By Audrey Taylor
Thomas Paine, an Englishman born in 1739, first became interested in politics when he was living at Lewes in Sussex. Here he joined the Headstrong Club, a society for young men who wished to debate current affairs, politics and poetry. Subsequently he went to work in London where he attended meetings of the Royal Society. Here he had the opportunity of meeting many learned men. This was the beginning of his programme of self-education. In London Paine met specialists in many fields. The one, which intrigued him most, apart from politics, was astronomy, and he drew on his knowledge of this subject many years later when he was writing The Age of Reason. Books on Paine have been published by scholars’ seeking to salvage him from oblivion. However they have either aimed their works at other scholars or have failed to reach a popular audience, beyond the academic community. Politicians and polemicists regularly quote him as one of their own; but they usually invoke him only by pulling a phrase out of his texts for present- minded utilitarian purposes. Such partial references to him offer no sense of the man, and distort him into a convenient icon. But, Paine is too important a leading political philosopher of his day, too significant in his exposition of democratic thought and prophecy into the future, to merit this treatment. This paper will discuss Paine’s involvement in the American and French Revolutions. Though he participated in a wide range of activities related to these events, his most effective contribution was through his writings, Paine’s involvement in the American War of Independence will be considered in two sections, relating to “Common Sense and the Pennsylvania Magazine”, and “the War of Independence against the forces of King George III” together with the Crisis pamphlets. This paper will then set out Thomas Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution, covering his “Reply to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution”, “Paine’s the Rights of Man”, and the “French National Assembly and Committee to formulate the Declaration of the Rights of Man”, and finally “Thomas Paine’s return to France for the next 10 years.”
At present work is being done both in North America and in England (Gary Berton, past President of the Board of Trustees of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, on the Committee of their Journal and their Research Committee and Audrey Taylor. Assistant Honorary Secretary or the Thomas Paine Society in England), which is aimed at authenticating how much the American Declaration of Independence depended for content and form on Thomas Paine. It is well known that Paine came close to losing the fight to establish democracy within the ruling circles in the American Colonies, because of the wish of John Adams, an American Federalist Congressman, who wanted to have a monarchy in the new United States of America. Paine would never have accepted this, because, to him, democracy was everything.
Paine’s Involvement In The American War Of Independence
Works arrived from Moscow and were translated from Russian into local languages. Therefore it can be said that Thomas Paine was influential from his lifetime to the present day whenever a country has sought its independence.
This was the first indication of Thomas Paine’s influence after he wrote Common Sense in which he finally recommended a separation from Britain of these Colonies which he named the United States of America. Thomas Paine decided to join the Colonists’ Army following the British Army’s massacre of the British Colonists at Lexington and Concorde. He was then asked to become our equivalent of a war correspondent and then he wrote the American Crisis series. When there was a tremendous shortage of money in America he made a visit to France to ask them for financial help, which Louis XVI was only too willing to make. By the end of the War of Independence the British Colonists were ready to prepare their Declaration of Independence in which they set forth the rules by which their new country would be run, as suggested by Thomas Paine.
Unfortunately they did not take his advice where slavery was concerned and so had to wait for the outcome of the Civil War before being forced to give slaves their freedom. Paine told the founding fathers that they were unjust in demanding their freedom from Britain when they were not giving freedom to their slaves, who were separated from their families and never paid.
American War of Independence and the Crisis
Series Paine enlisted in July 1776 with the ‘flying camp’ , a mobile body of one thousand men forming the militia of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Paine was attached to the Pennsylvania division. He served first as volunteer secretary to General Roberdeau and then at Fort Lee on the western bank of the River Hudson, where he became aide-de-camp to General Nathanael Green, retreating with the Continental Army to its winter base in Brunswick, New Jersey.
In Modern terms, Paine was asked to be a war correspondent, enlarging on his series of pamphlets called Crisis (December 1776 to December 1783) on the ideas and principles first . sketched in Common Sense, which had crystallized, at least in part, in the Colonists’ bold Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. They began at a genuine moment of crisis for the American troops. In the summer of 1776, the American army had retreated across the Hudson River to New Jersey: Among Americans hatred of the British army ran high: They were as Paine noted, with some sharpness, in many cases not even British, but Prussians, Brunswickers, German dragoons and Indians with scalping knives. There were even Russian soldiers with their typical weapons the knout.
