A Political Biography Of Thomas Paine. W. A. SPECK. xv & 258pp. Hardbound. London, Pickering & Chatto, 2013. ISBN 13: 9781848930957. £60.00 

For anyone interested in the life and influence of Thomas Paine the appearance of a new biography of him is to be warmly welcomed. Naturally it invites comparison with previous biographical studies, in particular the most recent. It bears out well in relationship to them. What stands out in this new work is its detailed coverage of Paine’s career and his comprehensive treatment of the controversies and issues Paine addressed. 

The author draws attention to the problems encountered by biographers due to the gaps in surviving information about Paine’s early life. To some extent he fills some of these gaps, particularly when it comes to Paine’s years in Lewes, in doing this he has drawn on the research undertaken by a retired excise officer of George Hindmarch, though not uncritically, though approvingly citing his contention that there was no such thing as the Headstrong Club, and that Paine had adopted republicanism – “even revolutionary” views as a consequence of his involvement. Professor Speck’s examination of the years Paine spent in Lewes bring out clearly that further research might well pay dividends. A more plausible explanation for Paine’s conversion to republicanism could have been a degree of resentment at the rejection of his Case of the Officers of Excise, over which he had laboured long and hard, and eventually lost his post with the Excise. His resentment, could well have made him more receptive to republicanism when after moving to the American colonies and there became aware of the discontent amongst the colonists to British government policies in respect of the colonies. His final conversion may well have been events at Lexington and Concord, which prompted Paine to write of rejecting ‘the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England for ever’. I would have liked to see Professor Speck go into the subject in detail. Whatever, Common Sense became not just a rallying point for the colonists but an exposition of republicanism that had an influence internationally. Yet for all his unqualified republicanism he was to oppose the execution of the deposed French king – at his personal cost, and would, but for an accident, or was it?, followed the king to the guillotine. 

Professor Speck refers to Paine’s ability to express himself in a manner readily understood by his targeted readership, artisans, small tradesmen, apprentices and others, an ability that was to alarm the political and religious establishments in England following the publication of Rights of Man which had achieved record sales. Previous Paine biographers have accepted the claim that the first biography of him, written by George Chalmers, who concealed his authorship under the name “Francis Oldys”, which appeared in 1791, had been commissioned and paid by the government, for whom he worked, however, Professor Speck questions the validity of this, and notes that given Chalmers political views [he had fled from the colonies following the outbreak of the revolution] he may have taken it on himself to denounce Paine. The fact that he had access to official papers, as chief clerk to the committee of the Privy Council, he would have had this. 

An example, not cited by Speck, of the alarm generated first by Rights of Man and then by The Age of Reason, can be found in a missive addressed to his clergy by the bishop of London, Beilby Porteus. Writing specifically of Paine’s works he refers to “the meanness of their style, and the homeliness, the plainness, and the gross familiarity of their manner, are all too well adapted to the taste and apprehension of those readers whom they are meant to captivate. This”, he goes on, “is a new (his emphasis) species of infidel writing, recently introduced among us. Hitherto we have had to contend with the Tolands, the Tindals, the Bolingbrokes, and the Humes of the age; men, whose writings could fall only into the hands of a few in the higher ranks of life, and were not likely to make much impression on well- informed and well cultivated minds. But the pieces to which I allude [Rights of Man and The Age of Reason] are addressed to the multitude (again his emphasis), and are most dexterously brought down to the level of their understanding”. He continues in a similar vein calling Paine’s works, “most artful snares” (Beilby Porteus. Tracts on Various Subjects. London, Cadell & Davies, 1807. pp.276-278). 

Ironically, having roundly condemned Paine’s style of writing he called upon his clergy to emulate it in both their writing and sermonising. Perhaps aware they could not, or would not, in 1792 he begged Hannah More to write something in simple words to open the eyes of uneducated people dazed by the words “liberty” and “equality”. Initially she had refused but then agreed, writing her tract, Village Politics, supposedly about a discussion between a country carpenter Will Chip, who was happy with his inferior social status and defended the political and social status quo, and a supporter of Paine’s ideas, who, naturally, ended up agreeing with Chip. This tract is briefly discussed by Professor Speck. 

A Political Biography of Thomas Paine must surely become one of the most important of Paine biographies and deserves a wide readership. It is a detailed overview of Paine’s life and career presented in varying degrees of detail, and written in what is a very readable, almost Paineite style. As well as its nine chapters on Paine and the disputes he became involved in through his writings, many of which retain their relevance and could apply to events and situations today given some minor changes, it also has thirty-four pages of notes, an extensive bibliography and a useful index. One error I noted, the reference to Paine’s Jewish critic David Levi, as being an American, whereas he was English, being by profession a hat-maker turned printer. 

A Political Biography of Thomas Paine is a comprehensive and thoughtful work that deserves to be not only in academic libraries but also those of anyone seriously interested in Thomas Paine. However, its high price is regrettably likely to put it beyond the reach of many students, though the Historical Association has just published an essay on Paine by Professor Speck. Priced at £2.99 it is at the time of writing restricted to Kindle, but hopefully the association will publish it in pamphlet form. 

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Literary Walks In Bath, Eleven Excursions in the Company of Eminent Authors. Andrew Swift & Kirsten Elliott. Bath, Akeman Press, 2012. xii & 320pp. Illustrated. Paperback. ISBN 978-9560989-3-1. £15.00. 

Last year I spent a week on holiday in Bath, a picturesque and historic Somerset city whose roots reach back to pre-Roman times, but achieved national, if not international, fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a spa town, the water of which was reputed to be particularly efficacious, a belief that attracted to the city the great and good, and the not so great and good, all anxious to partake of its water, or be seen in the company of the famous in British society. As well as this side of Bath’s story there is its rich literary heritage, and it is this side of the town’s story on which the authors concentrate. 

Both authors are well qualified to write on the town for they have long experience in conducting walking tours of the city, as well as authoring several other books on it, or aspects of it. Reading this book left me wishing that I had it when I stayed in Bath as it would have made my time there much more rewarding. However, this said, what has it to do with Thomas Paine, who, to my knowledge, never visited it? Well while there is nothing in the book that indicates he ever did, what it also brings to the fore in chapter seven, which is entitled, ‘The Rhythm of Tom Paine’s Bones’, are details of the interest in and reaction locally to Paine’s ideas, as is indicated in the chapter’s sub-heading, “Radicalism and Repression in Pitt’s ‘Reign of Terror'”. 

What the chapter relates offers is a tour of the places in the city associated with individuals known for their support either for Paine and/or his ideas. It commences with Henry Hunt, who in 1817 is said to have addressed between twelve and twenty thousand people at a gathering in Orange Grove, though the Bath Chronicle put the figure at five hundred, the purpose of the meeting being to agitate for universal suffrage. 

