Of Moses the great lawgiver of Israel we read that, “no one knoweth of his sepulchre”. The same may be said of Thomas Paine, who was a mighty potent force in advancing a better system of government, human rights and much else in America, Britain and France. It took time for his message to be heard but the history of the spread of democracy cannot be written without it.Yet why do the people of Britain generally know more about Pepys of the 17th century than Paine of the 18th. century? 

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’. Earlier Cobbett had written misguidedly in the USA, “How Tom gets a living or what brothel he inhabits I know not. He has done all the mischief known to man in the world and whether his carcass is the last to be suffered to rot in the earth or to be dried in the air is of little consequence”. Yet after Paine died he changed his opinion, writing in his Register, “We will honour this noble of nature, his memory, his remains, in all sorts of ways. The tomb of this noble of nature will be an object of pilgrimage with all people”. But what actually happened? 

Upon opening the coffin at the Liverpool Customs House, Cobbett said, “These, gentlemen, are the mortal remains of Thomas Paine’. True to form the plate on the coffin bore the wrong date of death, seventy-four instead of seventy two years. The coffin went to Cobbett’s London home and two years after his death to his farm near Farnham, Surrey. Soon after their arrival a Bolton town crier was imprisoned for announcing this. The Times and The Courier attacked Cobbett for bringing Paine’s remains back with great vindictiveness. Former friends shrugged their shoulders and Members of Parliament ridiculed him, so he rather furtively kept them until his death, making it rather late as an MP. 

A few years before death Cobbett became permanently estranged from his family and a Mr. Tilley became his secretary and constant companion. After Cobbett’s death his son engraved Paine’s name on his skull and other bones, but when his effects were sent for auction the auctioneer refused to put Paine’s remains up for auction. The Lord Chancellor’s was appealed to but declined to consider them as part of Cobbett’s estate and refused to make any order concerning them. The box was taken by a Mr. West, one of Cobbett’s trustees, but when he subsequently failed as a farmer he sent them to Mr. Tilley, who in 1847 was living in Stepney. 

In 1818, a Stepney Baptist minister named Reynolds said he had purchased for £25 some manuscripts and other items of Cobbett’s via a family named Guin, among these being Paine’s brain, or part of it, that had been removed from the skull by Tilley. He also said that following Tilley’s death a bag containing Paine’s bones had been thrown out. 

Moncure Conway in an article he contributed to the New York Sun in 1892, said that he had purchased a small portion of Paine’s brain for £5, which he buried below the Paine monument at New Rochelle in 1839. There are also reports of Paine’s jaw having been buried in Wales and his bones having been buried at Ash near Farnham.

Now who should we blame for this dastardly treatment of the remains of one of mankind’s greatest benefactors? First in line of censure must be the New Rochelle Quakers for refusing Paine burial in their graveyard. This would have been most appropriate in view of the strong Quaker beliefs of his father, which he had instilled into his son. 

The Lord Chancellor of Britain must also be held culpable for not ordering a proper burial, but most of the blame rests with that great agitator and enigma, William Cobbett, and perhaps later with his son. If financial problems were the main difficulty in Cobbett’s failure to provide his planned mausoleum, then he could have appealed for financial assistance from his Liberal minded friends, or did he fail to do this because he feared it would effect his chance of election to the House of Commons? 

In the circumstances it would have been better, perhaps, for Cobbett to have left Paine’s remains at New Rochelle, where he had been buried with only five people present, two being Negroes who stood as witnesses to his efforts to end slavery, the others being Mrs. Bonneville, long time platonic friend of Paine’s from France, her son, and a Quaker, Willett Hicks. Had his remains been left they would have lain for ever in the land granted him by New York State in gratitude for his services to American independence. 

However, Cobbett unwittingly did the right thing for the wrong reason, for the first real Citizen of the World belongs to no one country. Paine’s memory is part of the cultural history of all peoples and we should be proud of that fact. 

Editor’s note: This unpublished article by the late Eric Paine appears to have been prepared initially as a lecture given to the William Cobbett Society on April 25, 1992

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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 special pass out for this meeting of earthies  celebrating my bicentenary. Up here it only seems like yesterday that you were  doing your best to change the tried and tested old order.  

