THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, FREE AND INDEPENDENT, TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, OR MAY CONCERN, SEND GREETING :

KNOW YE, That the annexed is a true copy of the will of THOMAS PAINE, deceased, as recorded in the office of the surrogate, in and for the city and county of New York. In testimony whereof, we have caused the seal of office of our said surrogate to be hereunto affixed. Witness, Silvanus Miller, Esq., surrogate of said county, at the city of New York, the twelfth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and nine, and of our independence the thirty-fourth.

SILVANUS MILLER.

THE WILL

The last Will and Testament of me, the subscriber, Thomas Paine, reposing confidence in my Creator, God, and in no other being, for I know of no other, nor believe in any other. I, Thomas Paine, of the State of New York, author of the work entitled “Common Sense,” written in Philadelphia, in 1775, and published in that city the beginning of January, 1776, which awaked America to a declaration of independence on the fourth of July following, which was as fast as the work could spread through such an extensive country; author also of the several numbers of the “American Crisis,” thirteen in all; published occasionally during the progress of the Revolutionary War-the last is on the peace; author also of “Rights of Man,” parts the first and second, written and published in London, in 1791 and 1792; author also of a work on religion, “Age of Reason,” parts the first and second-N. B. I have a third part by me in manuscript, and an answer to the Bishop of Llandaff; author also of a work, lately published, entitled “Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, Quoted from the Old, and called Prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and showing there are no Prophecies of any such Person”; author also of several other works not here enumerated, “Dissertations on First Principles of Government-Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance-Agrarian Justice, etc., etc., make this my last will and testament, that is to say:

I give and bequeath to my executors hereinafter appointed, Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, thirty shares I hold in the New York Phoenix Insurance Company, which cost me fourteen hundred and seventy dollars, they are worth now upwards of fifteen hundred dollars, and all my movable effects, and also the money that may be in my trunk or elsewhere at the time of my decease, paying thereout the expenses of my funeral, IN TRUST as to the said shares, movables, and money, for Margaret Brazier Bonneville, wife of Nicholas Bonneville, of Paris, for her own sole and separate use, and at her own disposal, notwithstanding her coverture.

As to my farm in New Rochelle, I give, devise, and bequeath the same to my said executors, Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, and to the survivor of them, his heirs and assigns forever, IN TRUST nevertheless, to sell and dispose of the north side thereof, now in the occupation of Andrew A. Dean, beginning at the west end of the orchard, arid running in a line with the land sold to Coles, to the end of the farm, and to apply the money arising from such sale as hereinafter directed.

I give to my friends Walter Morton, of the New York Phoenix Insurance Company, and Thomas Addis Emmet, counselor at law, late of Ireland, two hundred dollars each, and one hundred dollars to Mrs. Palmer, widow of Elihu Palmer, late of New York, to be paid out of the money arising from said sale; and I give the remainder of the money arising from that sale, one-half thereof to Clio Rickman, of High or Upper Mary-le-Bone Street, London, and the other half to Nicholas Bonneville, of Paris, husband of Margaret B. Bonneville, aforesaid: and as to the South part of the said farm, containing upwards of one hundred acres, in trust to rent out the same, or otherwise put it to profit, as shall be found most advisable, and to pay the rents and profits thereof to the said Margaret B. Bonneville, in trust for her children, Benjamin Bonneville, and Thomas Bonneville, their education and maintenance, until they come to the age of twenty-one years, in order that she may bring them well up, give them good and useful learning, and instruct them in their duty to God, and the practise of morality; the rent of the land, or the interest of the money for which it may be sold, as hereinafter mentioned, to be employed in their education.

And after the youngest of the said children shall have arrived at the age of twenty-one years, in further trust to convey the same to the said children, share and share alike, in fee simple. But if it shall be thought advisable by my executors and executrix, or the survivors of them, at any time before the youngest of the said children shall come of age, to sell and dispose of the said south side of the said farm, in that case I hereby authorize and empower my said executors to sell and dispose of the same, and I direct that the money arising from such sale be put into stock, either in the United States Bank stock, or New York Phoenix Insurance Company stock, the interest or dividends thereof to be applied as is already directed for the education and maintenance of the said children, and the principal to be transferred to the said children, or the survivor of them, on his or their coming of age.

I know not if the Society of people called Quakers, admit a person to be buried in their burying ground, who does not belong to their Society, but if they do, or will admit me, I would prefer being buried there; my father belonged to that profession, and I was partly brought up in it. But if it is not consistent with their rules to do this, I desire to be buried on my own farm at New Rochelle.

