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+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 Cobbett
+
+(Hitherto Unpublished)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. Sieves, 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 "Memoire, etc.. a 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 democrate tel que Thomas Paine, d'un homme
+     qui avait vecu parmi les Americains, d'un penseur, cette
+     declaration parut si dangereuse a Marat que, pour en
+     detruire l'effet, il n'hesita pas a s'ecrier: 'Je denonce
+     le truchement. Je soutiens que ce n'est point la l'opinion
+     do Thomas Paine. C'est une traduction infidele.'"--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 Revolution," 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 Departement des Affaires Etrangeres pendant la
+     Revolution, 1787-1804." Par Frederic Masson, Bibliothecaire
+     da Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres.    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 Andre, 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 Andre 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. Grece 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 Egalite, 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 Barrere, 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 L100 fine for selling "Letter to the
+     Addressers." H. D. Symonds, for publishing "Rights of Man,"
+     L20 fine and two years; f or "Letter to the Addressers,"
+     one year,  L100 fine, with sureties in L1,000 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," L100 and one year; "Letter to the
+     Addressers," one year, L100 fine; in each case sureties in
+     L1,000, with imprisonment until fines paid and sureties
+     given. Richard Peart, "Rights" and "Letter," three months.
+     William Belcher, "Rights" and "Letter," three months. Daniel
+     Holt, L50, four years. Messrs. Robinson, L200. 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 L20,000; 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 ed., 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 declare, au nom de la nation Francaise, qu'attendu les actes
+multiplies et d'agressions ci-dessus mentionnes, la republique Francaise
+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 Revolution,"
+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 Hotel 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.; "Memoires tires des papiers
+     d'un homme d'Etat.," ii., p. 157; "Memoires 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 Petion
+"--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, Gensonne, Grangeneuve, Buzot, Barbaroux, Salles,
+Biroteau, Pontecoulant, Petion, Lanjuinais, Valaze, Hardy, Louvet,
+Lehardy, Gor-sas, Abbe 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
+     [culte]. 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 Herault de Sechelles, 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 revoltas contre le souverain de la terre,
+     qui est le genre humain, et contre le legislateur 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 OEuvres 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 Theot, 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 Barrere, Paine, Condorcet, and M. Faber. As Frederic 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.*
+
+     * "OEuvres Completes de Condorcet," Paris, 1804, t. xvi., p.
+     16: "La Republique Francoise 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 Fraternite"), 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 Francais_, 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 Francais_, Girey-Dupre, 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, Gensonne! 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, Herault de Sechelles) 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 ed., 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 fetes, 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. Grece, 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. Grece. 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."
+
+     * Etats 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 pretendant 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 Barrere."
+
+In the next volume (38) of the French Archives, marked "Etats 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 Judoeis_); but meanwhile the
+Church repeats, throughout Christendom, "He suffered under Pontius
+Pilate." 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 decrete d'accusation pour
+     les interets de l'Amerique 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
+_suppleant_, 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 Barrere, 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 Genet had reported. "I have not yet seen M. Genet,"
+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 Genet.*
+
+     * 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 Barrere, 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. Etats Unis, Vol. 38, No. 93.
+     Endorsed: "No. 6. Translation of a letter from Thomas
+     Payne to Citizen Barrere." It may be noted that Paine and
+     Barrere, 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 Barrere, 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." Barrere, 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, Barrere opened the Terror by presenting a report in which
+it is said, "Let us make terror the order of the day!" This Barrere 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 Barrere. 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, Genet 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 Frederic
+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 Departement des Affaires Etrangeres pendant la
+     Revolution," 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 Genet 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, Barrere, 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 Genet 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 Genet This was a clever hint in another way. Genet, 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 Genet 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 Genet, 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 Genet, 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 <DW64> 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 [Genet], 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 Genet 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 manoeuvres of Citizen Genet 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. Genet 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 Peres.
+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 Peres, 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, Elie 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 Peres,
+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.
+
+Dorle, 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.
+
+Dorle, 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.
+
+Dorle, 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 Pluviose [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 Genet in America had reinforced the European
+intrigues to detach Washington from France. The President had demanded
+Genet'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 Genet, 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
+Revolution," 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 Comite de Surete Generale, 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 Comite 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 Pluviose) 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."
+
+     * "Etats Unis," vol. xl., Doc. 54. Endorsed: "Received the
+     18th of same [Pluviose, 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 Genet 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. Genet 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, Herault
+de Sechelles, 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 L200 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.
+
+* "Memoires 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 Pluviose, 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. Sieyes and myself have
+survived--he by bending with the times, and I by not bending. The other
+survivor [Barrere] 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. Herault Sechelles, an acquaintance of Mr.