George Washington, leader of the Colonists’ Army, could only muster five thousand men at the Delaware River, although later they were joined by General Williamson’s group of soldiers and the Philadelphia militia. This was all the Americans who were available to fight the entire force of soldiers led by the British General, Sir William Howe. Washington had been pressed back along the Hudson River, while Howe occupied Manhattan Island, Long Island and Staten Island, and in December, Paine says that Washington wrote sadly:
“Your imagination can scarce extend to a situation more distressing than upon the speedy enlistment of a new army. If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up, as from disaffection and want of spirit and fortitude, the inhabitants, instead of resistance, are offering submission and taking from General Howe in Jersey.” (Quoted in Paine’s The first Crisis, 23rd December 1776)
The army’s situation as Washington had informed the President of Congress, was extremely bad as many of the troops were so thinly clad as to be unfit for their jobs. It was a bitter, icy winter with Arctic winds penetrating the men’s scanty clothes and with their feet wrapped in rags, owing to the lack of shoes and supplies. In November, Fort Lee had been surprised and Paine with the soldiers of Washington’s Army had retreated in haste, abandoning the boiling kettles and much-needed food baking in the American ovens, to the British.
To his relief Paine had discovered that he did not lack physical courage. However he discovered a different weakness and wrote of it in one of the earliest issues of Crisis, addressed to Howe. He wrote with typical sympathy of a soldier’s psychological problems:
“We cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son because the father got him in a cowardly mood. However, I believe most men have more courage than they know of, and that a little at first is enough to begin with. I knew the time when I thought the whistling of a cannon ball would have frightened me almost to death: But I have since tried it and from that I can stand it with as little discomfort, and, I believe, with a much easier conscience than your lordship.” (Ibid)
His sincerity was not in doubt When Paine was at Trenton with the Pennsylvania Navy Board, he urged the men to set fire to the British fleet on the Delaware River, and was restrained with difficulty from personally carrying out the project. In December 1776, alarmed by American defeats and determined to bolster the cause of independence, Paine published the first of 4 his Crisis essays, (Ibid) which built upon the foundation of Common Sense. Washington’s great Christmas victory at Trenton, a notable turning point of the war, was achieved by troops heartened and inspired by this publication. No.1 contains the most quoted passage that Paine ever wrote:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” (Ibid)
Refuting British arguments for American surrender, rallying the Americans’ morale and exhorting the Revolutionaries to continue the war, Paine carefully timed his essays and other articles for maximum political effect. The Crisis series proved as popular and successful as Common Sense, although once again he was never paid for these works. Paine’s series provided ample reason for George Washington and other leaders to esteem him and value his writings as essential to the maintenance of the American cause.
In April 1777 Paine became secretary to the Continental Congress’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, a title that Paine later shortened, misleadingly, to Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As he worked constantly for the Revolution and urged the creation of a truly national knit of government for the fledgling United States of America, Paine allowed himself to be drawn into the factional in-fighting of the Continental Congress. It was here that Paine showed that his sharpness in writing political documents was not matched by equally sharp debating skills, and this soon became evident to his friends and to his enemies as well.
Thomas Paine’s problem was that he was a seeker of truth, totally unable to’ countenance anything underhand or corrupt. Quite undiplomatically he wrote and published his views about this, using his pen name Common Sense. It seemed to him (and he was later to be proved right when letters belonging to the persons concerned came to light), that some American notables, as well as several foreigners, were seeking to make their profits from the American War of Independence. This involved contributions from the French government to help the American colonists in their war with Britain.
The factions within Congress lost no time in aligning themselves on opposite sides of the controversy surrounding Silas Deane, who was the agent for the transactions, together with the author Beaumarchais, but Paine seemed to disregard the political situation, looking rather simplistically at the overall affair. As a result he played into the hands of those he criticised, who became his enemies. In 1779 they tried to have him dismissed, but Congress partially 5 exonerated him and refused to dismiss him. Paine angrily resigned from his position. He filed a memorandum with the Pennsylvania legislature, detailing his services to the Revolution, and was duly given a position as a clerk.
A new American envoy to France, Colonel John Laurens, was asked to negotiate further contributions from France to help the American war effort. As he was a very young man, he was loath to take on such a responsibility alone, so he asked Thomas Paine, a friend of his father, to accompany him as secretary. Paine took with him a copy of Common Sense to give to the French King, where there was no mention of monarchy or aristocracy. Although Paine did not speak or understand French at that time, he and Laurens managed to make themselves understood and Louis XVI was most generous to the American Colonists, who were fighting the enemies of the King Louis, the British. The negotiators were very successful and sent three shiploads of silver and goods back to America.
Throughout this period Paine continued to write the Crisis essays analysing the events of the war and other pamphlets calling for American unity and governmental reform. The most noteworthy of these was called Public Good, which was published by Paine in 1780, perhaps the bleakest year of the War. In this essay, Paine argued with passion and conviction for the strengthening of the central government, so that the loose confederation of states could truly become one nation. In particular he urged that Virginia cede to the Confederation its claims to western lands, the settlement of which, Paine argued, would help to provide revenue for the United States. In the years following the Revolution and the winning of independence, Paine continued to write essays and pamphlets pleading for a strong national government. It was at this time that Paine met the Marquis de Lafayette„ who was going to remain his lifelong friend. Lafayette came from France to fight with the Colonists against the British.
