By Gary Berton

I had heard Thomas Paine’s name, but Bob Dylan put me on the track of discovering Paine’s profound importance in history. 

Dylan has been the soundtrack of my life. When he sang about Paine in the song, “As I went out One Morning,” on the 1967 John Wesley Harding album, his lyrics stayed with me. 

As I went out one morning 

To breathe the air around Tom Paine’s 

I spied the fairest damsel 

That ever did walk in chains 

I offered her my hand 

She took me by the arm 

I knew that very instant 

She meant to do me harm 

“Depart from me this moment” 

I told her with my voice 

Said she, “But I don’t wish to” 

Said I, “But you have no choice” 

“I beg you, sir”, she pleaded 

From the corners of her mouth 

“I will secretly accept you 

And together we’ll fly south” 

Just then Tom Paine, himself 

Came running from across the field 

Shouting at this lovely girl 

And commanding her to yield 

And as she was letting go her grip 

Up Tom Paine did run “

I’m sorry, sir”, he said to me 

“I’m sorry for what she’s done” 

When I entered graduate school at the University of Toronto, this song was in my head. I pursued studies in the history of political philosophy. I soon realized that Paine was not part of the curriculum, so I left, instead preferring a factory job. But I continued reading and researching Paine. 

For 56 years now, the path is paying off for me by being able to help bring the truth of Paine to the world, as in the form of the new Thomas Paine Collected Works, and by spreading it through the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. Bob Dylan led me to Paine.

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By Barbara Crane

Easily missed in the bustling streets of Greenwich Village today is a small bronze plaque installed almost 100 years ago in honor of Thomas Paine. The memorial is at 59 Grove Street in a building now standing on the location of Paine’s death in 1809. 

Historical accounts indicate starting in 1802, Paine had a house on Herring Street, now 309 Bleecker Street, the site of a modern commercial building. 

Paine likely was happier in Greenwich Village than on his isolated farm in New Rochelle. Freethinkers in the Village clearly admired him. To honor The Age of Reason, a short city street nearby in 1828 was renamed as Reason Street. Today it’s called Barrow Street. 

The building now at 59 Grove Street, built in 1839, opened its doors in 1928 as a restaurant (and speakeasy) called Marie’s Crisis Cafe. Marie DuMont, a French national, named it for The Crisis papers Paine wrote to support the American Revolution. The establishment still operates today as a popular Village piano bar known for sing-along showtunes. 

Marie DuMont inset the 1928 Paine plaque beside the entrance to the brick building. 

Samilla Love Jameson Heinzmann designed the plaque. The Indiana-born artist was a member of the Greenwich Village Historical Society,, founded in 1922 by Catherine Clivette, wife of artist and magician Merton Clivette. Their daughter, Juanita, known as the “Sappho” of the already Bohemian Village, read a poem at the unveiling of the plaque. 

Barbara Crane serves on the TPNHA Board. She thanks and credits Sarah Bean Apmann at Village Preservation and Tom Miller at Daytonian in Manhattan, with additional information from Maria’s Crisis Cafe.

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By Gary Berton 

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine introduced the concept of modern democracy. This idea is what the “revolution” in the American Revolution rested upon. Self-rule was a by-product of the concept of government “of the people, for the people, by the people.” 

Before Common Sense, the meaning of “democracy” was diffuse. Multiple meanings of the term since have been used by other forms of government, even oppressive regimes. Holding elections, no matter how corrupt, has become the definition of democracy. 

In Common Sense, Paine began his discussion about government by defining it for his readers: 

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one…. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver, but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, Thomas Paine on Government at the Birth of Democracy that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. 

Anarchists and libertarians, plus conservatives, love this quote. They refer to it constantly, but like many historians, they do not read further. 

The paragraph names security as the only purpose of government. This idea became an excuse for oppression. Government ensures the rich are “secure,” but the majority of the people are insecure due to corrupt government. 

To explain the origins of government, Paine told a parable imagining that “a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. 

”In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.” 

Six paragraphs later, after laying out his “design and end of government,” Paine sums up his thesis:

Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right. 

Paine changes the design and end of government (“end” meaning the goal) by adding freedom to security. Both are needed. 

His opening paragraph was about the need for security; this last paragraph sums up his thesis. Security and freedom together is Paine’s definition of republican government. “Republican” was the term used at the time for popular government. The “democratic” term came into use from Rights of Man in 1792. 

Sadly, self-interest does darken our understanding, as does fake news, propaganda, and blind obedience. As Paine observed in Rights of Man, “Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

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