The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1880-02-11
TEoMAssph1NE.

years since Thomas Paine was born
and seventy since he died, and the
world has not yet learned to estimate
him fairly. To half Of it he is some
thing more than man and to the other
half something Scarcely less than devil.
He is the nero of the radicals and the
rawhead and bloody bones Of the big
ots. His real character is as much
distorted by the praise Of his friends as
by the abuse Of his foes. The world
has not yet passed far enough from
him to take a fair, historical view OF
his motives and deeds. This is high
evidence Of the vigor Of his personality
and Of tho pcrmaneDce of the profound
impression he made upon his age and
his contemporaries. 1t is true ofevery
maj Of striking Individuality that the
estimate of his character by his con-
temporaries is biased by his personal
influence: that he gets in his lifetime
about as much unmerited blame as
measured praise. and has to wait a
generation for e%ven-handed Justice
from the verdict of history. Bit here
is a man of a personality so command
ing the enthusiastic loves and violent
hates that clustered about him in his
lifetime have not been shaken off in
fha tnp,u1tuons p,arch oc <,r ,oto
and crowded generations. 10 Robert
1ngerso'l he is as much a demigod as
he was to Thomas jefferson. TO the
ultra.conservatives in church and state
he is as horrible a specter in tn enine-
1eenth century as he vas in the eight
eenth. Paine's vigorous individuality
is not alone responsible for this curl
ious projection of the feelings and pref
udices of one century to the next.
The age in which he lived Was one to
make the sharpest definition of his
personality, to bring into the strongest
and most lasting light the contrasts
between his character and beliefs and
those of other men. The sentiment
of religious freedom grows more slow
ly than that Of political freedom.
The age that is willing to grant free
thought lags behind that which clam
ors for freedom of action. There we're
men among the American colonists
who precipitated the revolution so
broadly tolerant in matters of belief
as to startle the conservatives of to.
day; but they did not give color to
the age. Puritan rigor and asceticism
did that. The men who threw off
the shackles of a foreign state drew
tighter the bonds ola domestic church.
The men who denied the right of a
British king to tax the property and
control the actions Of American colo.
nists, claimed for an American church
the right to control their thoughts.
Indeed. the first effect of the growth
Of political liberty may easily have
been to retard the growth of religious
freedom. Men whose consciences
chafed at violence done to the divine
right ofa king salved them with fresh
devotion to the diviner prerogatives
Of the church. Perhaps it is even
true that Thomas Paine's signal ser.
y ces in the cause of political freedom
only increased the virulence with
which he was attacked for his prema-
ture championship of religious liberty.
CAagrin at having received valuable
aid from a scource so detested and a
willingness to escape the charge of in,
gratitude by belittling the services
rendered through defamation of their
source may have led the good Puri-
tans Of the early days of the republic
to attack the author Of The Age Of
Reason all the more savagely for
having previously written The Cri-
sis" and Common Sense" Besides,
the hatred Of Paine was not all relig.
ious in it's nature. There were on.
servatives in those days, too, and the
radical Paine was scarcely less hateful
to the federalist party than the free
thinker Paine to the Puritan sect.
Thomas Paine was a many sided
character, and the greatest mistakes
in popular or ever learnedly critical
estimates Of him arise from a habit Of
looking only at the smallest side,
which both his enemys and his friends !!
have persistently kept turned to the
public view. He was not only or
mainly a writer Of polemics. He was
greater both as a political writer and
AZ a man Of action than as a religious
disputant, and it is absurd to ignore
his greater work to bicker over his
smaller. This age has learned not to
NEEDLE itself much with the beliefs of
living men. Why should it quarrel
over the beliefs Of a man dead seventy
years. The impartial historian Of the
age who shall finally learn to rightly
estimate Thomas Paine will not ignore
his polemical writings, but will regard
them as a minor though consistent
part of a very remarkable and. in the
main, useful public career. Paine
was by nature a philosophical radical