(At the end of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States formed the League of Nations exactly following Paine’s advice but Wilson was not then on good terms with the leaders of Congress, who would not agree to America joining the League. However the United Nations was formed at the end of the Second World War, with its headquarters in New York.)
Paine’s involvement in the French Revolution
Reply to Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’
Edmund Burke was a well-known Whig political orator, whose notable characteristic was a love of order. He resisted when, as he thought, sympathisers with the French Revolution wanted to abolish the government 6 He claimed that he loved liberty but only if it was connected to order. He had a distinct veneration for the accumulated wisdom of centuries of experience, and held that liberty should be treated with great caution. He claimed that a political system that had lasted a long time, seemed to him to be an argument that it was fit for a current purpose and should not be changed rashly. With views like this it was inevitable that he would not agree with such a revolution and in fact he threw himself violently into the opposition camp. He could not see the hopeful things emanating from the revolution and he was unable to discriminate between man and motives. His book showed great wisdom and practical insight and led the reaction in England. The book created fame for him within Europe.
The French Revolution had already begun when Thomas Paine went to live in France as an honorary French citizen and an elected member for the Pas-de- Calais region of France in the new government. His great friends and colleagues were the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought in the American War of Independence, the Marquis de Condorcet and Georges Jacques Danton, a lawyer, orator and leader of the Revolution. Although Paine was unable to speak or write French, he was able to take part in discussions in the government, since one or other of his friends would interpret his speeches and let him know what was happening. Condorcet and Paine were elected to a committee to design a new constitution for France, together with its declaration of the rights of man.
Through the Marquis de Lafayette who became the leader of the King’s Guard, Paine was able to keep abreast of everything that was happening in Paris. Following the storming of the Bastille and the massacre on the Champs de Mars, there was a lull during which, from time to time, Louis XVI and his Queen made several unsuccessful attempts to leave France:
During a search of the royal apartments a lead safe was discovered containing… copies of correspondence between the French King and Queen and various crowned heads of other European countries. This was written evidence of treason against the people of France and they were arrested. Paine spoke in the King’s defence saying that while he was against the system of monarchy, he found it hard to speak against the King who had been so generous to the British Colonists in America and without whose aid there might not have been an independent republic so soon. He pleaded for their lives as people and not as royalty. He claimed that all the time they were alive it would preclude relatives trying to rebuild the monarchy and this would postpone a genuine republic being formed in France. Paine was proved to be correct in his prophecy, because France_did not truly become an independent republic until Louis Napoleon DI, his wife and son were granted asylum in Britain by Queen Victoria at the end of the 19th century.
Paine had promised his friends in France that as soon as Burke’s book was published, he would ensure that a copy went to them for translation into French. However in January 1790 Burke made a speech in the British Parliament relating to his book, which he was to publish in the autumn of that year. His speech was so contrary to all Whig beliefs, as well as to anything, which he had discussed previously with Paine, that the tatter decided to analyse carefully Burke’s speech, and then his writing, when the book was eventually published. The speech’s warning gave Paine a headstart in writing his book, the first part of which was almost finished by the time that Burke’s book was published in November 1790.
Paine’s book the Rights of Man, was to go down in history not only as a reply to Burke, but as a document of human rights which was to sound the clarion call for Chartism and the Reform Bill of forty years later, and for the universal franchise and social security in our own time. In 1781 Burke had even introduced a Reform Bill, including a proposal to prevent King George ITl from using large amounts of money from the Civil List on corruption, so there was nothing in Burke’s earlier political career to suggest that he would join the King’s Party physically or mentally.
Paine and Burke had visited France some sixteen years previously but Burke had not visited it again and his book was based on third party information. Paine was receiving updated information about the Revolution from his friend Lafayette, and therefore considered that he was more likely than Burke to know the true facts of the situation in France. Lafayette was put in charge of the National Guard to the King of France, upon his return from America where he had fought the British. There was a popular revulsion in France against the activities of the monarchy, the aristocracy and the clergy, by whom the country was dominated. France was in a financial state bordering on bankruptcy and a parliament of 144 notables had been unable to resolve anything. At that time there appeared to be no intention of removing King Louis XV1 from the throne of France. The States-General had become the National Assembly, consisting of nobles and clergymen who were considerably outnumbered by the Third Estate, comprising lawyers such as Maximilien Robespierre coming from Arras, and intellectuals such as Volney and the astronomer Bailly, as well as a handful of artisans.