The military, so the authors note, kept a watchful eye on the crowd but did not, as they also point out, act as they did at St. Peter’s Field in Manchester two years later. Others who were to address meetings in the bath included Henry Vincent the Chartist, who also called for universal suffrage. The authors offer an account of the life of Paine that extends over two pages and includes a portrait of him. This leads to a discussion on Paine’s critic Hannah More, who has a commemorative plaque on a building in Great Pulteney Street, where she had lived. Her attacks on Paine’s ideas are covered in reasonable detail, in the course of which the author’s support for Paine becomes evident, although they make the mistake of calling his book Rights of Man, The Rights of Man. They go on to notice the city prison in Grove Street “where many of Paine’s supporters, and others fighting for their rights ended up”. Details are also given of the numerous occasions near Bath where locals hung or burned Paine in effigy, while membership of the Loyal Bath Association which had a membership of seven thousand, although, they note, that many of those who signed up had done so at the behest of their employers and for them not to have done so would have entailed their dismissal and denunciation to the authorities. 

John Thelwall, who had assisted in the formation of the London Corresponding Society is buried in Bath and details are given as to how to find his grave. The chapter, a truly fascinating and informative read, even if you do not visit the city, also offers an explanation for the chapter’s title, it comes from a song, described as “stirring”, by Graham Moore, “The Rhythm of Tom Paine’s Bones”, though they add the thinking behind the song’s title “is a convoluted and bizarre one. They will by citing a tribute by Robert Ingersoll to Paine and the words of Graham Moore that Paine can still provide inspiration for those fighting new threats to the Rights of Man. 

Those interested in radicals and radicalism will also find the previous chapter: ‘Rebels and Romantics, Catharine Macaulay, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley & Percy Bysshe Shelley’, a productive read. Of those in the title the least known is Catharine Macaulay, and the authors devote considerable coverage to this remarkable woman, a republican, supporter of the American colonists in their struggle for independence, who writing to Washington on events in France, in which she referred to “all friends of Liberty on this side of the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which in all probability had been accelerated by the American Revolution”. Mary Wollstonecroft wrote of Catharine Macaulay that she had been the woman of the greatest abilities undoubtedly this country had ever produced. 

Literary Walks in Bath is not a dull repetition of the common place, but a scintillating tour of the city’s literary heritage, and in many respects of Britain’s, doing so in eleven detailed chapters. The authors have as well as a detailed knowledge of their city but an in-depth literary knowledge. They write well and are not beyond humorous anecdotes. It’s a wonderful book from which I emerged with a greater increase in my knowledge on aspects of Britain’s literary heritage than I had before I read it. Do I have any criticism, strangely yes. I would have liked an index.

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Where The USA Went Wrong, A Study Of The United States Empire. Joe Hanania. 176pp. Paperback. Privately Published in a limited edition, Nouic, 2011. ISBN 978-2- 9532166-3-9. Text in English. No price given Details from the author at 27, Beausejour, 87330 Nouic, France. 

This perceptive study of political and social developments from the birth of the USA in 1776 up until the Bush administration is a challenging and controversial being an evaluation of the nation’s history and how, as the author sees it, it went wrong and departed from the ideals of some of its founding fathers. 

A former American serviceman but now a French citizen, Joe Hanania has over several years delved deeply into his subject and come up with a work that certainly prompts one to think critically of US policies in the past and the motivation behind them, as also the manner they have impacted upon those currently pursued. 

Thomas Paine looms large in the book, particularly in its first chapter that is devoted to the issues that culminated in the birth of the nation, and the controversies involved then and in the years following. The author shows how a few “leaders” manipulated matters in order to pursue their imperialistic aims in respect of the new born nation. He observes that while the proposed constitution of the USA “looks like a constitution for the people” (his italics), this depends on the interpretation placed upon the meaning of “people”. The authors of the constitution were basically the two dozen people who discussed and concocted it behind locked doors, while most of those who signed it were not even present at the Constitutional Convention, they simply passed it and signed on the dotted line, so to speak. 

Mr. Hanania has harsh words to say of the attitudes prevailing amongst many in the new nation’s political leadership concerning the indigenous native population, the Red Indians, and tellingly cites Washington’s contention that they “have nothing human except the shape. The extension of our settlements will certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire, both being beasts of prey though they differ in shape”. This view can, in fact, be traced back to the earliest British colonists who considered them to be sub-human, this despite the assistance rendered at times to the early settlers without which help they would not have survived. The problem with them as far as wealthy slave owning plantation owners like Washington was that the Indians would not readily allow themselves to be enslaved. In Mr. Hanania’s opinion, people such as Washington, Jefferson, Adams and others had a vision of an American empire in mind from the outset, differing here from that of Paine, and maintains that the constitutional convention was actually the beginning of what eventually has become “the US Empire”. 

Where did the USA go wrong, the author asks? He answers this by saying it was when a handful of men were allowed to “pull off what was perhaps the greatest coup d’etat in modern history”. The implication here is that if those who absented themselves had participated in the deliberations what eventually transpired might have been dramatically different. Indeed, one wonders what would have occurred had Paine remained in America instead of allowing himself to be encouraged to leave the young nation for France then England. The people who had urged him to go for the most part detested his popular radicalism and feared his abilities, particularly as a pamphleteer. In the event, he remained in Europe far longer than he had planned and during which time he almost lost his life because of the inactivity to assist him on the part of the American minister in France, Gouvemeur Morris, a wealthy banker and supporter of Silas Deane, whose financial activities Paine had done much to expose, who hated Paine. But then, had he remained, would he ever have written Rights of Man or The Age of Reason, two of the most influential books in political history, and dare it be said, religion? 

The author rounds off “Where the USA Went Wrong” with a biographical appendix on the development of his ideas and the clashes he had with the “powers that be”, particularly amongst the military. which was to lead to him re-evaluating his previous opinions, a process that led ultimately to this interesting and intriguing book.

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We thank Paul Myles for the transcript of this important letter, now in the British Library (BL ADD 58968 F 67 Account of Dover to Calais by J. Mason), from the government agent J. Mason, to J.B. Surges. an under secretary for foreign affairs, which demolishes the constantly repeated mantra of Paine having fled the country to escape arrest. It is clear from what Mason writes that Paine had agreed to travel to France following the arrival of an official representative from the municipality of Calais, the people of which had elected him to represent them in the French National Assembly, sent to invite and accompany him there. The text remains as written.

– R.W. Morrell

To James Bland Burges Esq 

etc. etc. etc. 