The place where I am to be buried, to be a square of twelve feet, to be enclosed with rows of trees, and a stone or post and rail fence, with a headstone with my name and age engraved upon it, author of “Common Sense.” I nominate, constitute, and appoint Walter Morton, of the New York Phoenix Insurance Company, and Thomas Addis Emmet, counselor at law, late of Ireland, and Margaret B. Bonneville, executors and executrix to this my last will and testament, requesting the said Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, that they will give what assistance they conveniently can to Mrs. Bonneville, and see that the children be well brought up. Thus placing confidence in their friendship, I herewith take my final leave of them and of the world.

I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spent in doing good, and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God. Dated the eighteenth day of January, in the year one thousand eight hundred and nine; and I have also signed my name to the other sheet of this will, in testimony of its being a part thereof.

THOMAS PAINE.

Signed, sealed, published, and declared by the testator, in our presence, who, at his request, and in the presence of each other, have set our names as witnesses thereto, the words “published and declared” first interlined.

W M . KEESE, JAMES ANGEVINE, CORNELIUS RYDER.

from the Public Advertiser (New York), August 18, 1807.

THE election for Charter Officers last year was carried by the federal and quid trick of fortifications, and now the people are to be amused and duped to a new obstructions.

The only eligible mode of obstruction is that proposed by Franklin for the Delaware in ’76, an account of which was given in the Public Advertiser of the 6th, and republished in the Philadelphia Aurora of the 8th August.

The plan of obstruction now proposed for New York is by blocks, that is, by solid bodies of stone or earth in the manner of wharves. This was first suggested by Selah Strong, Chairman of the Committee of the Corporation, and in a publication by Mr. Stevens of Hobuck, which contains many just observations on ships and batteries, he adopts the same unfortunate idea of obstruction by blocks. The blocks to be “25 or 30 feet square or larger; at the distance of 50 or 60 feet from each other.” And the editor of the New York American Citizen in introducing Mr. Smith’s piece in his paper of Saturday last, says, Why not,”to make assurance doubly sure, to give us in fact protection, carry the obstruction by blocks or otherwise entirely cross from Robin’s Reef to Mud Flat.”

This, most certainly, would prevent Hostile Ships coming to the city, and it is equally as certain it would prevent the tide coming up and lay the wharves at New York dry, and be the ruin of all the towns on the North River that depend for commerce on tide water. This, the projectors of obstructors by blocks never thought of; but projectors should think of every thing or they will make ruinous work. If Selah Strong’s project is adopted New York is ruined, for the obstruction by blocks cannot afterwards be removed.

Every alteration made in the channel of a water course, whether it be in the natural current of a river or the current of a tide, will cause another alteration some where else.

If the obstruction be across the natural current of a river like the obstruction of a mill dam, the water will continue rising till it overtops the obstruction or overflow the country above; for as the daily supply from the source will continue the same it will have a passage somewhere.

If the obstruction be to the tide water, the effect will be, that the tide water will rise to the same height at the place where the obstruction is, as it did before and no higher, but the channel above the obstruction will be deprived of tide water.

The stone piers of a bridge lessen the quantity and extent of tide water above the bridge. This every body knows that knows anything of hydraulics. But to know it as a fact, if any person will look into Salmon’s Geography or Guthrie’s Geographical Grammar, he will find, in their account of rivers and bridges in England, that before Westminster bridge was built, which was begun in 1738, the tide flowed up to Kingston, about 17 or 18 miles above Westminster, but since the bridge has been built it flows no higher than Richmond, which is four miles short of Kingston. Now, if the piers of a bridge lessened the quantity of tide water, and shortened its extent four miles out of 17 or 18 miles, what must be the effect of a total, or even semi-total, obstruction by blocks of the channel between Robin’s Reef and Mud Flat on the wharves at the city and on the long course of the North River?

In projecting obstructions two things are absolutely necessary to be taken into view. The one is, the least possible obstruction to the water up or down; the other is, that the obstruction be such as can be removed afterwards. Neither of these entered the mind of the projectors of blocks, and both are embraced in the plan of Franklin. His frames had very little effect on the tide or the stream; and after the enemy went away they were taken up; but all the power and art of Man could not remove solid blocks of stone or earth 25 or 30 feet square, sunk several feet below the surface of the water.

If the channel between Robin’s Reef and Mud Flat is not more than about 36 feet, it can be obstructed as the Delaware was, and the obstruction can be defended by gun boats and batteries, and the militia can defend the shore as the people of Norfolk have done; but for men to be always employing themselves on imaginary fortifications or sculking behind, or within obstruction like a turtle within his shell, lest the crows should pick him, has a very cowardly appearance. It is not the spirit of “the times that tried men’s souls.”