P: Sorry if I’m a bit late but all these new methods of communicating through  the atmosphere seem to be effecting my wings. Before we start going over old  times I must say it’s a completely different world down there to what it was in our  day. Aeroplanes darting about all over the earth, motor cars and tractors making  horses redundant, and how I would have relished using their instant E-mail  instead of scribbling away millions of words with a quill and waiting ages for an  answer. Down there they seem to be in a similar turmoil regarding social change  as when our controversy raged in the 18th century.  

B: I don’t think I would want to go back there now; latest reports from new  arrivals up here say they are no happier. I still maintain it was a great pity you had  the audacity to produce that cursed book, Rights of Man in reply to my Reflections  on the Revolution in France. History repeated itself with revolutions in Russia, China  and elsewhere with little or nothing learned from the French revolution, or any  other bloody or so-called democratic revolution. Allow power to the masses and  sooner or later a dominant elite emerges producing anarchy, sometimes terror  and general chaos. In the end the vast majority end up far worse than before they  started disturbing time-honoured rule by kings, aristocrats and bishops. I vividly  remember saying in a speech in the House of Commons as I threw my sword on  the floor, ‘this is what we get from an alliance with France, nothing but PAINE,  PAINE, PAINE!’  

P: Oh, dear, you have not changed a bit and it looks like you never will get into  the highest celestial spheres. A fat lot of good it did you clinging to the Catholic  faith. I got rid of all denominational baggage and I reckon I did far more good in  the world than you ever did. You will never meet up with such enlightened souls as  Socrates, Bruno and Gandhi as I have.  

B: Didn’t they see through you?  

P: Very funny, but you did serve a purpose because had you not written  Reflections I might never have written Rights of Man, which sold far more copies  than your book. Equal rights for all had to be spelt out and that the old order of  oppression of the poor by monarchies, aristocracy and the church had to be  overturned everywhere. True, the results to date have been rather patchy and in  many parts of the world there is still a long way to go, but my ideas for free  education, democracy, embryo social security and many other things way ahead of  our time eventually came to pass in more advanced countries. That book became  the bible of the poor and it sold a million and a half copies before I got called up. Did you ever go to prison for your principles as I did and was nearly executed in Paris?  

B: You were always good at blowing your own trumpet.  

P: You prospered on earth as a paid hack whereas I gave away most of my  earnings to the causes of freedom, or others made money out of my works. And  look where it got you in terms of eternity. How ever did you manage to sleep at  night after wriggling out of paying back that loan you used to purchase your  estate? And you were paid a huge pension by George III.  

B: That is none of your business – and why have they not put up a statue in the  House of Commons to you like they have for me?  

P: That is no honour as you were a party to protecting their vested interests. I  always said principles before parties otherwise parties rule principles and I reckon  I have lived up to that. You completely ignored the causes of the French  Revolution; the exploitation of the poor for many centuries by rulers with  inherited rights and privileges even more so than in Britain and god knows that  was bad enough. You were utterly heedless of the profligacy of the court and the  duplicity of the church. You kept the profit from the sale of your book, whereas I  received a prosecution for Rights of Man and was outlawed from Britain. I don’t  suppose you ever read Tom Erskine’s defence of me.  

B: Your ego is as big as ever and I do not know how I put up with you when you  came to stay with us for a few days after American independence. You were always  too acerbic, dogmatic and a rabble rousing zealot. You took away the peoples faith  in the bible and the church, which has always been a great source of comfort and  consolation. You fostered hatred and discontent causing many innocent people to  cross over early. Earthies are just incapable of living together harmoniously when  they are given silly notions about their rights, which you implanted. Duties before  rights I say and you get less fights. Have you noticed they put up a statue to me in  Washington and not one to you?  