Whitehall 

to Dover by favor of the captain of the Kings Packet the Courier Sept 15th London 

I take the liberty of informing you that in the packet which brought me from Dover here, this morning, came Mr Thos Paine, the Great Patriot accompanied by a Mr Audibert , a [ municipal officer] of this place, who, by the accounts before I left Paris was sent to London to fetch him, a Mr Frost an Attorney, of Electioneering memory if I am mistaken not, accompanied them, and is going to Paris with them- They arrived at Dover at halt past ten, this morning, and, as Mr Audibert said were followed from London by a P. Chaise all the way, when they got to the inn the officers of the customs came and insisted on searching them, which, after some objections on their part, was submitted to, as force was threatened in case of refusal, the officers said they on information etc, which Mr Audibert wanted them to produce, but they did not, they were kept an hour and 5 minutes in the room, with the door locked a great part of the time, 

Mr Frost (I heard him) said he wanted to go to the recugury (toilet) and they refused to let him go. They examined their papers very strictly and opened some of their letters, the most suspected no doubt and took the directions of the others, when asked what money they had, Mr P. told that in the Packet, he had about 25 guineas. I believe they made him count them. I think, but not so positive as to this, Mr A. said he tore a letter that their curiosity might not be satisfied in reading it notwithstanding it was of no consequence, according to his account. Mr Audibert complains violently of the ill treatment they received, and being kept in prison for an hour and 5, after his being so serviceable to members of English at Calais etc.etc.etc. 

Threatens he will publish it in all the English papers, if they will not put it in, he says he will have bills posted up at his expense in London to publish it to the nation. This group of 3 set off tomorrow I believe, for Paris, therefore the National Assembly will be informed of it in the course of a few days. This company sir, went on board the packet immediately on being liberated, the packet was followed ’till out of the pier, which might be a quarter of an hour, by numbers of people, to stare at Tom Paine, as they called him, he was hissed a great deal, and a many ridiculous speeches made relative to his trade, / he has been a stay maker at Dover / the crowd increased very much, the wind being stuck the Packet was obliged to be towed out, I believe had we remained much longer, they would have pelted him with stones from the beach. 

Personally Sir, he is a very mean looking man, it is in my opinion a disgrace to them, rather than a merit that a better representative can not be found at home without having recourse to a foreigner, like him. He is the picture of a journeyman Taylor who has been drunk and playing at nine pins for the 3 first days of the week, and is returning to his work on Thursday. We arrived at Calais and as soon as he was known to be on the shore the people flocked to see him, and it was talked of saluting him with the guard as he passed the Place d’ Armes, it rained hard as I left him. 

He has had an interview this evening with Lord Landerdale, who I believe was desirous of seeing him and has been also at the assembly of the [ In e o buis ] here, which I believe is held three times a week, Mr Paine made a very short speech there I in English / en quatre mots / saying that he was proud of the honour the citizens of the Pas du Calais, had done him in electing him etc. That he had ever been a friend to the rights of man. and hoped that he should continue to be so nearly these words. 

The captain of the Packet told me it was an order from the Treasury to examine them- I perhaps need not inform you of that Sir. I saw this morning at Dover a man of the name of Clark, from the upper office, who was just arrived from London, who with one of this place, Dover, possibly came about this business. I hope Sir, this might come safe to your hand, the Captain Jo. Oyton of the courier packet who sails tomorrow has promised to put it in the post at Dover, I leave it in the care of the Landlord here, for this purpose. 

Upwards of 200 Frenchmen arrived yesterday at Dover from Dieppe etc. this morning about 60 sailed in a boat for Ostend, the Town is full of them. 

I have the honour to be, with the utmost respect 

Sir 

your most obedient and most humble servant 

J. Mason 

Calais 

11 o’ clock, Friday Morning Sept. 14th 1792 

J B Burges Esq. 

London 

(BL ADD 58968 F. 67 Account of Dover to Calais by J. Mason) 

(The London Mission of Thomas Pinckney, 1792-1798 Author(s): Samuel Flagg Bemis Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jan., 1923), pp. 228- 247)

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Thomas Paine And America, 1776-1809. Edited by Kenneth W. Burchell. 6 volumes. 2496pp. London, Pickering & Chatto, 2009. ISBN-13-9781851969647. £495.00. $875.00 

When Thomas Paine arrived in Philadelphia in 1774 he faced an uncertain future. He was seriously ill from an ailment picked up on the voyage to America, although thanks both to the captain of the ship on which he had travelled, having a cabin to himself, and the letters of introduction he carried from Benjamin Franklin to relatives, he received medical assistance on arrival that led to his. recovery. Because of the actions of the British government in imposing unpopular taxes and what was perceived to be restrictions on trade, there was considerable unrest amongst the populace which was accompanied with a feeling that change was called for. As for Paine himself, his first and most pressing need was to find employment, for although he was given the job of tutoring the sons of some prominent individuals, one of the recommendations in the letters being that he could undertake this as he had been a schoolmaster in London, he was not destined for this, as a chance meeting in a bookshop with one of the two proprietors of the newly established Pennsylvania Magazine, led to an invitation to him to contribute to it and before long he was appointed as its editor, a job in which he proved an outstanding success. 

Paine had some experience of writing as he had been asked when working as an exciseman in Lewes, to draw up a document for presentation to the British parliament setting out the arguments supportive of giving the low paid excisemen an increase in their salaries, only to have the members of parliament refuse to accept it. His Case of the Officers of Excise has been described as the first national trade union manifesto. But it was to have unfortunate consequences for Paine, as the Commissioners of Excise, who had asked him to draw up the appeal, dismissed him following its failure, then his marriage broke down and the shop he ran in Lewes failed. The future for him must have looked exceedingly bleak. However, he had got to know Benjamin Franklin in London, a friendship stemming from their common interest In science, and Franklin suggested to him that he should make a new start by emigrating to Pennsylvania. Paine, who rarely ever appears to have taken note of advice, this time did so. Perhaps the astute Franklin had sensed that he had potential, but it is unlikely that he had any inkling of the impact Paine was destined to make on the political life of the thirteen British colonies in America. 

Although the magazine Paine edited was officially apolitical, this did not prevent him including material that had a political slant, although most of his interest in political and social controversy was given voice to in letters he wrote to newspapers. Paine was no stranger to controversy having served an apprenticeship, so to speak, in the cut and thrust debates at the Headstrong Club that met in Lewes, of which he was a leading member. It is also believed that he was a supporter, if not an active helper, of the radical politician John Wilkes. Thus he would have taken a close interest in the discussions in the coffee houses and taverns of Philadelphia as well as in private gatherings that centred around the disputes with the government in London during which the idea of independence probably cropped up from time to time, for the radical John Cartwright had suggested the idea in one of his works that circulated in the colonies. Then late in 1775 Paine resigned as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, not a step to be taken lightly for one new to the colony who did not possess private means. This would suggest that something was afoot. 

In January 1776, there appeared on sale in Philadelphia a pamphlet entitled Common Sense, that created a tremendous stir accompanied by much speculation as to the identity of its anonymous author. Written in what might be described as a journalistic style, it marshalled the arguments not just for the colonies becoming independent of Britain but also that their form of government should be republican, a suggestion that went far beyond Major Cartwright’s ideas. Such was the pamphlet’s persuasive impact that there can be little doubt that it prepared the ground for the Declaration of Independence issued by the American Continental Congress on July 4, of the same year. Thus Paine may be said to have been the inspiration for that document, although some Americans have gone further and argued that while he may not have been one of the signatories he was, in effect, its actual author (cf. Joseph Lewis. Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration of Independence. New York, Freethought Press Association, 1947). Although most historians reject this hypothesis, a far more probable case can be made for some of his ideas having had an input into the Declaration, particularly a clause that had it been included would have banned slavery in America, however, this was eliminated from the final draft because of opposition from plantation owners, bankers and others of that ilk. 

