It was William Cobbett who dug up Paine’s bones in the dead of night in 1819 and brought them back to England with the intention of building a mausoleum in his honour. Appropriately the ship carrying his remains was the ‘Hercules’.
Paine: Hello Burkie, it’s a long time since we last met on planet earth, how have you been getting on in purgatory? Burke: Well bless my soul, it’s old Paine from cloud nine. They are not letting me out from purgatory yet, I got a pass for this meeting celebrating my bicentenary.
It is a bit of a paradox that some atheists are the most ardent admirers of Thomas Paine and his many faceted life, yet he made it abundantly clear that he believed in one god and that Quakerism left an indelible mark on him in many ways.
This paperback should prompt many to re-think their attitudes towards weaker non-human species generally. It is fitting to conclude with a quotation from Paine’s, The Age of Reason: ‘The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures”
Thomas Muir was one of the seven Scottish martyrs sentenced to Botany Bay in 1793 for sedition. The charges included circulating Rights of Man. He met Thomas Paine in Paris.
Listening to speeches at the Sunday Observer 200th Anniversary of their foundation and of the publication of Rights of Man, my mind wandered as Princess Anne was giving the Thomas Paine Lecture, to his thoughts on titles. ‘Titles baffle even the powers of fancy and are chimerical nonsense’, he wrote.
Some Observations On The Present Day British Monarchy And Titles Read Post »
The book is certainly a very stimulating read, tending to present a sophisticated new view of Paine. It has a good chronology and bibliography, good insights into how the repression of the 1790s was and the sad course of the French Revolution, combined to defeat the Paineite movement.
BOOK REVIEW: Thomas Paine, Political And Social Thought Read Post »
I decided to visit the United States as it was the month Paine had set out to go there in 1774, the first of his five journeys across the Atlantic. My visit would coincide with the Annual General Meeting of the Thomas Paine-Huguenot Historical Society.