P: I had noticed that and appropriately you are doing a sort of Hitler salute.  Have you heard the common saying: ‘you silly old Burke’, or, ‘you Burke’? I always  said rights should be united with the idea of duties; rights become duties by  reciprocity. Monuments don’t mean that much, but I confess I am chuffed that  there are monuments to me in Thetford, New Rochelle, Paris, Morristown,  Leicester, Lewes, Alford and now London for the commemoration of the 200th  anniversary of the publication of Rights of Man. There are probably more, but I  don’t go around looking for them. I hear they are to put up a statue of me in  Bordentown, where I was happiest in America. But let us not go into toting up  these memorials, it’s better that people concentrate upon living up to my  example. I was not perfect, whoever is?  

B: Well I have toted up the memorials world-wide and I come out well on top!  P: That is probably because you were buried in Westminster Abbey was it, and  gullible people thought you were automatically entitled to be honoured  elsewhere? Silly old William Cobbett dug my bones up ten years after I had  crossed over and took them to England with the intention of building a  mausoleum in my honour and giving me a decent burial, but he never got around to it and so, like Moses, I have no earthly sepulchre.  

B: Thank goodness for that. The less people know about you the better.  Encouraging people to get ideas above their stations only leads to the democratic  bog with everybody claiming equal rights when it’s not practical. If everybody is  somebody then nobody is anybody!!  

P: You old hornwogler, and I could say much worse. If mankind had clung to  your sort of philosophy, dogmas and creeds they would never have got to the  moon in 1969. I had ideas about bridges, including one across the English  Channel, but never thought it would be possible to go to the moon as earthies  now have. It’s likely they will be landing on Mars and other planets soon. Kings,  nobles, or as I have called them, NO-ABILITIES, popes and bishops would never  have allowed it. They wanted to hold people down in metu perpetuo (constant fear,  in case you have forgotten your Latin). Fancy Apollo going all that way in a few  days and Armstrong being able to wonder at the infinite greatness of the creator,  which is all a bit old hat to us now. Compare that with the months I spent crossing  the Atlantic in a sailing boat. Five times I did it. By the way, I doubt if earthies will  ever be able to stop Neptune over there colliding with Uranus every 117 years. You  could say that I and those who followed my lead opened up new vistas for  humanity, whilst you were only concerned to toady to the status quo and stifle progress. For my pains, after my death I was initially falsely portrayed as a  devil-shaped shuttlecock, tossed between fanatical and infidel rackets.  

B: There you go again, soaring off into flights of fancy, kidding yourself you are a  stupor mundi (wonder of the world). You bring on analysis paralysis. I think it is  very wrong for earthies to be spending all that money on space exploration when  they have so many better things they could be doing. They want to clean up on  pollution down there before they start messing about on other planets.  

P: For once we agree. Earthies must give that a much higher priority. If they are  not careful they will completely mess up the whole ecosystem and they should  immediately stop playing around with those dreadful nuclear weapons. I claimed  to be a citizen of the world and the United Nations, who have honoured me, have  much to do if their world is to survive another fifty years.  

B: But you must remember the real is rational and the rational is real.  

P: Burkie, what a truly nebulous statement.  

B: It’s no use arguing with you. I am off to have a quick look at the test match.  History might have been very different if in 1789 the first overseas cricket team  had not stopped at Dover because of the bloody revolution. Thoughts of leg breaks and cover drives might have stopped the revolution but would they have  accepted the umpire’s word on leg before wicket and run outs?  

P: So now you are blaming the terror on me for not teaching them cricket. I  think it is time we declared, so up and away before you get another spell on earth  at the bottom of the pile this time.  

B: You can’t go on playing god forever. Remember that I said the wisdom of the  dead was capable of guiding the living. Goodbye you old Oxymoron, I’ll keep  working to get you sent down.  

P: Nonsense! As I said: ‘The rights of the living are beyond being constrained by the rights of the dead’. You are as stubborn as a mule. Humans are all made in  the same mould; it’s just that some are mouldier than others. Goodbye and keep  seeking the lumen gratiae (light of grace).

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Soon after becoming Honorary Secretary of the Thomas Paine Society our eminent President warned me to try to keep off the subject of religion regarding Thomas Paine. However, I would like to make a  few points which sometimes are overlooked. For many it is indeed a  hornets nest but we always have to be conscious of the fact that it is  extremely difficult to sweep away many centuries of indoctrination and  surveys show that about 70% of people still believe in god, though less  than 5% go regularly to church.  

