Deptford’s Red Republican, George Julian Harney,  1817-1897. Terry Liddle. Pamphlet. 11pp. South London Republican Forum, 1997. £1.50  

IN 1897 Dr.Edward Aveling interviewed Julian Harney, commenting about him:  “I know that long after the rest of us are forgotten the name of George Julian  Harney will be remembered with thankfulness and tears”. Terry Liddle cites this,  noting that the words might not be bettered as his epitaph. Maybe, but it is an  irony of history that Aveling’s name rather than Harney’s is now more likely to be  remembered.  

Although much of this publication is taken up with Harney’s Chartism and  republicanism, the author does not neglect the many other political and secularist  causes he became involved with. Among those few who have written on Harney  there is general agreement that he was a brilliant writer, having, as Joseph McCabe  says in his biography of Holyoake, a pen like that of Marat, although McCabe’s  description of Harney as ‘a dark, moody little man…’ is historically incorrect.  Chartism was very much part of his life and its demise in the 1850s might have left  a void in the political life of many an individual, but not Harney. He rapidly  increased and developed his contacts with the growing socialist and trade union  movements, becoming a close friend of Frederick Engels and, for a time, Karl  Marx, although the latter broke with him, having become increasingly annoyed by  Harney’s refusal to censor articles critical of him in journals he edited. His  friendship with Engels, however, continued, as did his respect for Marx.  

As he became older Harney became more moderate in his approach to  political matters, no longer being the political firebrand he once was. In fact the  older he grew the more isolated he started to become, in some respects his  situation resembled that of Paine in old age and he found it hard to make ends  meet, nevertheless, like Paine he continued to write until the year of his death,  one of his last pieces being some personal reminiscences he contributed to the Chicago based magazine, Open Court, in 1895 Terry Liddle is to be congratulated on having written a first-rate, if short, essay  which brings to the fore an individual who, considering his importance, one would  have expected to have attracted the attention of several biographers. Yet such is  not the case. Indeed, as Liddle points out, there has been only a single full length  biography, which he appears to have drawn heavily upon, A.R.Schoyen’s, The  Chartist Challenge, A Portrait of George Julian Harney, published in 1958. This was  originally a degree thesis and tends to read like one. Peter Cadogan has explored  the relationship between Harney and Engels in an article published in the  International Review of Social History (10. 1. 1965), and there have been some minor  biographical studies such as `G. Mortimer’s”, ‘George Julian Harney, The Last of  the Chartists’, which appeared in Free Review for March, 1896, the author of this is  thought to have been J.M.Robertson. As might be expected Harney has also  received some attention in academic papers, though for the most part the  references are of a minor nature.  

The impetus for this publication was the centenary of the death of Harney.  The South London Republican Forum celebrated it, but requests to the Labour  Party, the TUC and the Cooperative Movement to join it fell, as it were, on deaf  ears. One might add here, that the Freethinker also ignored the centenary, despite  the fact that Harney was a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh and G.J. Holyoake.  The Freethought movement seems to be as neglectful of its pioneers as are the  political and trade union establishments. If Liddle’s comments on the failure of  the Labour Party, the TUC and the Cooperative Movement to commemorate the  centenary of one of their own outstanding pioneers, prompts them to make  amends, perhaps by funding a restoration of his memorial, which considering  their collective financial assets would be chicken-feed, he will have achieved  something of considerable significance, however, I hold out no great hopes as the  leaders of New Labour (more accurately New Conservative) appear to be only  interested in making political capital in order to retain power and the huge  salaries and perks which go with it, hence the degrading spectacle of the leader of  the party and his cronies boot-licking royalty.  

This pamphlet makes a stimulating and informative read. Harney is known to have held Paine’s memory in high regard and may even have been one of the  Chartists who influenced the movement to reprint and publish their own edition of Rights of Man. The failure to officially mark the centenary of his death also  reflects the continual official failure to recognise events associated with Paine, as  happened when Labour were previously in power. Liddle’s little work is at least a  step in the right direction in that it seeks to make amends for the official silence. I would urge all readers to purchase a copy.  

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Paine: Hello Burkie, it’s a long time since we last met on planet earth, how have you been getting on in purgatory?  

Burke: Well bless my soul, it’s old Paine from cloud nine. They are not letting me out from purgatory yet, I got a special pass out for this meeting of earthies  celebrating my bicentenary. Up here it only seems like yesterday that you were  doing your best to change the tried and tested old order.  