The presence in the movement for reform of leaders such as the Comte de Mirabeau and Lafayette, demonstrated that the group included aristocrats and property-owners, who were certainly not anti-monarchial. Mirabeau was to hold the country together, bridging the gap between the King’s party and the revolutionaries. But the ordinary people of Paris, fearing some mischief from the King, stormed the Bastille. This was the destruction of a symbol of power rather than anything else.
The Assembly met to arrange for some new regulations to be put in place. They abolished feudal privileges, serfdom and tax privileges. They clipped the wings of the wealthy priesthood, but this largely backfired because the effect rebounded on the poor dergy. There was even to be a democratic election of bishops.
But the main target of Burke’s rage as set out in his book, was the march of the women of Paris to Versailles in October. Burke painted a lurid picture of a violent, uncontrollable mob storming Versailles and bringing the “mildest of monarchs and the most beautiful of queens”v” back to Paris in a state of fear. They had ruled over a spirited, honourable and cultivated nobility, a respectable clergy and an independent judiciary. (Burke, E.M. author of Reflections of the French Revolution. edited by J G A. Pocock, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989, page 153.)
Paine challenged Burke point by point in his sober straightforward narrative in the Rights of Man, many of his facts having been obtained directly from Lafayette. Since then Paine’s account has largely been substantiated by contemporary historians. This march was mainly a protest from half-starving housewives. Lafayette followed the march with the National Guard and soon everything was under control.
The marchers’ demands were presented to the King by Lafayette personally. The King agreed to them all, and was content to return to Paris the following day; but in the morning disaster occurred. One of the King’s bodyguards saw the crowd beginning to stir from sleep and fired on them. This enraged them and they broke into the palace. This relatively sober explanation was carefully ignored by Burke who presented it as a dramatic and very gory scene.
Paine returned from England in the winter of 1789 to follow the progress of the revolution and to discuss it with his American and French friends in Paris. • Neither the Jacobins or the Girondins had yet acquired any strong leaders and there was still no question of the King losing his throne. Louis XVI had become a constitutional king and, if he had been a clever diplomat, he could easily have preserved the situation. Unfortunately he was surrounded by the courtiers and other sycophants. He was unduly influenced by his wife who was anxious to return to her native Austria. Under these conditions he was quite unable to adapt to the circumstances he now found himself in.
Lafayette had put before the National Assembly, proposals for a Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen, which gave Paine the title for the book he was writing and would publish. While in Paris Paine had written to Burke to advise him on how well everything was going.
Paine’s attitude to Burke’s book indicated that Paine feared the possibility of war. He said that he had seen enough of war’s miseries to wish he might never see one again, and hoping some other way might be found to settle differences, which occasionally arise between neighbouring countries. He observed that the state of harmony, which then existed between America and France could have been achieved also between England and France. Counter- revolutionary forces from other countries invaded France and induced a panic which led to the revolution’s temporary collapse.
Paine’s rational reply to Burke, pleading for human rights for the common people, reached even more readers than Burke’s book in England overseas. But its greatest impact was in reinforcing the views of those already converted, and in convincing the poor who had nothing on which to stake a claim. Yet the Rights of Man did have an effect on the rich and powerful, because it alarmed the Pitt government, which instituted repressive measures and a level of censorship which Britain had not experienced for many years.
There was a lot of political fighting in America and England at the time of the publication of the Rights of Man, doubtless due in part to the fact that the British government was discussing a trading affiance with the American government.. Perhaps Paine was tactless to have addressed his Rights of Man to the American President, George Washington.
Paine’s description of the French Revolution, both from his own experience and from the information he received from Lafayette, the Marquis de Condorcet and other French friends, is said by modern historians still to be a valuable historical document. t. At a time when few men were like this, Paine was still able to be impartial in his comments.
Paine tried at all times to be truthful and unbiased, as exemplified by the fact that he did not minimize the incidental loss of life. He said there was no doubt that it was the crowds of ordinary people who committed the burnings and who carried the heads of the beheaded upon pikes in Paris, but then this was not new to Britons who had seen similarly at the time of the English Civil War.
The Rights of Man must also be regarded as a blueprint for a new society. Paine contradicted Burke, who claimed that the English Revolution of 1688 had set a pattern of English government ‘for all time’ and that the country could only be governed by the privileged classes and the aristocracy – to both of which groups he had recently himself been elevated. His claim was that only these men had the necessary experience. Paine considered this to be a violation of democratic human rights, and he said once again that the privileges of monarchs and aristocrats could not be inherited. Everyone, according to Paine, had the right to elect their own government, on condition that they did not require it to be imposed on the next generation. Paine’s theme was to stand up for the rights of the living, not of the dead. 10
At Easter 1791 the French King and Queen tried to leave Paris for their residence at Saint-Cloud under the protection of Lafayette and the National Guard. Everything seemed to be very calm but there had been widespread rumours in Paris, that the royal couple were planning to escape abroad. The crowd found their carriage, and Lafayette, faced with a mutiny by a large section of his Grenadiers, was unable to protect the King and Queen unless they returned to the Tuileries. This caused the King, no doubt on the advice of his Queen, to complain to the Assembly. It was at this point that Lafayette began to feel that the royal family had not told him the truth about their plans and his loyalties became divided.