Evidence of how Common Sense swayed opinion in favour of independence is provided by the anonymous author of Civil Prudence, Recommended to the Thirteen United Colonies of North America, which had been written, so the author states, not long after the repeal of the Stamp Act. He had heard of the pamphlet and it’s advocacy of the case for independence, which disturbed him and had led him to conclude it to have been the “the invention of some Tory, to sow discord among the Colonies, and to set our friends in Great-Britain against us”, but once having obtained and read a copy, he underwent a complete change of mind, finding it had given him “a new set of thoughts, and opened a wider door to the flourishing of trade and common wealth, as well as of the due preservation of liberty” than he had ever imagined to be the case. As a consequence he decided to dedicate his own work “To the most excellent Patriot, COMMON SENSE, Defender of natural Right and Liberties of Mankind”. 

In contrast to the opinion expressed by the writer of the foregoing, are the arguments set out in another response. The writer, who describes himself as °An American”, entitled his pamphlet The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a pamphlet entitled Common Sense. As far as he was concerned Common Sense was “one of the most artful, insidious and pernicious pamphlets” he had ever met with, in which the author “gives vent to his own private resentment and ambition”. His “scheme”, the writer believed, would be found to be “shocking to the ears of Americans. The man who penned these hostile sentiments is now known to have been Charles Inglis, a prominent New York cleric and outspoken critic of both independence and republicanism, who left America after the British forces withdrew from New York, though he was later to return to the continent following his appointment as the first Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia in Canada, 

The two pamphlets cited from above are included among the hundred other pieces of varying length reprinted in Thomas Paine and America, making this an important source of contemporary works written in response to those of Thomas Paine, none of which are included. Although the overwhelming majority are American published and written, there are five by British writers, all critical of Paine, included, for, as the editor Kenneth Burchell explains, they had been specifically addressed to an American readership and their known influence was almost exclusively limited to America. Most of the works reprinted are reproduced as facsimiles, each of which has been digitally cleaned to make for easier reading, while the remainder which did not allow for such treatment have been reset. Collectively the six volumes of Thomas Paine and America have in excess of two thousand pages. The organisation is thematic and chronological, with each item being prefaced by a short introductory note presenting relevant information that includes, whenever possible, the identity of those writers who wrote anonymously or used pseudonyms. Some limited bibliographical data is also provided. According to the editor, the criteria employed when it came to selecting works for inclusion was governed by an intention to concentrate on lesser known responses as the better known essays are more easily accessible. As a consequence, many of the works to be found in Thomas Paine and America are reprinted there for the first time since the original dates of their publication, although some have been cited in books on Paine.

The first volume concentrates exclusively on Common Sense, and includes a total of seven works all dated to 1776. The second volume has a threefold division, the first part of which is devoted to the dispute Paine had with Silas Deane, although only two works are reprinted, one a brief letter favourable to Paine and the other the anonymously written Echo from the Temple of Wisdom, thought to be by Deane himself. The second part to the reaction to Rights of Man and reprints sixteen pieces including a sequence of letters published in the press and two poems. One of the more substantial works included is Henry Mackenzie’s, An Answer to Paine’s Rights of Man. The author, a Scottish lawyer who lived in Edinburgh, describes his book as being “addressed to the people of Great Britain”, although no British imprint is currently recorded. The edition reprinted here is that published by William Cobbett in Philadelphia in 1796 when he was living and working there. It includes a hostile dedication to Joseph Priestley written by him as Peter] Porcupine. Priestley, like Paine, had strongly supported the French Revolution and was known for his support of Paine’s political ideology. He had been forced to leave England in 1774 and had settled in Northumberland Town in Pennsylvania. The final part of the volume reprints three replies to The Age of Reason, a theme continued throughout the next three volumes, which is illustrative of the interest in, and controversy aroused by Paine’s book, which prompted Priestley join the many who replied to it, although his An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason, that was first written and published in America in 1794, but is not amongst those reprinted. The final volume has a two-fold division, the first part containing six pieces relating to Paine’s public criticism of George Washington for, in his view, not having responded to an appeal he had sent to him requesting that the president, whom he had considered to be a personal friend, use his influence with the French to gain his release following his arrest in Paris in 1793. One of the pieces reprinted here is an anonymously written attack on Paine by William Cobbett. The second part reprints some forty- two pieces published in American newspapers and journals reacting to the news in 1802 that Paine intended to return to the United States having been away for fifteen years. 

Concluding each of the six volumes is a section containing fully detailed and annotated end-notes, while in addition to these, the final volume also has a general index relating to the various reprints but not to editorial matter. An index covering this would have been of value. 

Thomas Paine and America is competently edited by the American Paine scholar Kenneth Burchell, who in the introduction found in the first volume explains the rationale behind the work, stating it to have been the aim to “place a large single collection in the hands of scholars and others concerned with the debates that surrounded Paine and the American Early Republic”, for Paine’s works “were at the centre of the most important debate on democratic principles in history, from which emerged for the first time the full range of recognizably modem political ideologies, ranging from conservatism to Whiggism and liberalism to radicalism”. 

The introduction also has some critical notes appertaining to the first two biographies of Paine, the first of which had been written by George Chalmers, a government employee who concealed the fact by using the pseudonym ‘Francis Oldys, A. M. of the University of Pennsylvania’, his book being entitled, The Life of Thomas Pain (sic), the Author of Rights of Man, With a Defence of his Writings, which was first published in London in 1791 by John Stockdate, and was anything but a “defence”, instead the use of the word sought to lull supporters of Paine to buy the heavily subsidised book in the hope that after reading it they would drop their support for Paine and his radical, republican ideas If that was truly the government’s hope then it cannot be considered a success. Yet, as it contains material on Paine’s early life not available elsewhere, it possesses some value. It is interesting to note that Stockdale also published John Quincy Adams’s An Answer to Pain’s (sic) Rights of Man, which is reprinted in Thomas Paine and America, from the Stockdale edition. John Quincy Adams’ father, also named John, had himself written a response to Paine’s Common Sense, although without mentioning it by name: Thoughts on Government: Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies. He had been alarmed by amongst the populace for Paine’s proposals, which he considered to be “foolish”, as he records in his diary from which Burchell quotes. Adams considered the ideas in Common Sense to have flowed from what he terms “simple ignorance”, and had been written from a “desire to please the democratic party in Philadelphia”. Nowhere in his pamphlet, which some have seen almost like a monarchical manifesto despite its references to republicanism, does he refer by name to Paine’s pamphlet. Adams’ work can be read in volume one. 