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, apart from being willing to  fight in a just cause.  

We know Paine had no time for religious dogmas however wrapped  up and independence of thought and action was his happiness and  many of us are thankful for his wisdom and courage shown in The Age of  Reason, bringing out the cruelties, follies, exploitation and general  misuse of power by the church and the inaccuracies and inconsistency  of it. But many atheists tend to overlook all the good that has been  done, with or without ulterior motives in education, medical and  charitable work generally throughout the world.  

I hold Thomas Paine’s values of deism but will not mock those who  find comfort and solace in church membership including Catholics and Muslims. In my experience some militant atheists (like some believers) are not particularly likeable people, often cold, cynical about everything with little or no idealism in them. Not many foundations or institutions for the betterment of the less fortunate have been promoted by atheists and they tend to be lacking in tolerance for other people’s foibles and weaknesses which we all have. Even Voltaire, who perhaps much influenced Paine, said that if god had not been invented it would have been necessary to do so in order to suppress our basest instincts and selfishness. 

It must be said, whether we like it or not, that more altruistic work has been done in the world by those who believe in god than by those who sincerely believe that the “god thing” is a complete myth. Also, however we view religion, churches are a tremendous link with our ancestors worldwide. Regarding an afterlife, if any, those who fervently believe in spiritualism, psychic powers, continuation of life through atomic particles or whatever, need to remember that Thomas Paine only said that he hoped for happiness hereafter and that the almighty can change a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly, then it is possible there is an afterlife. Sincere believers in Jesus who want absolutes and are sure he was the son of god (unlike Paine) unless they suffer too much from hypocrisy and cant on their doorstep, are very hard to move. 

There is no denying that in many countries today christians, muslims, jews or whatever stand aside from fundamental abuses of human rights by oppressive regimes and in other countries religious believers are still persecuted. Thomas Paine said it is the scheme of invented systems of religion to hold man in ignorance of his creator, likewise of governments to hold man in ignorance of his rights. Thereby they are calculated for mutual support, and we still have not got separation of church and state. 

Thomas Paine preached tolerance, deciding that Adam, if there ever was such a man, was created a deist, stating, “let every man follow, as he has the right to do, the religion and worship he prefers”, presumably that covers rejection of any type of religion or faith. 

None of us knows for sure about the mysteries of life but we do need moral imperatives to guide us and if we try to live by the simple maxim of do unto others as we would be done by, we are less likely to land ourselves in trouble and confusion. Some may argue, perhaps with some justification, that religion, even though misused. as opium for the people, may in some cases be better than no religion at all or one based only on consumerism and to hell with the consequences for society and the planet.

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The Extended Circle. Jon Wynne-Tyson. Sphere, 1990. £6.99  

THIS is a most formidable collection of the thoughts of eminent  people on the underlying unity of life and the obligation we have to  extend the boundary of our compassion to the natural world. It runs to over six hundred pages, and requires no index as the contributions are in alphabetical order.  

The book took Wynne-Tyson six years to compile and a life-time of appalled observation of our unremitting cruelty towards non-human species, being motivated by the conviction that our treatment to each  other will not improve until we have learned to behave more  compassionately towards all sentient life.  

The book is not just a catalogue of man’s particular cruelties to animals such as vivisection, zoos, rodeos, factory farming, bull fighting,  blood sports, etc., but has the positive purpose of stressing the need for  a beneficial love of all creatures as an ante-dote to the chilling  inhumanity of societies which have inherited the life denying values of  an existence deifying growth above all humane, holistic and long term  considerations. The book makes for good soul searching and the church comes in for condemnation for being almost totally indifferent  towards the suffering of animals.  

This paperback is good value and 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. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.’  

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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 and the seven martyrs are commemorated by an obelisk erected in 1851 at Nunhead cemetery,  Rye Hill Estate, London.  

After being arrested in January 1793 for his so-called seditious  activities; Muir was released on bail and then he went to France to warn  the French that the execution of the monarch would be counter  productive to the reform movement. He came back via Ireland and was  arrested again at Stranraer. Being a barrister he defended himself at his  trial.  