THOMAS PAINE.

A challenge to the Federalists to declare their principles.

from the American Citizen, October 17, 1806.

The old names of Whig and Tory have given place to the later names of Republicans and Federalists; by contraction Feds. The word republican contains some meaning though not very positive, except that it is the opposite of monarchy; but the word federalist contains none. It is merely a name without a meaning. It may apply to a gang of thieves federalized to commit robbery or to any other kind of association.

When men form themselves into political parties, it is customary with them to make a declaration of their principles. — But the feds do not declare what their principles are; from which we may infer, that either they have no principles, and are mere snarlers, or that their principles are too bad to be told. Their object, however, is to get possession of power; and their caution is to conceal the use they will make of it. Such men ought not to be trusted.

The republicans, on the contrary, are open and frank in declaring their principles, for they are of a nature that requires no concealment. The more they are published and understood the more they are approved.

The principles of the republicans are to support the representative system of government and to leave it an inheritance to their children and to their children’s children — to cultivate peace and civil manners with all nations as the surest means of avoiding wars, and never to embroil themselves in the wars of other nations, nor in foreign coalitions — to adjust and settle all differences that might arise with foreign nations by explanation and negociation in preference to he sword, if it can be done — to have no more taxes than are necessary for the decent support of government — to pay every man for his service, and to have no more servants than are wanted. — The republicans hold, as a fixed uncontrovertible principle, that sovereignty resides in the great mass of the people, and that the persons they elect are the representatives of that sovereignty itself. They know of no such thing as hereditary government or of men born to govern them, for besides the injustice of it, it never can be known before they are born whether they will be wise men or fools.

The republicans now challenge the federalists to declare their principles. But as the federalists have never yet done this, and most probably never will, we have a right to infer what their principles are from the conduct they have exhibited.

The federalists opposed the suppression of the internal taxes laid on in the stupid, expensive, and unprincipled administration of John Adams; though it was at that time evident, and experience has since confirmed it for a fact, that those taxes answered no other purpose than to make offices for the maintenance of a number of their dependents at the expence of the public. From this conduct of theirs we infer, that could the federalists get again into power, they would again load the country with internal taxes.

The federalists, while in power, proposed and voted for a standing army, and in order to induce the country to consent to a measure so unpopular in itself, they raised and circulated the fabricated falsehood that France was going to send an army to invade the United States; and to prevent being detected in this lie, and to keep the country in ignorance, they passed a law to prohibit all commerce and intercourse with France. As the pretence for which a standing was to be raised had no existence, not even in their own brain, for it was a wilful lie, we have a right to infer, that the object of the federal faction in raising that army, was to overthrow the representative system of government and to establish a government of war and taxes on the corrupt principles of the English government; and that, could they get again into power, they would again attempt the same thing.

As to the inconsistencies, contradictions and falsehoods of the federal faction, they are too numerous to be counted. When Spain shut up the port of New-Orleans, so as to exclude from it the citizens of the United States, the federal faction in Congress bellowed out for war and the federal papers echoed the cry. The faction both in and out of Congress declared New Orleans to be of such vast importance that without it the Western States would be ruined. But mark the change! No sooner was the cession of New-Orleans and the territory of Louisiana obtained by peaceable negociation, and for many times less expence than a war, with all its uncertainties of success, would have cost, than this self-same faction gave itself the lie and represented the place as of no value. According to them it was worth fighting for at a great expence, but not worth having quietly at a comparatively small expence. It has been said of a thief that he had rather steal a purse than find one, and the conduct of the federalists on this occasion corresponds with that saying. But all these inconsistencies become understood, when we recollect that the leaders of the federal faction are an English faction, and that they follow, like a satellite, the variations of their principal.

Their continual aim has been and still is, to involve the United States in a war with France and Spain. This is an English scheme, and the papers of the faction give every provocation that words can give, to provoke France to hostilities. The bugbear held up by them is that Bonaparte will attack Louisiana. This is an invention of the British emissary Cullen, alias Carpenter, and the association of the federalists, at least some of them, with this miserable emissary involves their own characters in suspicion.

The republicans, as before said, are open, bold, and candid in declaring their principles. They are no skulkers. Let then the federalists, declare theirs.

COMMON SENSE.

Of the cause of Yellow Fever, and the means of preventing it in places not yet infected with it, addresed to the Board of Health.

from the American Citizen, June 27, 1806.

A great deal has been written respecting the yellow fever. First, with respect to its causes, whether domestic or imported. Secondly, on the mode of treating it.