The second biography discussed is that written by James Cheetham, and was published in Philadelphia in 1809, a few months after Paine’s death. Cheetham may be said to have popularised the stories about Paine having been personally dirty, smelly and a drunkard, tales destined to become the stock-in-trade of later critics of Paine that included some scholars, notably Sir Leslie Stephens, although he retracted his comments and apologised after he had been challenged by John M. Robertson. The Cheetham biography has been dubbed as having been the first muckraking work in American literary history. Regarding the ChatmersiOidys biography, in the course of his discussion the editor makes two questionable assertions, the first being that the pseudonym used by Chalmers was ‘Sir Francis Oldys’, but of the many copies I have examined that have been published in both the United States and in Britain, none have prefaced the pseudonym with the title ‘Sir’. The second point is that Chalmers had sought to infer that ‘Oldys’ was a clergyman. Reading copies of the book have certainly not left me with that impression. 

Those studying the reaction by Americans to Thomas Paine’s ideas, and, perhaps, to him as an individual, will find the judicious selection of works reprinted herein of immense value. Of course, there are works that one feels should have been included, but where does this process end, another six volumes? It has to be accepted that the selection process for a work of this character must in the last analysis always be subjective and so can never satisfy everyone. For some the cost of the work may seem high, but try finding copies of the originals, assuming it is possible to locate them, but if you manage to do so be prepared for a fright. It is the editor’s hope that Thomas Paine and America will make a substantial contribution to Paine’s bicentenary. I feel it to do so, and congratulate both him and his publisher for having produced so valuable a work. 

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Thomas Paine: In Search Of The Common Good. Edited by Joyce Chumbley & Leo Zonneveld. 144pp. Illustrated Paperback. Nottingham, Spokesman Books, 2009. ISBN 978-0-85124-762-5. £12.00. 

On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1987, an international group of Paine enthusiasts met at the United Nations in New York under the auspices of the United Nations, in particular its Peace Studies Unit for a colloquium celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Paine. The event was organised by the United Teilhard Trust and the University of Peace (Costa Rica) with support from the Thomas Paine National Historical Association of New Rochelle and the Thomas Paine Society, whose president Michael Foot, gave the first address on ‘Thomas Paine and the Democratic Revolution’. Much of the inspiration for the event had been generated by the late Florence Stapleton, a member of the TPS, and Nat Mills, also deceased, who had created an informal Thomas Paine readers group. The initiative for this publication has been due to the work of Irwin Spiegelman, the president of the Friends of Thomas Paine in the United States. Leo Zonneveld, of the United Teiihard Trust (the reference is to Teithard de Chardin the Jesuit philosopher and palaeontologist), provides an introduction which briefly discussed the various contributions. 

As well as Michael Foot, there were eleven other speakers, Professor Ian Dyck on, ‘Thomas Paine: World Citizen in the Age of Nationalism’. David Branff on, ‘The Forgotten Founding Father: The Impact of Thomas Paine’. Professor Eric Foner on, Thomas Paine and American Radicalism during the American Revolution’. Charles Francisco on, ‘Thomas Paine: A Most Un-Common Man’. Professor Bernard Vincent on, ‘From Social to International Peace: The Realistic Utopias of Thomas Paine’. Clive Phillpot on, ‘In the Footsteps of Thomas Paine’. The Hon. Paul O’Dwyer on, ‘Thomas Paine Never Died’. Professor Sean Wilentz on, ‘Paine’s Legacy. David Henley on, Thomas Paine: An Emerging Portrait’. Robert Muller on, Remarks on the Present State of the World, Inspired by the Philosophy of Thomas Paine’. Professor Zofia Ubiszowska on, The Reality of the Constitutional Vision of Thomas Paine’. This last was read as the Professor was not able to leave Poland. 

I will make no attempt to comment on any of the contributions, to fully appreciate their calls for reading them, it is sufficient to say they contain much that is of great value and it is good that they have been now been put into print thanks to Dr. Chumbley, a TPS member, who transcribed them. 

In addition to the lectures the book is well illustrated with colour photographs taken by Clive Phillpot and others showing the participants, and reprints some of the correspondence that went on in the planning stages. There is also an index. This is a splendid contribution to the Paine bicentenary and the Friends of Thomas Paine in the United States who sponsored it deserve the gratitude of all those interested in Paine and his ideas.

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142 Strand, A Radical Address In Victorian London. Rosemary Ashton. London, Vintage Books. Paperback. ISBN 978 0 712 60696. £9.99. 

This is not a book about Thomas Paine, in fact in the course of its three hundred and eighty-six pages he receives only a single passing mention, which leaves aside whether or not its central character, the publisher and doctor John Chapman, read Paine’s works and like so many of his contemporaries came under their influence. That he may well have been so influenced is suggested by his friendship and association with several freethought publishers, notably G J. Hoiyoake, Hein Hetherington, Edward Truelove and to some extent William Dugdale, although he had abandoned his earlier role as the publisher of radical and freethought books in preference to the more profitable field of Pornography. 

John Chapman was born in Nottingham In 1821, being one of four sons of a prosperous shopkeeper He appears to have developed a desire to become a doctor, as in the case of one of his brothers who had been sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, but John’s ambition came to nought, at least for the time being, for he was apprenticed to a watchmaker in Worksop to learn that trade. In 1839 after completing his apprenticeship he immigrated to Australia, settling in Adelaide where he set up in business sang and repairing watches. However, three years later he returned to England and took up the study of medicine first in London then in Paris. 

But once more Chapman’s ambition was to be thwarted because he became almost by accident, the proprietor of a publishing house. In June 1843 he had married the daughter of a wealthy Nottingham lace manufacturer and having returned to London, presumably to continue with his medical studies, he approached the publisher John Green with a request that he publish a short work to which he had given the long-winded title, Human Nature, A Philosophical Exposition of the Divine Institution of the Reward and Punishment, which obtains in the physical. Intellectual, and MOM/ constitution of Man; with an Introductory essay. To which is added, a series of ethical observations, written during the perusal of the Rev. James lokatineau’s recent work, entitled Endeavours eller the Christian Life’, only to be told by Green that he was giving up publishing. In response, Chapman offered to purchase the firm, doing so with £4,600 of his wife’s money supplemented by a further sum from one of her relatives. Green had specialised in publishing books by Unitarians, being described by Theodore Parker in a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson as “the Unitarian and Transcendal Bibliopole for all England….”, however, according to the author information about Chapman’s own religious beliefs is vague, although it may be suggested that as he had approached a well known Unitarian publisher to issue his book this might suggest that at the time he held Unitarian opinions. Whatever be the case the study of medicine was put on the back burner and- Chapman entered into a new career as a publisher. Not surprisingly one of the first works published under his imprint was his extremely dreary treatise, though Professor Ashton diplomatically describes it as being ‘earnest, if rather vapid’. 