This intrepid character escaped captivity en route to Botany Bay in  the Friendly Isles and after many adventures, including being badly  wounded when the Spanish ship he was on was attacked by a British  warship, he got back to France, where he was feted on his arrival in Bordeaux and Paris. 

He eventually died at Chantilly, a suburb of Paris,  having succumbed to the wounds he had received coupled with the  effect of his other ordeals.  

The Thomas Paine Society hope to be associated with the friends of Nunhead Cemetery in commemorating the 200th anniversary of the  sentencing of the Scottish martyrs.  

A recent copy of a Norfolk paper reveals a fitting coincidence in that a Thomas Muir is now manager of the Thomas Paine Hotel in Thetford,  which stands on the traditional site of Paine’s birthplace.

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As I sat listening to the speeches at the Sunday Observer 200th Anniversary of their own 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. However, it was particularly appropriate for The Observer to link their own anniversary with that of Rights of Man, as Paine and Paineites were in the vanguard for the fight for freedom of the press. 

There were eight of us present from the TPS, by kind permission of the newspaper, to hear Princess Anne, Donald Trelford, Editor of The Observer, and Edward Du Cann speak. The princess clearly respected Paine, albeit in a slightly whimsical manner, and it was great to hear his name mentioned so often with admiration. Our rather ambivalent feelings at being there at all were eased by the fact of the event being in aid of Save the Children Fund, of which the princess is president. 

However, I could not bring myself to call Princess Anne, “your Royal Highness”, when introduced to her (I think Thomas Paine may have got on well with her as both liked horses), good egg as she obviously is, in a haughty sort of way. I cannot see justification for the very high class social security that royalty and its hangers on receive. Probably to most people in Britain the continuance of royalty, or not, is hardly a burning issue, but glancing through Whitakers Almanac recently made me realise how strongly feudal elements remain in this country, and how much is shelled out to archaic remnants. 

The Queen’s annuity, tax free, of course, is approximately four and a half million pounds. She has fifty-eight household staff, twenty-seven in the Privy Purse and Treasurer’s office. The Lord Chamberlain’s office has sixty-five people, the Royal Collection office twenty. Her ecclesiastical household numbers fifty-nine people and there are thirteen medical staff, while the Master of the Household has a staff of twenty. There are also household staffs for each of the other royal households. No doubt the dubious origins of the Queen’s private estate pays for some or most of this, but Thomas Paine would not be amused to find that after 200 years many amusing and quaint offices still exist. These include, Women of the Bedchamber, Ushers, Keeper of the Jewel House, Keeper of Swans, Clerk to the Closet, Apothecary, Bargemaster, etc. There is little merit in the Queen paying for her horses and their upkeep from her private estates when we reflect on how they fell into her lap. 

The Queen Mother receives approximately half a million pounds, the Duke of Edinburgh three quarters of a million, the Duke of York, £189,000, Princess Anne, £154,000, Margaret, £148,000. The Duke of Kent gets £161,500, Princess Alexandria £154,000, the Duke of Gloucester, £119,000, Prince Edward, £20,000. Add to this the twenty-five other dukes, 220 earls, 150 viscounts, 900 barons (420 hereditary) plus thousands of baronettes, knights, privy councillors, members of ancient orders such as Garter, Thistle, etc., and the holders of Empire Crosses (though we no longer have an empire), which together constitute a formidable bulwark for the continuation of monarchy and social divisions. Having a vested interest in its continuation, they operate a kind of superficially soft-sell KGB to maint..in the status quo. Because, thankfully, Communism has collapsed in Russia, we should not ignore the abuses of the opposite extreme. 

The unelected House of Lords, which Thomas Paine attacked, is still there and likely to remain so until we have a proper written constitution, Bill of Rights, proportional representation, etc. The first thing is that every nation has a right to establish a constitution’, said Paine. The sums paid to those attending the House of Lords daily when it sits must be collectively considerable, added to which is the administrative and other costs. This is a waste of tax payers money, considering how little real power the Lords has. Peers daily allowances (1988 figures) are as follows: overnight accommoda- tion £57, day subsistence and incidental travel, £21, secretarial expenses, £22, and they have the right to recover travelling expenses, probably 1st class, between their estates or homes and London. 