What I am going to suggest in this essay is to ascertain some point to begin at in order to arrive at the cause; and for this purpose some preliminary observations are necessary.

The yellow fever always begins in the lowest part of a populous mercantile town near the water, and continues there, without affecting the higher parts. The sphere or circuit it acts in is small, and it rages most where large quantities of new ground have been made by banking out the river for the purpose of making wharves. The appearance and prevalence of the yellow fever in these places, being those where vessels arrive from the West Indies, has caused the belief that the yellow fever was imported from thence. But here are two cases acting in the same place. The one, the condition of the ground at the wharves, which being new made on the muddy and filthy bottom of the river, is different from the natural condition of the ground in the higher parts of the city, and consequently subject to produce a different kind of effluvia or vapour; the other case is the arrival of vessels from the West-Indies.

In the state of Jersey neither of these cases has taken place, no shipping arrives there, and consequently there have been no imbankment for the purpose of wharves, and the yellow fever has never broken out in Jersey. This, however, does not decide the point as to the immediate cause of the fever, but it shews that this species of fever is not common to the country in its natural state; and I believe the same was the case in the West Indies before imbankments began for the purpose of making wharves, which always alter the natural condition of the ground — no old history of the West-Indies that I know of mentions such a disorder as the yellow fever.

A person seized with the yellow fever in an affected part of the town, and brought into the healthy part, or into the country, and among healthy persons, does not communicate it to the neighbourhood, nor to those immediately around him. Why then are we to suppose it can be brought from the West Indies, a distance of more than a thousand miles, since we see it cannot be carried from one town to another, nor from one part of a town to another at home; but a healthy going from a healthy part into an affected part will be seized with it, which shews it has a limited local existance and is not communicable. Is it in the air? This question on the case requires a minute examination. In the first place the difference between air and wind is the same as between a stream of water and a standing water. — A stream of water is water in motion, and wind is air in motion. In a gentle breeze the whole body of air, as far as the breeze extends, moves at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour. In a high wind, at the rate of 70, 80 or 100 miles an hour. When we see the shadow of a cloud gliding on the surface of the ground we see the rate at which the air moves; and it must be a good trotting horse that can keep pace with the shadow, even in a gentle breeze — consequently a body of air that is in and over any place of the same extent as the affected part of a city may be, will, in the space of an hour, even at the moderate rate I speak of, be moved seven or eight miles to leeward and its place, in and over the city, will be supplied by a new body of air coming from a healthy part seven or eight miles distant the contrary way and then on in continual succession. The disorder, therefore, is not in the air considered in its natural state and never stationary. This leads to another consideration of the case.

An impure effluvia arising from some cause in the ground in the manner that fermenting liquors produce near their surface an effluvia that is fatal to life, will become mixed with the air contiguous to it, and as fast as that body of air moves off it will impregnate every succeeding body of air, however pure it may be when it arrives at the place.

The result from this state of the case is, that the impure air or vapour that generates the yellow fever issues from the earth, that is from the new made earth or ground raised on the muddy and filthy bottom of the river, and which impregnates every fresh body of air that comes over the place, in like manner as air becomes heated when it approaches or passes over fire, or becomes offensive in smell when it approaches or passes over a body of corrupt vegetable or animal matter in a state of putrefaction.

The muddy bottom of rivers contains great quantities of impure and often inflammable air injurious to life, and which remains entangled in the mud till let loose from thence by some accident. This air is produced by the dissolution and decomposition of any combustible matter falling into the water and sinking into the mud, of which the following circumstance will serve to give some explanation.

In the fall of the year that New York was evacuated (1783) Gen. Washington had his headquarters at Mrs. Berrian’s, at Rocky-hill, in Jersey, and I was there — Congress sat then at Prince Town. We had several times been told that the river or creek that runs near the bottom of Rocky-hill, and over which there is a mill, might be set on fire, for that was the term the country people used; and as General Washington had a mind to try the experiment, Gen. Lincoln, who was also there, undertook to make preparation for it against the next evening, November 5th. This was to be done as we were told by disturbing the mud at the bottom of the river and holding something in a blaze as paper or straw, a little above the surface of the earth.

Colonels Humphries and Cob were at that time aids of General Washington, and those two gentlemen and myself got into an argument as to the cause. Their opinion was, that on disturbing the bottom of the river, some bituminous matter arose to the surface, which took fire when the light was put to it; I on the contrary supposed that a quantity of inflammable air was let loose, which ascended through the water and took fire above the surface. Each party held to his opinion and the next evening the experiment was to be made.