The Unitarian ethos of Green’s former firm soon disappeared under its new owner who exhibited no hesitation in publishing works by authors critical of Christianity, if not actual unbelievers. These included J. A. Froude’s Nemesis of Faith and Marion Evans’, anonymous translation of The Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss, which was issued in an attractive three volume set. However, not long before his edition appeared the freethought publisher Henry Hetherington. also based on The Strand, beat him to it by having commenced to publish a translation in parts and this may have had an effect on the viability of Chapman’s edition, for while it caused a lot of interest it does not appear to have been profitable. Evans was destined to become better known as “George Elliot’ but before that she became Chapman’s lover. He went on to publish her translation of another German work, Ludwig Feurbach’s The Essence of Christianity. 

Chapman was continually having financial problems and was facing one when Kali Marx approached him to publish his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx had also been suffering from domestic financial difficulties, not for the first time, and was unaware that the same was true at the time in the case of Chapman for he had hoped that he would also discount some of his bills until he received payment from the United States for articles he had written for the New York Daily Tribune. Chapman was forced to turn “Mr. Melte, as he names him, down. Commenting on this Professor Ashton remarks that had he not done so the two ‘might have come into closer and mutually rewarding contact”. In the event Engels bailed Marx out, while wealthy Mends came to Chapman’s assistance, as frequently happened. 

What put Chapman firmly on the literary map was his purchase in 1851 of the radical Westminster Review, which prompted the Church and State Gazette to bemoan the fact that the Review had `fallen into the hands of a publisher’ whose principal writers are known for their unorthodoxy. Professor Ashton, though, takes care to distance her subject from unbelief or close association with working class radicals by describing him as representative of the respectable face of nineteenth century radicalism, and the Review, as being the leading journal of respectable radicalism in Britain. It had been founded in 1824 by Jeremy Bentham and James PAM and soon became an organ for Unitarian thought and opinion. It had always been a loss maker, as Chapman must have known. The two founders, though, being wealthy were able to run the journal as a hobby while ensuring that it only published Ideas they approved of. This was also the case with W. E. Erickson, from whom Chapman purchased the Review. On his part he opened It to a whole range of orthodox and unorthodox radical writers and in doing so built up a stable of able new contributors, several of whom appear to have given him financial support by not taking any fee for the articles. They included J. S. Mill, Viscount Amberley, Bertrand Russell’s father, Herbert Spencer, M. D. Conway. Harriet Martineau, Frederick Harrison, Francis Newman, John Tyndall and T. H. Huxley, who became the journal’s scientific correspondent and championed Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis in its pages. His articles included a particularly important review of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Although Darwin subscribed to the Review he never contributed to its pages, but when certain parties sought to gain control over the journal he was amongst those who rallied to Chapman’s support. 

Eventually Chapman sold his publishing house while retaining ownership of the Review, which he continued to edit after resuming his medical studies, and Professor Ashton traces his progress which culminated in his passing the necessary examinations that resulted in him achieving his long sought ambition. Thus he entered Into the final stage of his varied career. As a doctor he specialised in nervous disorders and became a homeopath, in which field he became a well known practitioner. He wrote a number of medical works and contributed articles on medicine and medical reform to his journal. He also invented what he described as ‘spine-bags’ which used cold and heat to treat certain disorders. Amongst those he treated with them was Charles Darwin. 

According to Professor Ashton, Chapman took every opportunity to publicise his medical ideas and inventions being ‘a determined self-advertiser’ but he also appears to have been unable to establish a viable medical practice in London so he moved to Paris where he set up in practice treating English and American residents, and it was there on November 25, 1894 that he died. His remains were brought back to England and interred at Highgate Cemetery near the graves of `George G H. Lewes, a frequent contributor to the Review, and Karl Marx. There was no religious service but his friend and colleague Dr. C. R. Drysdale, whose opinions on birth control he strongly supported, gave a brief address. It would seem that Chapman had become, in effect, an unbeliever. 

Among other causes Chapman championed in the pages of the Review was that of women’s rights, about which he held very advanced opinions including that they should be enfranchised. On a personal level he was a known womaniser, something he never sought to conceal, unlike so many of his contemporaries who feared the effects on their reputations if their lax morality became public knowledge. Professor Ashton treats his dealings with women in detail in a chapter entitled ‘Chapman’s Radical Women’. 

This book rescues from obscurity a man who played an important role in radicalism in nineteenth century Britain. In many respects reminds me of that other radical publisher Charles Watts, the founder of the Rationalist Press Association, which consciously sought to represent itself as being the respectable public face of freethought in contrast to the impression given by the largely working-class based National Secular Society. While Chapman does not feature in the annals of freethought, he certainly deserves a place in them, even if only a minor one. I learned a lot from this stimulating book which I have no hesitation in recommending. Moreover, unlike so many other books these days it has been published at a price that is affordable. 

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Crisis Of Doubt, Honest Faith In Nineteenth-Century England. Timothy Larsen. 317pp. Hardback. OUP., 2006. ISBN 978-0-19-9287871. £60.00 

Although this is not a book about Thomas Paine, it does bring out the extent of his influence amongst members of the freethought and Secularist movement in England during the 19th century, in particular the use by them of the arguments found in his Age of Reason. However, this is incidental to the theme of the book, which is intended to demonstrate that the impact of unbelief amongst the populace was not as strong as most scholars contend. In addition, the author seeks to show that the intellectual integrity of Christianity successfully weathered the battering it had taken over the century. 

Central to the author’s case is the story of seven individuals whom he puts forward as having been leaders of the freethought movement in England, which none were, although they were with one exception prominent speakers, these were William Hone, Frederick Young, Thomas Cooper, John Gordon, John Bebbington and George Sexton. The exception is Hone who was never an active freethinker or member of any specific freethought organisation, or, for the matter a genuine unbeliever as opposed to a dabbler. In Cooper there is considerable doubt as to whether he ever gave up belief in the first place, an uncertainty reflected in what Timothy Larsen writes about him. 

Each of those named have a chapter in the book, described as “intellectual biographies”, devoted to them, but the presentation of the material is in my opinion marred too often by the author’s all too evident bias, which is understandable as he is a professional theologian whose job is to defend the belief system he subscribes to. His bias is all too evident in, for example, his remarks about a two night debate between G. W. Foote and Sexton at Batley held in Batley in 1877 on the theme of “Is Secularism the True Gospel for Mankind?” Sexton had been an able Secularist propagandist, even if he awarded himself self-created university degrees, and had at one time given an address praising Thomas Paine, though after his defection to Christianity he had little good to say of Paine. Larsen devotes a page to Sexton’s contribution to the debate in contrast to a mere two lines to that of Foote, thereby creating the impression that Sexton had come out on top, whereas anyone who actually reads the published transcript of the debate may well conclude otherwise and feel that in reality Foote had “wiped the floor” with his opponent. 