In December 1988 there were twenty-six bishops (including vo arch-bishops), 784 hereditary peers, 379 life peers (65 female) entitled to attend. At this time twenty-one lords were members of the government, which speaks volumes about the evils of Thatcherism. There were also 84 peers without writs, 169 on leave of absence and 12 disclaimed for life. Average daily attendance in 1987-88 was said to be 333. 

One wonders if they were all in committee when the House of Lords is shown on TV. No doubt there are some really good public spirited members of the Lords, but Thomas Paine’s sweeping assertion that nobility meant NOABILITY, is probably true for the majority. 

As to monarchy and its residual powers, with full Europeanisation nearly upon us, something which Thomas Paine would have endorsed if properly constituted, the time is long overdue for a referendum on whether the House of Lords should continue or not. This masquerade should have long been over.

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Thomas Paine, Political And Social Thought. By Gregory Claey. Unwin & Hyman, 1989.

THE author concentrates for the most part on one of Paine’s best known political essays, Rights of Man. He dwells on the development of Paine’s thinking from his early American writing set against the backcloth of natural law and rights expounded by Locke, Burke and others. Republicanism and radicalism, together with Paine’s Quaker and deistic views. It analyses debates amongst historians and effectively demonstrates the underlying consistency in Paine’s thinking. 

Much consideration is given to the British reception of Rights of Man, and the successful efforts to abate temporarily the growth of the radical movement it inspired. 

The author makes a strong point when he says that Paine attempted to do in The Age of Reason, without the aid of ancient languages, or comparison of manuscripts, a deep historical reading of the bible, its inconsistencies, illogical assumptions and contradictions, whilst still retaining a very respectful tone when referring to the life of Christ. Thus, says Claey, many of the opponents of The Age of Reason conceded with Paine that a deep connection existed between theology and politics by accusing his followers, the Paineites, of aiming first to destroy Christianity so that the British constitution would naturally follow suit. 

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, but in no sense is it, or does it claim to be, a complete life of Thomas Paine.

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I decided to visit the United States in October as it was the month Paine had set out to go there in 1774, the first of his five journeys across the Atlantic. It so happened that my visit would coincide with the Annual General Meeting of the Thomas Paine-Huguenot Historical Society of New Rochelle. My journey contrasted greatly to Paine’s in that it lasted a mere six and a half hours in comfort unlike his of nine weeks in great discomfort and illness. My object in going was to meet TPS members in the United States, visit places of Paine interest and do some research. My hosts at New Rochelle were Mr & Mrs Stapleton, and they were awaiting me at the station. Florence is Historian of the American organisation, and is a charming individual, a tireless and enthusiastic worker in the Paine cause. Within an hour of my arrival the terrible earthquake hit California and the media was full of it – was there a connection!!!? 

Next day Mrs. Stapleton took me to visit the Paine Museum, which is shared with the Huguenots, refugees that had fled from religious persecution in France. The museum is in Paine’s cottage, which had been moved from its original site. The museum has a lecture hall which has a portrait of Paine and houses a bust of him and several relics. There is also a splendid library where we spent an all too brief two hours. Near the museum and not far from where Paine had been buried is a monument to him, erected in 1839. 

The following day I paid a return visit and heard an interesting talk from the President of the New Rochelle society about Paine and women’ s rights. On the Friday I ventured alone into New York to visit the United Nations, though the weather left much to be desired. At the United Nations I sat in on a debate about disarmament. I also joined a tour of the building which prompted me to conclude that despite all its weaknesses the United Nations has achieved a lot over the past forty years. The remainder of the day was spent in the City Museum of New York for a Thomas Paine browse. 

On the Sunday I visited a Baptist church for what turned out to be a three hour spiritual jamboree. I thought Thomas Paine would have been pleased to see ladies all dressed in white taking a prominent role in the service, with a black lady preacher, and when they asked visitors to stand up and announce themselves, there was a round of applause when I told them I was on a “Paine pilgrimage”. 