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

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

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

B: Didn’t they see through you?  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P: Burkie, what a truly nebulous statement.  

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

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

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

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

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As a new member of the Thomas Paine Society, I ventured to suggest that  Thomas Paine would have had much in common with Henry George (1839-1897)  the American political economist. But I forgot that George is not now very well  known. So the point is: was George’s decline due to his faults or due to the faults of  others? Alas – it is the latter.  

Fame-wise, George was once very famous (not, of course, that this proves  anything) and in fact, his name was once as much a household name as Karl Marx’s.  George was not just a mild commentator but, in fact, he spoke at packed meetings  here and abroad and was very much involved with political matters all over the  world, especially Ireland. He did not, incidentally, get his ideas from Paine or Condorcet’s colleagues because at the time he had never heard of them. But, in  comparing George with Paine, what people forget is that (thanks to people like Paine) people in Henry George’s day were able to speak their minds a little more  openly.  

But this was to go against George! When it was realised that they could not destroy  his logic by force, the authorities used the only other weapons available to them,  conspiracy and misrepresentation.  

George’s great superiority over all other political economists was that he properly defined terms. The text-books tell us that the pre-French Revolution economistes’ for example had their errors corrected by Adam Smith. But what the text-books seldom tell us is that Adam Smith had his errors corrected by Henry George.  

What were the errors of Smith and others? They were really very obvious – once  seen. All wealth comes from land; therefore, as all true capital is wealth, this must  come from land as well. What, consequently, people need to correct any faults in  employment or wealth acquisition is free access to land. Any differences in land  (due to fertility or position) should be confiscated and redistributed, thus making a  level ‘playing-field’ for all.  

George was right to ignore the past acquisition of wealth. This is because most  wealth (including capital) is produced daily; it just is not practical to attempt to  recover the loot of past thefts. If this seems harsh, then what we have to remember  is that most of this ‘loot’ is not wealth at all – but is a piece of paper allowing thieves  to steal future wealth.  

A great pity is that ‘name-calling’ played its part in George’s logic; and foremost  is the name of ‘socialism’. But, nowadays, we should be more aware. The socialist of  old wanted a fairer, more equal, society, and this is exactly what George wanted. But  now, especially after taking a look at today’s world, we should realise that ‘socialism’  has to be more than simply ‘taking out of one pocket and putting into another’.  The great difference between the old ‘socialists’ and Henry George was that – much  more to the point – George pondered: How did wealth get into the wrong pockets in the  first place? In the present social conditions of the civilized world, nothing is clearer than that  there is some deep and widespread wrong in the distribution, if not the production, of wealth. 

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“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the  sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women. Tyranny, like  hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us that, the harder  the conflict, the more glorious the triumph”. Thus wrote Thomas Paine in the first part of The American Crisis papers, two days before Christmas of 1776.  

Seven years later, in The American Crisis, Part XIII, he paraphrased his own  famous lines. “The times that tried men’s souls are over, and the greatest and  completest revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished”.  

But alas, for Citizen Paine, the bitter trials of his own soul lay ahead – if by the phrase one means rejection, condemnation, banishment, trial, imprisonment,  illness, drunkenness and poverty.  

British born, this man, more than any other, crystallized the attitudes and emotions of the American colonists. His writings were their supreme inspiration to  revolt against English rule. Hailed for his achievement early on, how did he fall from grace and glory?  

The young Thomas Paine had sparse education and limited working  experience. He started as a corset maker in his father’s shop in Thetford,  England, at the age of 13. He failed at a succession of menial jobs before coming  to America in 1774 when he was 37. It is remarkable that this person of limited  background could have written a monumental pamphlet with such skill and power  as he did two years later in Common Sense.  

Reflecting on his creation, Paine tells us, “I saw an opportunity, in which I  thought I could do some good, and I followed exactly what my heart dictated. I  neither read books nor studied other people’s opinions. I thought for myself…”  

Before departing for America, after separating from his second wife, who  settled £35 on him and thus financed his journey, Paine had developed an intense  bitterness toward George III and the whole concept of royalty.  

At Lexington, in April 1775, American blood was shed. That incited Paine to  pour his bitterness against “the Royal Brute of Britain” into Common Sense. “I  rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever, and disdain  the wretch, with that pretended title of Father of His People can unfeelingly hear  of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul”.  