A scow had been stationed in the mill-dam, and Gen. Washington, Gen. Lincoln and myself, and I believe Col. Cob, (for Humphries was sick), and three or four soldiers with poles were put on board the scow in Buteaux. General Washington placed himself at one end of the scow and I at the other. Each of us had a roll of cartridge paper, which we lighted and held over the water about two or three inches from the surface, when the soldiers began disturbing the bottom of the river with the poles.

As Gen. Washington sat at one end of the scow and I at the other, I could see better anything that might happen from his light than I could from my own, over which I was nearly perpendicular. When the mud at the bottom was disturbed by the poles, the air-bubbles rose fast, and I saw the fire take from General Washington’s light and descend from thence to the surface of the water, in a similar manner as when a lighted candle is held so as to touch the smoke of a candle just blown out the smoke will take fire and the fire will descend and light up the candle. This was demonstrative evidence that what was called setting the river on fire was setting on fire the inflammable air that arose out of the mud.

I mentioned this experiment to Mr. Rittenhouse of Philadelphia the next time I went to that city, and our opinion on the case was that any combustible matter (vegetable or otherwise) that underwent a dissolution and decomposition of its parts, either by fire or water in a confined place so as not to blaze, that the air or vapour that issued from it would be inflammable and would become flame whenever it came in contact with flame.

In order to determine if this was the case, we filled up the breach of a gun barrel about five or six inches with saw-dust and the upper part with dry sand to the top, and after spiking up the touch-hole, put the breech into a smith’s furnace and kept it red hot so as to consume the sawdust, the sand of consequence would prevent any blaze. We applied a lighted candle to the mouth of the barrel, but as the first vapour that flew off would be humid, it extinguished the candle; but after applying the candle three or four times the vapor that issued out began to flash. We then tied a bladder over the mouth of the barrel which the vapour soon filled, and then tying a string round the neck of the bladder, above the muzzle, took the bladder off.

As we could not conveniently make experiments upon the vapours while it was in the bladder, the next operation was to get it into a phial. For this purpose, we took a vial of about three or four ounces, filled it with water, put a cork slightly into it, and introducing it into the neck of the bladder, worked the cork out, by getting hold of it through the bladder. The water then emptied itself into the bladder and the air in the bladder ascended into the vial. We then put the cork into the vial, and took the vial from the bladder. It was then in a convenient condition for experiment.

We put a lighted match into the phial and the air or vapour in it took first and blazed up in the manner of a chimney on fire. We extinguished it two or three times by stopping the mouth of the vial, and putting the lighted match to it again it repeatedly took fire, till the vapour was spent and the vial became filled with atmospheric air.

These two experiments, that in which some combustible substance (branches and leaves of trees) had been decomposed by water, in the mud, and this where the decomposition had been produced by fire without blazing, shew that a species of air injurious to lif, when taken into the lungs, may be generated from substances which in themselves are harmless.

It is by means similar to these that charcoal, which is made by fire, without blazing emits a vapor destructive to life. I now come to apply these cases, and the reasoning deduced therefrom, to account for the cause of the yellow fever. (Note: The author does not mean to infer that the inflammable air or carbureted hydrogen gas, is the cause of the yellow fever; but that perhaps it enters into some combination with miasma generated in low grounds, which produces the disease.)

First, the yellow fever is not a disorder produced by the climate naturally, or it would always have been here in the hot months. The climate is the same now as it was 50 or 100 years ago. There was no yellow fever then, and it is only within the last twelve years that such a disorder has been known in America.

Secondly, the low grounds on the shores of the rivers at the city, where the yellow fever is annually generated and continues about three months without spreading, were not subject to that disorder in their natural state or the Indians would have forsaken them; whereas they were the parts most frequented by the Indians in all seasons of the year on account of fishery. The result from these cases is that the yellow fever is produced by some new circumstance not natural to the country in its natural state, and the question is, what is that new circumstance?

It may be said that every thing done by the white people since their settlement in the country, such as building towns, clearing lands, levelling hills and filling up vallies, is a new circumstance; but the yellow fever does not accompany any of these new circumstances. No alteration made on the dry land produces the yellow fever. We must therefore look to some other new circumstances, and we now come to those that have taken place between wet and dry, between land and water.

The shores of the rivers at New-York, and also at Philadelphia, have, on account of the vast increase of commerce, and for the sake of making wharves, undergone great and rapid alterations from their natural state within a few years, and it is only in such parts of the shores where those alterations have taken place that the yellow fever is produced. The parts where little or no alteration has been made, either on the East or North river, and which continue in their natural state, or nearly so, do not produce the yellow fever. The fact therefore points to the cause.