One wonders how long it took the usually sharp-witted Paine to realize how Lafayette’s basically republican feelings were in conflict with his care of the royal family. In June the royal family again escaped from the Tuileries and the following morning Lafayette hurried to tell Paine. Paine would have been pleased if the royal family had reached a foreign country; in this event the Revolution could have continued and the King and Queen would not have been killed. Paine recorded that apart from some wild attacks on aristocrats being released from prison, Parisian life continued throughout the revolution period with the theatres, bars and restaurants being lit up and full of people.
Paine was faithful in his friendships and could not support Marat, whose writings including those in L’ami du Peuple, took every opportunity to demand the downfall of Lafayette. But Paine was also ready to show his Republican principles and actively worked to disseminate them. He wrote and issued a Manifesto, which was translated and signed by a French friend, Achille du Chatelet, who may have made minor alterations to Paine’s text, which he had to sign, as the law required published documents to be signed by a French citizen. There was still little support for a republic and until September 1792, even Marat favoured a very restricted monarchy.
Madame Roland, who held political discussion groups in her home, thought, like Paine, that it was a misfortune for the royal family to have returned to Paris. As well as sharing Paine’s views she also predicted that Louis would continue to obstruct the Assembly, and would make use of the armies of France’s enemies. In the Societe Republicaine, Paine published an article extending the ideas of the Manifesto and referring to the King as ‘Louis Capet’. He challenged Montesquieu’s theory that republicanism can only occur in small countries, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view that ‘Liberty diminishes the larger the state becomes’.
Paine believed that a Constitution for all to read, as being a likely remedy for the French people, as well as it had salved American ills. He said that France could only be called a civic empire when it had its own Constitution conforming to its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. II
National Assembly and Committee to formulate the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
Paine had returned briefly to England and, according to Clio Rickman at whose home he was staying, Achilles Audibert, the French radical, arrived at the house on the 12th September, straight from the French Convention to request Paine’s personal assistance in their deliberations. Audibert came from Calais, which was one of four constituencies, which invited Thomas Paine to represent them in the Nations] Assembly. On 26 August the Assembly had conferred the title of French citizen on a number of distinguished foreign sympathizers including Paine, Wilberforce, Washington and the American poet friend of Paine’s, Joel Barlow. the accompanying invitation read:
“Your love for humanity, for liberty and equality, the useful works that have issued from your heart and pen in their defence, have determined our choice. It has been hailed with universal and reiterated applause. Come, friend of the people, to swell the number of patriots in an assembly which will decide the destiny of a great people, perhaps of the human race.”
Thomas Paine returns to France for the next ten years
This then was the reason for Paine’s return to France, and not – as maintained by many of his critics – his arraignment for seditious libel in England. A thorough study of all Paine’s writings, and a great number of biographies and critical analyses of his works, leads to the conclusion that the Thomas Paine who leaps at you from the written page, would have been divided as to which he wanted more: the opportunity of being physically and actively further involved in the making of the French Republic, or the wonderful opportunity of standing up in court and disputing the charge of seditious libel, from which he would undoubtedly have derived great satisfaction.
In 1791 on the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a republican petition had been prepared by Paine against the King’s reinstatement. The excited crowds in the Champ de Mars, lynched two men of whom they were suspicious, and the Mayor of Paris was obliged to call out the National Guard. Lafayette arrived with the Guard to be greeted by a hail of stones. The National Guard fired upon a largely unarmed crowd causing a massacre of some 50 people.
On 22nd September 1793, the National Convention declared a Republic at which point the newly-named first month, Vendemaire, of Year One began. Paine’s first triumph at the National Assembly was to cross swords with Dutton, newly elected Minister of Justice on a judicial matter. Paine’s inability to speak French was not a problem since he was able to converse with Danton in English. Danton had moved that judges should be chosen from any section of the community, irrespective of legal training or knowledge of the law. However Paine resisted this proposal as being too revolutionary, on the rational and commonsense basis, that justice could only be effectively administered by men of good legal knowledge and training. He further maintained that reforms in the law, where needed, could only be effective if planned as a whole, and not piecemeal. Paine won his point and Danton capitulated.
The young Maximilien Robespierre took over the Convention in the autumn of 1793 and Paine found they had much in common. Incorruptibility, war and the death penalty were three main areas of agreement. Paine heard with pleasure of Robespierre’s proposal to abolish the death penalty. The liberal moral code of both Paine and Robespierre, included their belief in religion without intermediaries, and Robespierre envisaged replacing the Church by an “Etre Supreme”. There would be celebrations to this personage on the Champ de Mars in Paris for everyone to enjoy.