+Jefferson, and a good patriot, was my _suppleant_ 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 _suppleant_ 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. Barrere, 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 Barrere
+had returned to France, after banishment, Paine introduced him to the
+English author, Lewis Goldsmith.* As Barrere 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 Barrere 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.
+
+     * "Memoires de B. Barrere," 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'Arret du Luxembourg, Le 19 Thermidor, l'an 2 de
+la Republique, 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
+Barrere, 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. Barrere, 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 Frederic 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 Departement des Affaires Etrangeres," 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: "Memoire de Thomas
+     Payne, autographe et signe de sa main: addresse a M. Monroe,
+     ministre des Etats-unis en France, pour reclamer sa mise en
+     liberte comme Citoyen Americain, 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 naive.
+
+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 Barrere, 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 interets
+de l'Amerique," 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.
+
+"Cambaceres."*
+
+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. Etats 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 Genet'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 (Etats 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--Sieyes and Paine. That original
+Committee had gradually left the task to Paine and Condorcet,--Sieyes,
+because he had no real sympathy with republicanism, though he honored
+Paine.* When afterwards asked how he had survived the Terror, Sieyes
+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 Sieyes well. The people will vainly try for the
+"Constitution of Ninety-three." They shall have no Constitution but
+of Sieyes' making, and in it will be some element of monarchy. Sieyes
+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."--Sieyes
+     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 employes, 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 Genet to Morris, and probably to public men in
+America. Genet 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 Genet 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 ( Etats-
+     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 Barrere 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 Caesar's friend,"
+cried the Priest to Pilate. The proconsul must face the fact that in
+Judea Caesarism 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
+_regime_ 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 revolutionnaire
+     avant la Revolution," 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 Ikshaku; 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 <DW19>, 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. Herault de Sechelles, 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 Herault'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 Thionville, 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 rcason 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'Etre 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 Genet 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; 'Demander que Thomas Paine soit decrete d'accusation pour
+les interets de l'Amerique 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 _sequelae_ 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'etat_, 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 fraternite._
+
+"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 Theoantropophiles." 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 Elementaire 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 a la Legislature et au Directoire: ou la
+     Justice Agraire Opposee a la Loi et aux Privileges
+     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 regime_ 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 negociations 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 negociation 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 negociation, 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
+Revelliere 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 Larevelliere-Lepeaux, 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 <DW18>s, 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 Informe_. 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 Theatre-Francais, where he
+published liberal pamphlets, also his _Bien Informe_. 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'etat_ in America, which made President Adams virtual
+emperor, pretended constitutionality, and was reversible. That which
+Napoleon and Sieves--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 Informe_ 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 Metal 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'Amerique avec les
+puissances du Nord pour faire respecter la liberte 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'ecritoire." 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
+Siecle 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 Hauey. 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 Larevelliere-Lepeaux, whose secretary, Antoine Vallee, 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 Larevelliere-Lepeaux
+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 _eclat_ 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 <DW64>s of St. Domingo the resistance
+which Leclercq had experienced from them." He found Paine in No. 4
+Rue du Theatre Francais. 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 L3000 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 L400 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 <DW19> 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
+_schwarmerei_, 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
+negociation.
+
+"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'Amerique, 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 <DW64> 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. Grece, 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 <DW64> 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 <DW64>s 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 <DW64>s 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 <DW64>s, 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
+<DW64>s 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 <DW64>s 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 <DW44>s 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 <DW64>s 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
+<DW64>s 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 <DW64>s 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. Grece, 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. Grece showed me Paine's papier-mache 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
+<DW64>s in St. Domingo; for the colonization of Louisiana with free
+<DW64> 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 _cortege_ 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 <DW64>s, 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 _cortege_ he would have turned his horse's head and
+followed it. Those two <DW64>s, 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 <DW64>s 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 <DW64>s 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
+L1,500, she for two years, with fine of L500,* 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 <DW19>s 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 <DW64> 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
+Fouche 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 <DW64>s, 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, Herault de
+Sechelles:
+
+"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.
+
+"Herault,
+
+"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 Lanthenas 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. Bache, 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 Francois. 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 Conde 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 Ca-ira of America.--To the Consul Lepeaux.*
+
+     * 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 Informe_) 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,
+Gregoire.--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 deg.,
+or 5 vol. 8 deg., 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 <DW64> 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 manoeuvres, 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 L9000 currency. Then was put up about 400 acres of land and sold for
+L2700 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, Petion, Camille
+Desmoulins, Billaud de Varennes, Gensonne, Clermont Tonnere. 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 Depute a 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. Grece, 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. II. (of
+II), by Moncure Daniel Conway
+
+*** 
\ No newline at end of file