Besides several new streets gained from the river by embankment there are upwards of eighty new wharfs made since the war, and the much greater part within the last ten or twelve years; the consequence of which has been that great quantities of filth or combustible matter deposited in the muddy bottom of the river contiguous to the shore, and which produced no ill effect while exposed to the air and washed twice every twenty-four hours by the tide water, have been covered over several feet deep with new earth, and pent up, and the tide excluded. It is in these places, and in these only, that the yellow fever is produced.

Having thus shown from the circumstances of the case, that the cause of the yellow fever is in the place where it is produced, or rather in the pernicious vapour issuing therefrom, I go to shew a method of constructing wharves, where wharves are yet to be constructed (as on the shore on the East River at Corlder’s Hook, and also on the North river) that will not generate the yellow fever, and which may also point out a method of removing it from places already infected with it. Instead, then, of imbanking out the river and raising solid wharves of earth on the mud bottom of the shore, the better method would be to construct wharves on arches, built of stone. The tide will then flow in under the arch by which means the shore, and the muddy bottom will be washed and kept clean as if they were in their natural state without wharves.

When wharves are constructed on the shore length-ways, that is without cutting the shore up into slips, arches can easily be turned, because arches joining each other length-ways serve as butments to each other; but when the shore is cut up into slips there can be no butments. In this case wharves can be formed on stone pillars, or wooden piles planked over on the top. In either of these cases the land underneath will be commodious shelter or harbour for small boats, which can come in and go out always, except at low water, and be secure from storms and injuries. This method besides preventing the cause of the yellow fever, which I think it will, will render the wharfs more productive than the present method because of the space preserved within the wharf.

I offer no calculation of the expence of constructing wharves on arches or piles; but on a general view I believe they will not be so expensive as the present method. A very great part of the expence of making solid wharves of earth is occasioned by the carriage of materials which will be greatly reduced by the methods here proposed, and still more so were the arches to be constructed of cast iron blocks. I suppose that one ton of cast iron blocks would go as far in the construction of an arch as twenty tons of stone.

If by constructing wharves in such a manner that the tide water can wash the shore and bottom of the river contiguous to the shore, as they are washed in their natural condition, the yellow fever can be prevented from generating in places where wharfs are yet to be constructed, it may point out a method of removing it, at least by degrees, from places already infected with it, which will be by opening the wharves in two or three places in each, and letting the tide water pass through. The parts opened can be planked over without preventing the use of the wharf.

In taking up and treating this subject I have considered it as belonging to natural philosophy rather than medicinal art, and therefore I say nothing about the treatment of the disease after it takes place. I leave that part to those whose profession it is to study it.

THOMAS PAINE.

As bridges and the method of constructing them are becoming objects of great importance throughout the United States, and as there are at this time proposals for a bridge over the Delaware, and also a bridge beginning to be erected over the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, I present the public with some account of the construction of iron bridges.

The following memoir on that subject written last winter at the Federal City, was intended to be presented to Congress. But as the session would necessarily be short, and as several of its members would be replaced by new elections at the ensuing session, it was judged better to let it lie over. In the meantime, on account of the bridges now in contemplation, or begun, I give the memoir the opportunity of appearing before the public, and the persons concerned in those works.

N.B.-The two models mentioned in this memoir will, I expect, arrive at Philadelphia by the next packet from the Federal City and will remain for some time in Mr. Peale’s museum.

THOMAS PAINE.

June, 1803.

BORDENTOWN,

To THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

I have deposited in the office of the Secretary of State, and under the care of the Patent Office, two models of iron bridges; the one in paste- board, the other cast in metal. As they will show by inspection the manner of constructing iron bridges, I shall not take up the time of Congress with a description of them.

My intention in presenting this memoir to Congress is to put the country in possession of the means and of the right of making use of the construction freely; as I do not intend to take any patent right for it.

As America abounds in rivers that interrupt the land communication, and as by violence of floods and the breaking tap of the ice in the spring, the bridges depending for support from the bottom of the river are frequently carried away, I turned my attention, after the Revolutionary War was over, to find a method of constructing an arch that might, without rendering the height inconvenient or the ascent difficult, extend at once from shore to shore, over rivers of three, four or five hundred feet and probably more.

The principle I took to begin with and work upon was that the small segment of a large circle was preferable to the great segment of a small circle. The appearance of such arches, and the manner of forming and putting the parts together, admit of many varieties, but the principle will be the same in all. The bridge architects that I conversed with in England denied the principle, but it was generally supported by mathematicians, and experiment has now established the fact.

