Col. Ingersoll’s Eulogy On Thomas Paine

Chicago daily tribune (Chicago, Ill.), January 31, 1880

COL. INGERSOLL’S EULOGY ON THOMAS PAINE

Though Col. Ingersoll’s glowing tribute to the memory of Thomas Paine will be differently viewed by its readers according to their religious biases, we doubt not that all will concede that there is no man in the world more competent to have pronounced that eulogy than Col. Ingersoll, and that very few will deny its eloquence, its close analysis, its terse logic, its aptness of illustration, its humor, its biting satire, and its epigrammatic flashes and force. In all these qualities it is incomparably the most brilliant and masterly effort that has ever appeared among all the numerous eulogies that have been written by the admirers of this remarkable man. However much religious people may be pained by Col. Ingersoll’s attacks upon their dogmatic beliefs by his irreverence, which to them will fall little short of profanity and blasphemy, and by his mockery of things that are sacred to them, they will at least concede that his tribute is an exhaustive, eloquent, and at times very impressive defense of the man who has been more maligned than any other man of this or the last century.

It is difficult to quote from this address without marring the context or introducing some of Mr. Ingersoll’s bitter prejudices against the system of Christian religion and its teachers, but there are passages which will bear reproduction, as illustrating the general remarks we have made about the style and success of the orator in dealing with his subject. There has never been clearer or more concise analysis of Paine than the following:

Poverty was his mother—Necessity his master. He had more brains than books; more sense than education; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes,—no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for the truth’s sake, and for man’s sake. He saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong,—of the enslaved many against the titled and brutal few.

Or the manner in which he describes the appeal of Paine to the Colonists to strike the blow for their independence:

It is simple justice to say that Paine did more to cause the Declaration of Independence than any other man. Neither should it be forgotten that his attacks upon Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy; and while he convinced the people that the Colonies ought to separate from the mother-country, he also proved to them that free government is the best that can be instituted among men. Paine was not content with having aroused the spirit of Independence, but he gave every energy of his soul to keep that spirit alive. He was with the army. He shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory. When the situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon all, he gave them the Crisis. It was cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, leading the way to freedom, honor, and glory. He shouted to them: “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 his country: but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

There is very general belief in the religious world that Paine’s Age of Reason is an attack upon the Bible, while in reality it is an attack upon the Old Testament. Upon this point Col. Ingersoll says:

Thomas Paine denied the Divine origin of Christ, and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies of the Old Testament had no reference to Him whatever; and yet he believed that Christ was virtuous and amiable man; and the morality He taught and practiced was of the most benevolent and elevated character, and had not been exceeded by any. Upon this point he entertained the same sentiments now held by the Unitarians, and in fact by all the most enlightened Christians. Paine thought the barbarities of the Old Testament inconsistent with what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder, massacre, and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the Deity. He regarded much of the Bible as childish, unimportant, and foolish. The scientific world entertains the same opinion. Paine attacked the Bible precisely in the same spirit in which he had attacked the pretensions of Kings. He used the same weapons. All the pomp in the world could not make him cower. His reason knew no Holy of Holies, except the abode of Truth.

Col. Ingersoll’s humanity and love for humanity are strikingly brought out in the following passage:

Nothing but education—scientific education—can save mankind. We must find out the laws of Nature and conform to them. We need free bodies and free minds,—free labor and free thought,—chainless hands and fetterless brains. Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us truth. We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions. We need have no fear of being too radical. The future will verify all grand and brave predictions. Paine was splendidly in advance of his time; but he was orthodox compared with the infidels of to-day. Science, the great iconoclast, has been busy since 1800, and by the highway of Progress are the broken images of the Past. Science took handful of sand, constructed telescope, and with it read the starry page of Heaven. Science wrested from the gods their thunderbolts; and now, the electric spark, freighted with thought and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea. Science took tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil.

We close our extracts with the orator’s allusions to Paine’s death:

Is there any God in the Heavens who hates patriot? If there is, Thomas Paine ought to have been afraid to die. Is there any God that would damn man for helping to free 3,000,000 of people? If Thomas Paine was in hell to-night, and could get God’s attention long enough to point to Him the old banner of the stars floating over America, God would have to let him out. What was he afraid of? Had he ever burned anybody? No. Ever put anybody in an Inquisition? No. Ever put the thumb-screw on anybody? No. Ever put anybody in prison so that some poor wife and mother would come and hold her little babe up at the grated window that the man bound to the floor might get one glimpse of his blue-eyed babe? Did he ever do that? Did he ever light fagot? Did he ever tear human flesh? What was it he did to be afraid of? He had helped make the world free. He had helped create the only free republic then on the earth. What was he afraid of?

Whatever views men may entertain of Paine’s criticisms of the Hebrew Scriptures through his Age of Reason and other writings, no one at this day will question his irrepressible love of human liberty, his courageous defense of humanity against its taskmaster, or his splendid and invaluable services for the American Republic prior to and during the War of Independence. His voice rang like clarion, and the clarion never gave an uncertain sound. Col. Ingersoll has eloquently enumerated those services, but, singularly enough, omitted one of the most important. The most thoughtful of recent critics, and those who have studied the subject most deeply, have arrived at the irresistible conclusion that Paine was the original author of the Declaration of Independence, or, at least, of its first draft and outline ideas. The testimony shows that he held frequent conversations with Jefferson, and, it is believed, urged upon him the very views that are set forth in that immortal instrument, and that he held and expressed them long before any other American. It is known that Jefferson, who was apt scholar and shared Paine’s religious views, was deeply impressed with them, and requested him to put his thoughts on paper, which he did; and that paper is the very bone and substance of the Declaration of Independence. Though the phraseology may have been changed and additions made, the declaration of liberty, the indictment of Great Britain, the reasons for freedom, very probably came from Thomas Paine. All through that instrument there are unmistakable ear-marks of his peculiar and remarkable style of expression, which, if it were Jefferson’s production, never characterized any of his subsequent writings. The style of Common Sense, the Crisis, and the Rights of Man pervades the Declaration of Independence.

In the introduction to the forthcoming work, the advance sheets of which are before us, Col. Ingersoll alludes to this matter in the following words:

I am inclined to think that he actually wrote the Declaration of Independence; but whether this is true or not, every idea contained in it had been written by him long before. It is now claimed that the original document is in Paine’s handwriting. It certainly is not in Jefferson’s. Certain it is that Jefferson could not have written anything so manly, so striking, so comprehensive, so clear, so convincing, and so faultless in rhetoric and rhythm as the Declaration of Independence. Paine was the first man to write those words: “The United States of America.” He was the first great champion of absolute separation from England. He was the first to urge the adoption of federal constitution; and more clearly than any other man of his time he perceived the future greatness of this country.

Had it not been for Paine’s assaults upon the Old Testament and the Church in his Age of Reason, which arrayed the Christian ministers and their people against him for more than three-quarters of century, his great political services would have been more fully recognized, and he would have taken his place among the fathers of the Republic, standing in popular esteem even before Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams, and second only to Washington. The mortal offense he has given to the religious world and the acerbity of the warfare that has waged against him have eclipsed the inestimable services he rendered this country in her days of struggle and peril for freedom and independence. Men who look upon him as blasphemer and moral monster are not likely to concede his claims to that glorious record of patriotism which the future will allow without question. Leaving his religious notions out of the question, history will assign him his proper place as the great champion whose teachings and ringing utterances induced the American Colonies to strike the blow for independence, and as the great lover of his kind whose voice was always heard in defense of the poor, the suffering, and the enslaved.