Supplementing the biographical chapters is an appendix featuring a further twenty-nine individuals which carries the heading “More Reconverts and Other Persons of Interest”. The author states by way of explanation that many of those he includes are there simply because he finds them to be persons of interest in various ways and he is not claiming all as being reconverts, nor should their inclusion be taken as an attempt on his part to co-opt them. Amongst these “persons of interest” can be found Annie Besant, Richard Carlile, Keir Hardy, Robert Owen, George Romans and A. it Wallace. Larsen writes that space limitation imposed on him by his publisher forced him to exclude several others, although in a chapter entitled “How Many Reconverts?”, he holds out to his readers the prospect of further research revealing many more. 

That the freethinkers managed to achieve as much as they did considering the odds against them is remarkable. But they could be their own worst enemy for in demonstrating that religion was of no real value in the day to day struggle for existence they caused many not simply to abandon it altogether, but to desert freethought for politics. That was the real end product of the conflict, indifference to the arguments of both sides. Nevertheless, if Crisis of Doubt can be said to have any real value it is to draw attention to a fascinating part of the nation’s social history.

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“My Pen And My Soul Have Ever Gone Together”, Thomas Paine and the American Revolution. Vikki J. Vickers. Routledge, 2000. 186pp. Hardbound. ISBN 0-415 07652-9. 

Over the past few years there have been not a few biographical studies of Thomas Paine, most of which may be rightly described as relatively routine, while a handful stand out. I have no hesitation in ascribing this short book as being firmly in the latter category, although in the strictest sense it is not really biographical as the author sets it primarily in a context of the years 1737 to 1783. This said she goes beyond this by making allowances for the fact that two of Paine’s most important works, Rights of Man and The Age of Reason fall outside this time span. 

The author seeks to place Paine firmly into a historical context and is critical of biographers such as John Keane and Jack Fruchtman Jr, on the grounds that their works lack critical analysis. This a fault she considers to arise from the fact that neither are historians, others, she feels, tend typically to be devotees, and others study Paine’s politics, his religion, his rhetoric, but rarely do these threads ever intersect in scholarship related to him. She is critical of those who highlight the more “sensational elements” in his life, instancing the question of his alcoholism and “possible sexual dysfunction”, which latter she describes as being almost too ridiculous to confront. On the subject of his drinking, she states that it would appear that in the 1790s he developed a serious drinking problem, but tat before this time none of his friends or enemies seems to have noticed any. She notes, as have others, that during his imprisonment he had become seriously ill and had never fully recovered, and found in drink a remedy for pain and a restorative. However, while she says her comments should not be seen as an excuse for Paine’s “possible alcoholism”, which on the whole is an irrelevance. It would only become worthy of serious consideration, she contends, “If he thought, acted, and wrote one way while drinking and another while sober”. 

Ms. Vickers traces the factors that she considers had influenced Paine in formulating his views, drawing attention to Milton’s Paradise Lost, citing a comment in it that Satan had secured his independence through his fall from grace. In using this, Paine took on the role of Devil’s Advocate to force Americans and the Continental Congress to examine what had been envisioned as a worse case scenario, independence from Britain. Through Paine’s examination, “America realized, like Satan in Milton’s fable, that independence was actually the best of all possible solutions. 

The book is divided into six chapters and an appendix, the headings of each giving a clear indication of how the author develops her arguments: 

1. The Devil’s Advocate: Thomas Paine and the Making of Common Sense.
2. Why Thomas Paine? 
3. The Origins and Significance of Thomas Paine’s Religious Beliefs. 
4. “One God and No More”: The Strange Mission of Thomas Paine. 
5. Conclusion. 
6. Appendix: Common Sense: A Historiographical Overview. 

In addition, there is a useful introduction, notes, bibliography and an index. Nearly two hundred years of scholarship exist on Paine, so the author notes, yet there remains no answer to the question posed by historians: “why Thomas Paine?”, namely, why was it that a poor, unknown Englishman wrote Common Sense, which she rightly notes transformed the nature of political debate on two continents? In chapter five, she seeks to provide an answer, but in doing so argues that what should be excluded in the task is any reliance upon “suspect biographies” such as those by Chalmers (Oldys) and Cheetham. However, her reference to Thetford as a city is incorrect. 

One cannot do justice to this fascinating and I would say controversial work. Ms. Vickers in the space available, she rejects the charge that Paine’s work lacks originality and she is scathing about some of the comments made by several scholars critical of Paine. He was, she concludes, an ordinary man whose pen helped to start the American revolution, although she also refers to his “often limited perspective and attention to short term solutions is that scholars will never know how Paine might have succeeded had he turned his potent pen to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, or universal suffrage. Nevertheless”, she continues, “it cannot be denied that Paine’s activism (however flawed his reasoning) influenced the minds of his readers….. Although Paine failed in his personal mission to create a world of deists, his indomitable will, his tireless crusade for justice and human rights ensured him of a success unequalled by any other writer of his time”. 

Whatever criticism I might have of this book, and I have some, but overall these are few in number, so much so that they can be passed over unwritten. I consider this book to be absolutely essential reading for all those interested in Thomas Paine.

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In His Footsteps, Finding Thomas Paine In Bordentown, N.J. Mae Kramer. Silver. Bordentown, Hometown Printing, 2007. 168pp. Illustrated. A4 Paperback. ISBN 0-9669913-4-6. Unpriced. 

This book began life as a series of notes brought together by the author, who founded the Thomas Paine Society of Bordentown when she moved there a few years ago. She wanted to learn why he was there, what he did when he was, whom he knew and how they related to him. She also established a walking tour of the town, and this forms the basis of this extremely informative book. It is as much a history of the place when in the time of Paine and provides a great deal of background information appertaining to him. 

It was lucky for the world that Thomas Paine surfaced when he did, so writes the author. In the right place at the right times, he touched the people of the thirteen colonies by writing, in understandable language decorated with witty pointed humour and punctuated with a passionate rage, revolutionary ideas whose time had clearly come. So opens the introduction. 

The book’s chapters summarise its scope: ‘Thomas Paine’s American Hometown, Bordentown; ‘Thomas Paine’s Favourite Pub: Tavern House’; Bordentown’s Renaissance Man: Francis Hopkinson’; ‘The Bordens’; ‘The Kirkbrides at New Bellevue’; ‘The Statue of Thomas Paine in Bordentown’; ‘Thomas Paine’s Last Year: A New Perspective; ‘Afterwords’. 

The text is supplemented by an extensive range of illustrations, mostly new to me. The book is a mine of useful information and a wonderful example of the sort of research that can be undertaken in a specific area. Mae Silver deserves the congratulations of everyone interested in the life of Thomas Paine.

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It often surprises me when I discover, as I do from time to time, the story of Paine having supposed to have recanted the opinions he expressed in The Age of Reason. It is difficult to understand why Christian critics of Paine’s theological opinions, some of whom are also critical of his political ideas, although usually reluctant to be explicit on this. I have commented on the story in the past,¹ but at a meeting in Sheffield a few weeks ago I was rather taken aback when a distinguished astronomer at a northern university referred in passing to Paine having renounced his views critical of Christianity. When I pressed him later as to how he knew this was the case, he referred to a little book by the Rev. Leith Samuel entitled The Impossibility of Agnosticism (1968). A few days later I was surprised to receive a copy from the professor. 