In 1786, I made three models, partly at Philadelphia, but mostly at Bordentown in the State of New Jersey. One model was in wood, one in cast iron, and one in wrought iron connected with blocks of wood, representing cast iron blocks, but all on the same principle, that of the small segment of a large circle.

I took the last mentioned one with me to France in 1787 and presented it to the Academy of Sciences at Paris for their opinion of it. The Academy appointed a committee of three of their own body-Mons. Le Roy, the Abbe Bossou, and Mons. Borda. The first was an acquaintance of Dr. Franklin, and of Mr. Jefferson, then minister at Paris. The two others were celebrated as mathematicians. I presented it as a model for a bridge of a single arch of four hundred feet span over the river Schuylkill at Philadelphia. The committee brought in a report which the Academy adopted-that an arch on the principle and construction of the model, in their opinion, might be extended four hundred feet, the extent proposed.

In September of the same year, I sent the model to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society in England, and soon after went there myself.

In order to ascertain the truth of the principle on a larger scale than could be shown by a portable model five or six feet in length, I went to the iron-foundry of Messrs. Walker, at Rotherham, County of Yorkshire, in England, and had a complete rib of 90 feet span, and 5 feet of height from the chord line to the center of the arch, manufactured and erected. It was a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter; and until this was done no experiment on a circle of such an extensive diameter had ever been made in architecture, or the practicability of it supposed.

The rib was erected between a wall of a furnace belonging to the ironworks and the gable end of a brick building, which served as butments. The weight of iron in the rib was three tons, and we loaded it with double its weight in pig-iron. I wrote to Mr. Jefferson who was then at Paris, an account of this experiment, and also to Sir Joseph Banks in London, who in his answer to me says-“I look for many other bold improvements from your countrymen, the Americans, who think with vigor, and are not fettered with the trammels of science before they are capable of exerting their mental faculties to advantage.”

On the success of this experiment, I entered into an agreement with the iron-founders at Rotherham to cast and manufacture a complete bridge, to be composed of five ribs of 210 feet span, and 5 feet of height from the chord line, being a segment of a circle 610 feet diameter, and sent it to London to be erected as a specimen for establishing a manufactory of iron bridges to be sent to any part of the world.

The bridge was erected at the village of Paddington, near London, but being in a plain field, where no advantage could be taken of butments without the expense of building them, as in the former case, it served only as a specimen of the practicability of a manufactory of iron bridges. It was brought by sea, packed in the hold of a vessel, from the place where it was made; and after standing a year was taken down without injury to any of its parts, and might be erected anywhere else.

At this time my bridge operations became suspended. Mr. Edmund Burke published his attack on the French Revolution and the system of representative government, and in defense of government by hereditary succession, a thing which is in its nature an absurdity, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary; and therefore, so far as wisdom is necessary in a government, it must be looked for where it can be found, sometimes in one family, sometimes in another. History informs us that the son of Solomon was a fool. He lost ten tribes out of twelve (2 Chron. ch. x). There are those in later times who lost thirteen.

The publication of this work by Mr. Burke, absurd in its principles and outrageous in its manner, drew me, as I have said, from my bridge operations, and my time became employed in defending a system then established and operating in America, and which I wished to see peaceably adopted in Europe. I therefore ceased my work on the bridge to employ myself on the more necessary work, “Rights of Man,” in answer to Mr. Burke.

In 1792, a convention was elected in France for the express purpose of forming a Constitution on the authority of the people, as had been done in America, of which convention I was elected a member. I was at this time in England and knew nothing of my being elected till the arrival of the person who was sent officially to inform me of it.

During my residence in France, which was from 1792 to 1802, an iron bridge of 236 feet span, and 34 of height from the chord line, was erected over the river Wear near the town of Sunderland, in the County of Durham, England. It was done chiefly at the expense of the two members of Parliament for that county, Milbanke and Burdon.

It happened that a very intimate friend of mine, Sir Robert Smyth (who was also an acquaintance of Mr. Monroe, the American Minister, and since of Mr. Livingston), was then at Paris. He had been a colleague in Parliament with Milbanke, and supposing that the persons who constructed the iron bridge at Sunderland had made free with my model, which was at the iron-works where the Sunderland bridge was cast, he wrote to Milbanke on the subject, and the following is that gentleman’s answer.

“With respect to the iron bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, it certainly is a work well deserving admiration, both for its structure and utility, and I have good grounds for saying that the first idea was suggested by Mr. Paine’s bridge exhibited at Paddington. What difference there may be in some part of the structure, or in the proportion of wrought and cast iron, I cannot pretend to say, Burdon having undertaken to build the bridge, in consequence of his having taken upon himself whatever the expense might be beyond between three and four thousand pounds sterling, subscribed by myself and some other gentlemen.

