The Evening statesman (Walla Walla, Wash.), July 12, 1909
NEWS FROM ACROSS THE DEEP WATERS
LONDON NEWS LETTER TELLS OF HONOR TO THOMAS PAINE IN ENGLAND
Orangemen Are Celebrating Today—Prince John Charles Francis Is Four Years Old Today.
LONDON, July 12
(Special)
During “the times that tried men’s souls,” England placed a price upon the head of that “prince of traitors,” Thomas Paine, thus esteeming the cranial appendage of the stormy petrel of the American revolution as of even greater importance than that of George Washington. Paine’s great work, “The Rights of Man” stung the British autocrats to the quick and its suppression was looked upon as a vital necessity.
While Paine is still denied his meed of honor and rightful place in history by the prejudices of that America he did so much to free, British newspapers in this centenary year of his death, are recalling with pride that Paine was of English birth. Practically all of the great papers of England, including the Times, Mail, News and Manchester Guardian, have recently published appreciations of Paine, and a movement has been set on foot to erect at his birthplace in Thetford a magnificent monument to his memory.
English newspapers have praised Paine principally as a journalist, the Manchester Guardian referring to him as the “first journalist in the fullest and best modern sense of the word”, and the first “to realize the power and value of a cheap press.”
It is also pointed out that Paine was responsible for the first newspaper “beat” when, as a Philadelphia journalist, he answered a speech by the king before it reached America and had the journal containing his answer on the streets when the king’s speech arrived.
The London Daily News says that Paine was more than a century ahead of his time, and declares that Paine’s religious views have now won such wide acceptance as to permit the election to the presidency of the United States of a man who entertains similar religious opinions.
The Daily News adds that “to Paine is due the first project of international arbitration.” and also that Paine was the first “to declare for the emancipation of the slaves, the first to champion the cause of woman, to insist upon the rights of animals, and to expose the criminal folly of dueling.”
Perhaps the most interesting matter in regard to Paine which the Daily News points out is that he formulated in the second part of “The Rights of Man,” a detailed scheme for “old-age pensions and a graduated income tax.”
These radical reforms, the suggestion of which more than a century ago caused the English government to offer a liberal price for Paine’s head, are now in full force and effect.
It is said that several thousand pounds have already been offered by wealthy admirers of Paine toward the monument at Thetford, and that the project now appears to be a certainty. There is only one small Paine monument in America, and the English memorial will be so much more imposing as to serve as proof that “republics are ungrateful.” The monument should be erected, if only to show that monarchical England can be more magnanimous to its greatest enemy than republican America to its foremost friend.”