Louis XVI was unable to defend himself at his trial, because a quantity of correspondence with the enemies of France had been found in the royal apartments. The object of this correspondence was the enemies’ successful invasion of France and the restoration of the King on the throne as absolute monarch. Paine, the humane idealist who could never forget the help of Louis to the American cause, tried to help him. In a paper read to the Convention on 21 November, he stated the following:
“I think it necessary that Louis XVI should be tried; not that this advice is suggested by a spirit of vengeance, but because this measure appears to me just, lawful and conformable to sound policy. If Louis is innocent let us put him to prove his innocence; if guilty let the nation determine whether he shall be pardoned or punished.” (Doyle, William, The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press. p.167)
When Louis was found guilty on 17 January 1793, Paine wrote, as a member of the National Assembly, confessing that he was far more ready to condemn the Constituent Assembly, when he thought of the unaccountable folly, which restored the King’s executive power. Paine suggested that the United States of America could become a royal asylum, bearing in mind the amount of help, which Louis XVI gave to the American War of Independence. There, Louis might learn from the constant aspect of public prosperity, that the true system of government consisted in fair and equal representation. Paine submitted the suggestion, remembering the debt of gratitude, which America owed to every Frenchman_ Paine said that he was normally the enemy of monarchy, but he could not forget their human frailties. He reminded the court it had already been proposed by Maximilien Robespierre, that the death penalty should be abolished.
In his Address to the People of France, Paine was both adulatory and optimistic, ending with the suggestion that they should begin the new era by instructing, rather than taking revenge, and by ensuring a greatness of friendship to welcome the approach of union and success. He was delighted when he was appointed to the Committee for framing a new French Constitution. This Committee originally had been the idea of the Marquis de Condorcet, and it was he who led the discussion while Paine drafted a Declaration for Rights to accompany the Constitution. These documents were adopted after many amendments, on 25 June 1793.
Paine’s apparent friendship with the American Ambassador, Gouverneur Morris had added to Marat’s dislike of Paine, because Morris was distrusted by the Revolution due to his relationship with the English Court, and the Assembly had finally written to America asking them to replace him. The Assembly was also suspicious of Paine because of the stand he had made for saving the King’s life. Paine had written to Marat, whose suspicions of Paine may have been lulled as a result, so that when Robespierre demanded a more stringent law against foreigners, Paine was one of two foreign deputies, who were accepted.
Ten months in the Luxembourg Prison and then return to America
Paine had been warned against attending the Assembly, because Danton was to be arrested, and, as a friend of Danton, possibly Paine would also be arrested. Paine had been advising Barere, in charge of the Committee of Public Safety, on a project for sending commissioners to America in order to obtain American food aid for France during the war with England. Barere feared a massive country-wide famine. At his request Paine wrote long and lucid arguments for Barere to use, and spent a good deal of time taking the matter up with American sea captains whose vessels had been held up in Bordeaux, because the French feared that the English navy would seize them. The captains appealed personally to Paine after their useless application to the American Ambassador, Morris.
Barere instigated the Reign of Terror, when he presented a report to the Convention on 5 September, which contained the words: “Let us make Terror the order of the Day”. Paine had already published Part 1 of The Age of Reason, and planned to leave it with the American poet Joel Barlow, if there was a risk of him being arrested. It was also Barere who made the speech leading to Paine’s arrest. He gave some very incredible excuses to Paine, but at least in his Memoires, he told the truth about Paine’s help in saving France from famine.
When Paine was arrested he found an excuse to visit Joel Barlow’s lodgings with his captors and was able to leave with him Part 1 of The Age of Reason, without his captors’ knowledge. Various reasons have been put forward as to 14 the reason for his imprisonment, but none of them have been confirmed. Paine was able to complete the second part of The Age of Reason despite his poor state of health while in prison. When James Monroe was brought in as the new American Ambassador Paine was at last released. At first Paine was nursed by Mrs Monroe when he was so ill that they feared he would die. Gradually he recovered and moved into the home of Nicholas de Bonneville, who produced a radical newspaper in Paris, and his family. With the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte came an amnesty for all emigres and Paine finally was able to return to America. It has been said that he actually met Napoleon Bonaparte while staying with the de Bonneville family and that Bonaparte had read many of his works and found them ‘most interesting’. However I must say that there is no actual proof of this meeting.