“But whatever the mechanism might be, it did not supersede the necessity of a center.” (It is the technical term, meaning the boards and numbers which form the arch upon which the permanent materials are laid; when a bridge is finished the workmen say they are ready to strike center, that is to take down the scaffolding.-Author) (The writer has here confounded a center with a scaffolding.) “Which center (continues the writer) was esteemed a very ingenious piece of workmanship, and taken from a plan sketched out by Mr. Nash, an architect of great merit, who had been consulted in the outset of the business when a bridge of stone was in contemplation. “With respect therefore to any gratuity to Mr. Paine, though ever so desirous of rewarding the labors of an ingenious man, I do not feel how, under the circumstances already described, I have it in my power, having had nothing to do with the bridge after the payment of my subscription, Mr. Burdon then becoming accountable for the whole. But if you can point out any mode according to which it would be in my power to be instrumental in procuring him any compensation for the advantages the public may have derived from his ingenious model, from which certainly the outline of the bridge at Sunderland was taken, be assured it will afford me very great satisfaction. (The original is in my possession.-Author.)

“RA. MILBANKE.”

The year before I left France, the Government of that country had it in contemplation to erect an iron bridge over the river Seine, at Paris. As all edifices of public construction came under the cognizance of the Minister of the Interior (and as their plan was to erect a bridge of five iron arches of 100 feet span each, instead of passing the river with a single arch, and which was going backward in practise, instead of forward, as there was already an iron arch of 230 feet in existence) I wrote the Minister of the Interior, the citizen Chaptal, a memoir on the construction of iron bridges. The following is his answer:

“The Minister of the Interior to the citizen Thomas Paine,-I have received, citizen, the observations that you have been so good as to address to me upon the construction of iron bridges. They will be of the greatest utility to us when the new kind of construction goes to be executed for the first time. With pleasure, I assure you, citizen, that you have rights of more than one kind to the thankfulness of nations, and I give you, cordially, the particular expression of my esteem.

“-CHAPTAL.” (The original, in French, is in my possession.-Author.)

A short time before I left France, a person came to me from London with plans and drawings for an iron bridge of one arch over the river Thames at London, of 600 feet span, and 60 feet of height from the chord line. The subject was then before a committee of the House of Commons, but I know not the proceedings thereon.

As this new construction of an arch for bridges, and the principles on which it is founded, originated in America, as the documents I have produced sufficiently prove, and is becoming an object of importance to the world, and to no part of it more than to our own country, on account of its numerous rivers, and as no experiment has been made in America to bring it into practise further than on the model I have executed myself and at my own expense, I beg leave to submit a proposal to Congress on the subject, which is:

To erect an experiment rib of about 400 feet span, to be the segment of a circle of at least 1,000 feet diameter, and to let it remain exposed to public view, so that the method of constructing such arches may be generally known.

It is an advantage peculiar to the construction of iron bridges that the success of an arch of a given extent and height can be ascertained without being at the expense of building the bridge; which is, by the method I propose, that of erecting an experiment rib on the ground where advantage can be taken of two hills for butments.

I began in this manner with the rib of 90 feet span and 5 feet of height, being a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter. The undertakers of the Sunderland bridge began in the same manner. They contracted with the iron-founder for a single rib, and, finding it to answer, had five more manufactured like it and erected into a bridge consisting of six ribs, the experiment rib being one.

But the Sunderland bridge does not carry the principle much further into practise than had been done by the rib of 90 feet span and 5 feet in height, being, as before said, a segment of a circle of 410 feet diameter; the Sunderland bridge being 206 feet span and 34 feet of height, gives the diameter of the circle of which it is a segment to be 444 feet, within a few inches, which is but a larger segment of a circle 30 feet more diameter.

The construction of those bridges does not come within the line of any established practise of business. The stone architect can derive but little from the theory of practise of his art that enters into his construction of an iron bridge; and the iron-founder, though he may be expert in moulding and casting the parts, when the models are given him, would be at a loss to proportion them, unless he was acquainted with all the lines and properties belonging to a circle.

If it should appear to Congress that the construction of iron bridges will be of utility to the country, and they should direct that an experiment rib be made for that purpose, I will furnish the proportions for the several parts of the work and give my attendance to superintend the erection of it.

But, in any case, I have to request that this memoir may be put on the journals of Congress, as an evidence hereafter that this new method of constructing bridges originated in America.

THOMAS PAINE.

FEDERAL CITY, January 3, 1803.