The new world brought a new career – journalism. Thomas wrote articles for a  magazine, signed by pseudonyms, as was the custom of the day. He met intelligent  men of like mind. Dr.Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams and  David Rittenhouse read the manuscript of Common Sense before publication,  offering few changes.  

Common Sense appeared in bookstalls on January 9, 1776, under the by-line,  “Written by an Englishman”. It was a sell-out. More copies were printed, and they  quickly spread through the colonies. Said Edmund Randolph in Virginia, “The public sentiment which a few weeks before had shuddered at the tremendous  obstacles with which independence was environed, over leaped every barrier”.  

“The country was ripe  for independence”, commented a contemporary,  “and only needed some body to tell the people so,  with decision, boldness and  plausibility”. And Paine, never overburdened with  modesty, declared, “I believe, by the end of the  year, the number of copies  printed and sold in  America was not short of  150,000. This was the greatest sale since the use of  letters”.  

Knowing that Paine was  short of money virtually his  entire life, we may wonder  why, with this best seller  (and more to come), he  wasn’t rich. While he be 

came sophisticated about fi nance, in an intellectual  and political sense, he  lacked any personal understanding of how to make and keep money. The hope for profit certainly did not  motivate him with Common Sense. He donated the first £30 that came from the  pamphlet “for the purchase of mittens for the troops ordered on that cold  campaign” (the failed attempt to capture Quebec).  

At first there was much speculation as to the author, but the truth came out  and Paine was immediately a hero to all who espoused independence.  Tom, the Englishman, now professed to be an American citizen. After the July  4 Declaration, Paine served as a war correspondent for Philadelphia newspapers.  The early phase of combat went against the Americans. When voluntary  enlistments expired on December 1, there were not adequate replacements.  Washington was in retreat at Trenton, and a British attack on Philadelphia seemed  imminent.  

Morale, both of civilians and soldiers, was at a low. Strong words were needed. Paine wrote, “in what I may call a passion of patriotism”, an essay named The  Crisis. The opening lines are the opening lines of this article. The closing lines  were an inspiration to stand and fight: 

This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and  fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils – a savaged country – a depopulated city – habitations without safety, and a slavery without  hope – our homes turned into barracks for bawdy Hessians, , and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

Paine restricted the printer to a two cents a copy price. Other publishers up  and down the coast reprinted the work, so it received a fast and wide circulation.  The second in the Crisis series appeared in the middle of January 1777. By  then confidence had returned. In April Crisis No.III attacked English sympathizers  and urged the Pennsylvania Assembly to pass a loyalty oath to the new  government, ‘Tories’, Pane wrote, ‘are a set of avaricious miscreants, motivated  only by avarice, downright villainy, and lust of personal power’. And as for the  pacifist Quakers, he had these invectives: They are ‘like antiquated virgins, they  see not the havoc deformity has made upon them, but pleasantly mistaking  wrinkles for dimples, conceive themselves yet lovely and wonder at the stupid  world for not admiring them’.  

It is an amusing irony that, when near death in 1809, Paine requested  permission to be buried in a Quaker graveyard. ‘I wish to be buried in your  burying ground. I could be buried in the Episcopal church, but they are so  arrogant, or in the Presbyterian, but they are so hypocritical’. The Quaker  congregation turned him down.  

Nominated by John Adams, with whom he later became bitter enemies, he was  appointed secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs. Adams saw that Paine  ‘had a capacity and ready pen, and understanding he was poor and destitute, I  thought we might put him into employment, where he might be useful and earn a  living’.  

In the next couple of years, inflation struck. By summer 1779 a paper dollar  issued by the Continental Congress was worth less than a copper penny. Hence  the phrase, ‘not worth a continental’. The war was going badly. Winter was terrible  and spring no better. General Washington expressed his desire in a letter to the  Executive Council of Pennsylvania: ‘Every idea you can form of our distress will  fall short of the reality. There is such a combination of circumstances to exhaust  the patience of the soldiery that it begins to be worn out, and we see in every line  of the army the most serious features of mutiny and sedition…Indeed, I have  almost ceased to hope’.  

In May of 1780, Charlestown was captured. The worst of times had come. There  was a desperate need of money for supplies and for bounties to pay volunteers. 

Thomas Paine had a plan. He told the wealthy Philadelphia merchants that ‘as  it is the rich that will suffer most by the ravages of an enemy it is not only duty but  true policy to do something spirited’. Robert Morris got involved, and with  pledges of some £300,000, the Bank of Pennsylvania was created, the first bank in  the United States. Congress backed the plan with the ‘full faith and credit’ of the  nation. ‘By means of this bank’, reported Paine, ‘the army was supplied through  the campaign and being at the same time recruited was enables to maintain its  ground’.  