The story of Paine’s “conversion” surfaced within days of his death. In fact there has rarely been a critic of Christianity who has not renounced his critical opinions according to writers such as Mr. Samuel, one-time president of the Protestant Truth Society and author of several evangelical works who also trots out the tale of Voltaire having renounced his opinions. In fact, inventing stories of infidels being converted, usually after encounters with simple, young believers, became a sort of evangelical cottage industry and those familiar with the religious press of the 19th century and later – the most recent I have seen is a piece claiming that F. A. Ridley converted just before his death, this being supposedly based on a claim made by a member of the staff of the nursing home he was in, although the home in question has denied that the person named as the story’s source ever worked there. In fact such tales were a feature of evangelical newspapers and magazines-in the 19th century, and parts of the 20th, as G. W. Foote noted, such tales have ‘been a fertile theme of pulpit eloquence’, and one clergyman named Erskine Neale, even published an entire collection of such claims in a work he called Closing Secrets, which Foote states ‘was at one time, very popular and influential; but its specious character having been exposed, it has fallen into disrepute, or at least into neglect’ (Infidel Death-Beds. London. Pioneer Press, Nd. pp.vii-viii). Though I suppose we must exclude from this Mr. Samuel, not that he refers to it. 

The claim that Paine had renounced his theological opinions first surfaced in the memoirs of Stephen Grellet, an American evangelical of Dutch origin who had connections with the Quakers, who claimed that he had got the story from a girl named Mary Roscoe. Samuel also claims that it came from a girl named Mary Hinsdale, its source being one Charles Collins. In fact both girls were one and the same person, Hinsdale being Roscoe’s married name. She was in the employ of a Quaker named Willett Hicks; a friend of Paine’s who conducted his funeral. She claimed to have been sent by her employer to deliver something to Paine and when there to have had a conversation with him during which he is supposed to have caned out ‘with intense feeling Lord Jesus have mercy upon me’, then informed here that, if ever the Devil has had any agency in any work he has had it with me writing that book’ [The Age of Reason]. Paine is also said to have asked the girl’s opinion of his book, and later told her that he wished he had burned it. 

Needless to say this tale took on a life of its own and from having supposedly made a single delivery Mary Roscoe had, it was claimed, been in ‘constant attendance’ . According to the Reverend Mr. Samuel, Grellett’s ‘unimpeachable testimony… seemed to outweigh anything found in contrary sources’, as he put it in a letter he wrote to me in 1967 when I had inquired as to what investigation he had made of the story before going into print (I had read his little book many years ago, unknown to my astronomical correspondent). It then transpired that he had not read any criticism of Grellett’s little tale, admitting so in a letter written to me in July 7, 1967, following me having drawn attention to William Cobbett’s investigation into the story. 

Cobbett had sought out both Mary Hinsdale and Charles Collins in New York in 1818 while collecting material for his own life of Paine. It seems that Samuel was labouring under the impression that Cobbett was a critic of Paine, as indeed he was when writing as Peter Porcupine, but later he had read Paine’s pamphlet on The Decline and Fail of the English System of Finance (1796) and found the ideas expressed therein coincided with his own, he underwent a genuine ‘conversion’ and became as ardent a supporter of Paine as he had hitherto been a critic. Cobbett asked Collins for evidence of Paine’s conversion and he had in response given him a document containing Roscoe’s statement. Cobbett then called on her at her home 10, Anthony Street, New York, and showed her the document, requesting her to authenticate it. This Hinsdale flatly refused to do, and said she could provide no information about what was in it. She said she had never seen the document before, nor had she authorised Collins to speak in her name. So the story collapsed and that would have been the end of the matter except it was just too good a tale for evangelical propagandists to give up and so we still find the likes of Leith Samuel trotting it out as though it had never been refuted by the very person it is claimed who had made it in the first place. 

As for Willard Hicks, he personally denounced the story as a ‘pious fraud and fabrication’, stating that Roscoe had never spoken to Paine. He also spoke of the many bribes and other inducements he had received to produce a statement in which he said Paine had recanted. 

We know from various other sources that Paine maintained the opinions he had expressed in The Age of Reason to the last. His friend the painter Wesley Jarvis is on record as stating that there were those who would seek to claim that he had denounced his theological opinions and for that purpose he insisted on there being witnesses present when being interviewed, doing so when he learned of the possible fatal character of his illness he showed no regret about having made public his theological opinions, which he in fact looked on as a defence of Christianity, thus when John Pintard the founder of the Tammany Society, who is now looked upon as one of the originators of what became the modern Democratic Party, a long- time friend of Paine, told him at a dinner in New York held in his honour and attended by many distinguished figures, that he had read The Age of Reason several times and that it had removed any doubts he had about the truth. of revelation, and that his arguments had convinced him ‘of its truth’, Paine was delighted that the intent behind it had been grasped. ‘I may return to my couch tonight with the consolation that I have made at least one Christian’. Paine’s doctor James Manley, a devout Christian but one who usually kept his opinions on the matter private, had informed him of the probable fatal consequences of his illness, and later gave a statement under oath that three days prior his death Paine’s opinions in respect to religion had not changed. He had asked him whether he ‘wished to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?’ To which Paine had replied following a pause of some minutes, I have no wish to believe on that subject.’ 

I suspect we have not heard the last of the Paine conversion myth as it appears to give some sort of psychological satisfaction to those who continue to retail it. They remind me of ghouls who in mythology are desperate to steal the souls of the dead. Perhaps the likes of the Reverend Leith Samuel should read Matthew 19; 18, where they are told not to bear false witness.

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These Are The Times, A Life Of Thomas Paine. Trevor Griffiths. Nottingham, Spokesman. xii & 195pp. Paperback. ISBN 0 85124 695 8. £15.00 

In a sense this book, the screenplay written by Trevor Griffith’s for the proposed film in his life of Paine, well almost, as it does not take boyhood, saddens me, since its publication infers, to me at least, that the film may never be made. Sir Richard Attenborough attempts to obtain funding for the film have not met with the success they deserve, which is a great pity, as Paine’s life would make a superb film. We can but hope that the project even now will come to fruition.

Set in Britain, America and France, Griffiths recreates episodes in Paine’s life with a dialogue that incorporates his opinions, and those of others, but moulded into a continuous thread with what may be described as a degree of literary license, but it should be remembered that in a film of Paine’s life the scriptwriter would have no option but to combine some fiction with fact so inevitably some liberties have had to be taken even though they may upset purists, but this film has to entertain as well as inform so this is inevitable. There is humour, too, and the odd crack at Washington’s expense, or expanse. The book is a good read, but I fear the price is rather on the steep side which may put people who might otherwise buy it off doing so. 

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