Paine’s involvement in British and Irish affairs
Paine had drawn up a detailed topographical plan for the invasion of Britain but this must have been kept with the rest of his manuscripts, which he left for safe keeping with Madame de Bonneville, who gave them to her son. Nicholas de Bonneville was a French Radical friend of Paine and when he knew that Paine was returning to the U.S.A. he asked him to take his wife and three sons to America where de Bonneville thought they would have better lives. However following his death Madame de Bonneville inherited everything belonging to Thomas Paine and his land and house were divided between the two elder de Bonneville boys, who had remained with Paine. His manuscripts were subsequently passed to General de Bonneville and were “accidentally” lost in a fire at the General’s home.
When Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Theobald Wolfe Tone asked Thomas Paine to obtain French ships and men to invade Ireland the French government was not averse to helping them, but on the advice of an Irish American they did not do so immediately because he recommended waiting until the United Irishmen were more of a cohesive group. It is believed that this Irish American was a Colonel William Tate who later led a French invasion force to Bantry Bay, but on their first attempt they were prevented by violent storms. The very fact that this fleet had been sent encouraged the United Irishmen particularly since the British then used military coercion in Ulster in 1797. The rebellious Irish were mixed Catholics and Protestants and the rebellion was severely squashed.
The first French-based raiding party after that was due to attack Newcastle where the Legion Franche were to burn the docks and shipping and destroy the coal mines. The second party was to land at Bristol going on to Wales and Liverpool with the Legion Noire. These two groups of soldiers comprised mainly convicts. It was a weak plan based as it was on expecting great military action, but using the poorest quality of troops. Martell° Towers 15 had been built on Bere Island in Bantry Bay and were the forerunners to those later built by the English.
Britain had been saved because none of the French troops spoke or understood English and only the aristocracy could speak and/or understand French so that there was no rapport between the French and the English. The non-appearance of the British Navy, the one, which Pitt had reassured Parliament in October 17% was the “national defence of this kingdom in case of invasion” did nothing to persuade the ordinary Englishmen that this was a cause for them to join in. After the recapture of [(Biala, Wolfe Tone was captured by a British warship and committed suicide. The utter failure of the Irish invasion did not stop the related diversion raid against Wales. The French arrived at Fishguard in February, for what was to prove to be the last time that Britain was ever invaded. It was not planned to harm the British people but to be the first step in liberating the oppressed poor of the country from the domination of the English ruling classes, thereby alighting the fire of independence and democracy.
The French had left Brest in Brittany on 18 February and anchored to the north-west of Fishguard. From information received from a captive, they were misled as to the size of the fort’s militia and they sailed out to Carreg Wasted Point, out of reach of the militia’s guns. Meanwhile the French soldiers were looting and setting fire to churches in a manner hardly conducive to encouraging the local people to join in a revolution and rise up against their oppressors. Lord Cawdor on behalf of the British Army demanded Tate’s surrender.
All of these events led to a run on the Bank of England and it suspended cash payments, but instituted bank notes to the value of El and £2. People were suspicious of these novel notes and many found them hard to use in a commercial way. Things gradually calmed down and normal trade continued.
With the failure of the French-aided attempts at invasion of the British Isles followed by Admiral Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet in Aboukir Bav in 1798 the immediate threat of further invasions seemed to disappear until Napoleon created himself Emperor when considerable monies were spent on fortifications such as 74 lvlartello towers on the South Coast of England and 40 on the east coast. Each tower had a cannon on top with a one mile range. They cost £3,000 each to build and were to carry 24 soldiers each.
This was the time of the Royal Military Canal being built from Rye towards London and Birmingham and when Weed on Beck in Northamptonshire was planned to be the emergency capital of Britain in case London were to fall. Chatham was the next fallback position and this time led to the birth of the semaphore system between Chatham and Portsmouth. In 1852 when Louis I6 Napoleon 111 came to power further large sums were spent on fortifications against the French.”
Paine’s involvement in Russia
Common Sense reached either St Petersburg in Russia or, more probably, Leipzig, where it had been translated into German. The young Russian Radical, Alexander Radishchev, was studying jurisprudence there at the instigation of Catherine the Great. Several books have been written on the subject of Radishchev: “The First Russian Radical”, by David Marshall Lang while Jesse Clardy wrote another, but the most up to date information has been researched and written by a fellow Russian, !Cara Rukshina, who is presently working in the U.S.A. [n her work she established that Radishchev was familiar with Common Sense from its inclusion in G. Th. Ravnal’s A History of the Two Indies (1780 edition). Until now the question of Paine’s influence on Radishchev has received no scholarly attention, writes Rukshina This was probably due to the fact that when Common Sense was first published it did not have Paine’s name on it as the author.
Ravnal described Common Sense as the ideological foundation of the French Revolution. However Rukshina claims that Radishchev had an excellent command of English and could have read an original English-language copy when he was at Leipzig University or in the famous multi-lingual library of his employer, the Count Vorontsov. The main difference between Paine’s book and that of Radishchev’s A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow is that Radishchev considered the monarch’s death essential and unavoidable while Paine only wanted the position of the monarch to be removed.