In the afternoon I attended the AGM of the Thomas Paine— Huguenot Historical Society, at which I was invited to address the members. I congratulated them on the splendid way they guard and promote the Thomas Paine image, and the devoted manner in which they shoulder their responsibilities. I concluded my address with my “Human Rights Missionary Man” song. President Cooper, in his address to the society, reported on a visit to Paris he had made for the rededication of the Paine statue there. A proposal I made for support for an exchange visit in 1991 was well received. After the meeting a few of us went on to the splendid Thomas Paine Hotel at which we had “Tom Paine pie”. 

WASHINGTON 

Our member David Henley drove me to Washington, stopping at Fort Lee, Morristown, where stands a magnificent statue of Paine in a lovely setting that any Paine enthusiast should make every effort to see. This statue should really be in Washington itself. We then went on to Bordentown to visit Paine’s house there, which has been occupied for over sixty years by the charming Valentini sisters, both TPS members, who were most happy to see us. Another keen member of the TPS who lives in Bordentown, George Earle, came round to meet us and took David and I to see Col. Kirkbride’s grave and monument. Mr. Earle took us out to dinner and it was 11.30pm before we eventually reached Washington and there I met David’s charming wife, Nancy. David Henley is a great admirer of Paine and has collected many interesting items related to him. He has made a detailed study of Paine portraits, and has an unrecorded example in his collection, perhaps the one Col. Trumbell presented to Jefferson in 1789. David supports the hypothesis that Paine wrote the letters of Junius, and had a child by his first wife, which he considers was adopted. 

In Washington I took in the usual round of tourist sites. In the Smithsonian Institute I saw a model of Paine’s bridge. In the Capitol there was no trace of any gratitude for Paine’s role in the formation of the United States apart from a minor ceiling painting. A visit to the National Library allowed me to inspect original Paine documents and hear tapes of quotations from Paine used in the last war to encourage men to enlist in the services. These included Basil Rathbone reading the famous passage starting: “These are the times that try mens souls….” It was a pleasure to have dinner with Frank Smith, author of Thomas Paine Liberator, and Herbert Manius, who offered to help with the 1991 exchange proposal. 

PHILADELPHIA 

I went to Philadelphia by Greyhound coach, a journey of three hours. This was where Paine began his great work. I stayed at a youth hostel set in glorious parkland a few miles out of the city, where I met a party of Estonians and had a long discussion with one and distributed Paine literature to the rest. My first venue in Philadelphia was Independence Hall, a picture of Paine hangs there. Next I visited the Philosophical Society to inspect the Gimbel Paine Collection housed there. Looking at the original letters and other material made me realise just how close Paine was to many leading figures in three countries. 

Benjamin Franklin is well commemorated in Philadelphia, and a modern “shrine” to him is found at the site of his family residence. Here is shown a sugary film about his life and recorded conversations take place between models dressed in period costume which rise from beneath the floor. The centre has ingenious computerised devices to stimulate visitors, and it was good to find that Paine’s role in American history was not ignored, but there is no portrait of him and no postcards showing him available at the shop. A visit to several other historical places in the city revealed that Paine is not portrayed in any, nor is it known where he lived, however, most of those I spoke to seemed to know something about him, though many were still ambivalent in their attitude to him. 

So it was then back to New York, where I had the unpleasant experience of having my pocket picked at Grand Central Station, and discovered the New York police to be particularly unhelpful, to put it mildly. I wrote about this to the Mayor of the city, and also to the “Philadelphia Public Enquirer” about that city’s general lack of public recognition of Paine’s heroic stand for American independence (the letter was, I understand, published). In Washington, I noted a statue of Edmund Burke. 

I must express my heartfelt thanks to Mr & Mrs Stapleton, Mr & Mrs Henley, Ann Kalloudis, George Earle and the members of the New Rochelle society for their great help. An added bonus was to bring back a splendid bust of Paine by Gabriel Pierro, rescued from New Rochelle Town Hall by Mrs Stapleton, which will be “installed” at the “Bull”, Lewes, next year by our new Vice—Presidents, Mr & Mrs David Henley as a gift from the United States. 

In all my “pilgrimage” was a truly memorable and Paine-expanding experience, which should hopefully make me more effective in talking about and working for the great man’s ever continuing cause.

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