors being fresher, but an
inscription on the back says "Charles W. Jarvis, pinxit, July, 1857."
From this perfect duplicate Clark Mills made his portrait-bust of Paine
now in the National Museum at Washington, but it has not hitherto been
engraved. Alas, that no art can send out to the world what colors only
can convey,--the sensibility, the candor, the spirituality, transfusing
the strong features of Thomas Paine. As I have sat at my long task, now
drawn to a close, the face there on the wall has seemed to be alive, now
flushed with hope, now shadowed with care, the eyes greeting me daily,
the firm mouth assigning some password--Truth, Justice.