Radishchev’s ideas laid the groundwork for the revolutionary tradition in Russia. Karl Man is said to have had a library containing two copies of each of Thomas Paine’s works and Nikolai Lenin was known to have read Radishchev’s work as well as that of Raynal, and, during his time in London was to have read the rest of Paine’s works in English. Therefore the thinking behind the Russian Revolution of 1917 can be said to have been influenced by Thomas Paine.
Cuba and South America influenced by Paine
Copies of Paine’s works had been circulated throughout Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico since 1816, so they had been read and considered by the Castro family and other revolutionary-minded young men for generations before Fidel Castro came on the scene in 1953. In 1955 Castro went to Mexico and teamed up with the Argentine doctor, Che Guevara.
Fidel Castro had tried several times to overcome the right-wing government of Batista in Cuba and did not succeed until, accompanied by his brother Ratil 17 and Dr Ernesto Che Guevara, they won a rousing victory with the backing of the ordinary people in January 1959. Castro assumed control of Cuba and governed without a formal constitution until 1976. Castro frequently asked for financial aid from the government of the U.S.A. but when this was not forthcoming, he publicly proclaimed his allegiance to Marxism-Leninism on 2 December 1961. Although Castro retained political independence from the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy came to depend on billions of dollars in Soviet aid.
Che Guevara was a keen follower of Thomas Paine, and Fidel Castro in his defence before the court of Santiago de Cuba in 1953, claimed that “Thomas Paine said that a just man deserves more respect than a crowned rogue”, thereby indicating that he was well aware of Paine’s political writings.
In Latin America Common Sense and the American Crisis papers were only translated in part, but were used as symbols by leaders of independence movements. In South America no biographical details about Paine were known and his political writings were concentrated. upon Paine was a symbol of toleration and individual human rights. In Argentina a Spanish translation of Common Sense circulated in Buenos Aires during 1816 and inspired heated discussion in the local press. A number of political documents such as the Declaration of Independence and several state constitutions were circulated in translation but only Paine’s major political works attracted comments in the press.
The works of Paine, which were readily available consisted of parts of Common Sense the Dissertation on First Principles of Government, the Rights of Man, the Dissertations on Government the Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money. The sections from Common Sense include Paine’s famous distinction between government and society, and his demonstration of the superiority of republican over monarchical government. Paine’s forthright method of expression was well received in Buenos Aires.
It could be argued that Paine’s ideas were foremost in the minds of Central and South American revolutionaries, because they were all reared on the works of Karl Marx and Lenin. It is also possible to argue that wherever revolutions have taken place in the world in modern times, the leaders were also educated in Marxism or Leninism. Either Paine’s works arrived in countries, directly in English, say from America, and were then translated into local languages, or his work was directly translated into Spanish or Portuguese.
CONCLUSION
Few men could have led such a fascinating life as Thomas Paine. Fle saw two momentous revolutions at the end of the 18′” century, in America and France 18 and was heavily involved in both of them. He always felt that the only one which was a true Republic was America, though he could easily be accused of prejudice where “America was concerned. Nevertheless by 1802 when Paine left France, the country had an imperial monarchy ruled every bit as tyrannically as that before 1789. Paine had forecast that this would happen and events proved him right By contrast the U.S.A. was, and remains, a genuine republic.
Paine never claimed that his writings were original; what was original was the way in which he wrote. He used a simple, straightforward style, which was very easy to understand. Paine did not write for the academic audience but for the ordinary people and it can be argued that following the publication of Common Sense followed by the Rights of Man and the tremendous number of copies of each that were sold or borrowed or available in taverns or reading rooms, his words did not reach exactly the people to whom they were addressed. It can be said therefore, that Paine achieved what he set out to do, which was to make the ordinary people understand that they could eventually enjoy the social reforms, which he talked about He did not guarantee when this would happen, nor that it would happen without them being involved in pushing their politicians to take action.
If taxation was tackled – and he showed how this could be done equitably – there would be sufficient money to carry out all the social reforms, which he had described. His aim in life had been to improve the life of the ordinary people, who had nobody else to speak for them. He considered that if a government was run according to the plans he had suggested, then people would be happy. Paine said that insufficient food, clothing, housing and work was not sufficient to make people happy.
Without the benefit of modern communications, Paine was able to act as a prophet to two revolutionary bodies: the American fight for independence and the French for liberty, equality and fraternity. Equally he made major contributions to the English evolution towards extended suffrage. His failure to make the American Revolution into an egalitarian movement must have been a bitter blow to him. It was the English, after Paine’s death, who made policies out of his proposals.
Paine is still a controversial figure, but his ideas have never lost their power or their appeal. To read any of his works today is to read a modern, well written and easily understandable text.