The tide turned, and Cornwallis surrendered in October of 1781. The war was  not over, but the crisis was. Paine, meanwhile, was a journalist without a job. He  wrote to General Washington complaining about the country’s lack of appreciation of his contributions to the cause. Washington was sympathetic. He formed a  plan with Robert Morris and Robert Livingstone, newly appointed Secretary of  Foreign Affairs, to hire Paine to write for the government, a kind of staff  propagandist. He would be paid $800 a year from a secret fund. But the war  ended in 1783 and so did Paine’s job.  

With peace, Paine’s life lacked purpose, as well as money. He expected  somehow to be taken care of by a grateful nation, which he had served for seven  years. But the nation was now too busy enjoying tranquillity and readjusting to  life without battle. Paine wondered what to do. ‘Trade I do not understand. Land  I have none… But I have exiled myself from one country without making a home  of another’.  

On the advice of Robert Livingstone and Robert Morris, Paine petitioned  Congress for financial reward for his services. This failed, and he next tried asking  the states, one by one. The New York legislature gave him a small farm that had  been confiscated from a Tory in New Rochelle. In 1785 Pennsylvania awarded him  £500 as “temporary recompense”.  

The subject was revived in Congress by President Washington, who asked  Elbridge Gerry to help. Paine requested reimbursement for his expenditures since  coming to America, at least $6,000. Congress awarded him $3,000. These gifts he  considered far less than he deserved. Nevertheless, for the time, he was  comfortable financially.  

He took leave from politics and immersed himself in designing an iron bridge.  His bridge would be constructed with a single arch combining thirteen sections  “in commemoration of the thirteen states”. There were then very few bridges in  America because the state of the art design was a combination of piers and low  arches which would then have been crushed by winter ice.  

Paine rented a loft in Philadelphia and began construction of a 13 foot model.  The finished product would require 520 tons of wrought iron and would span the  Schuykill River in Philadelphia. He presented his designs to Benjamin Franklin,  now returned from a decade in Paris, and David Rittenhouse. A committee of the  Pennsylvania Assembly examined the model on New Year’s day, 1787. Curiosity was  great, conviction mild.  

Paine estimated the cost at over $330,000, which was more than the state’s  annual budget. Such a project at a time when government debt was high was too impractical. Franklin suggested that Paine take the model to Europe. If he could  get approval from the Royal Society in London and the Royal Academy of  Sciences in Paris, it would aid his chances for government subsidy and perhaps  induce wealthy private investors to support the project.  

Benjamin Franklin called Thomas Paine “my adopted political son”, and he  wrote letters of recommendation to important persons in Paris. So in April 1787,  at the age of 50, Paine sailed from New York harbour bound for France, a crossing  which under the best of conditions took a month. Though he planned to return  soon, it would be 15 years before he again saw America.  

The French Revolution began May 25, 1787, the day before Paine debarked.  So intent was he on winning approval for the bridge, that he scarcely seemed  aware he had arrived at the onset of a revolution. At first the revolt unfolded  peacefully. Lafayette and other moderates hoped for a constitutional monarchy  with limited authority for the rulers.  

Paine was well known to French intellectuals as the spokesman of the  American Revolution, and he was welcomed as a hero. Thomas Jefferson was in  Paris as Minister, and his influence induced the Academy of Sciences to study  Paine’s bridge. They did approve his plan, but the bridge was never built.  

Paine moved on to London to seek endorsement from the Royal Society. He  returned to his home in Thetford and was reunited with his 91 year old mother.  Paine closely guarded a couple of secrets in his life. One was that over the years  from what little money he could spare, he had consistently sent sums to his  parents.  

While in Thetford he wrote a pamphlet titled Prospects on the Rubicon, in  which he, the expatriate Englishman, advises England to avoid a contemplated war  with Holland. War “has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes…I  defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the  farmer, and of all those on whom the real burden of taxes fall – but above all, I  defend the cause of humanity”.  

Endorsement of the bridge by the Royal Society was not forthcoming.  Undaunted, Paine set up a workshop with a firm of ironworkers in Rotherham,  Yorkshire. There, part of the time, he continued to work on bridge design and  other mechanical inventions. In London he was welcomed into the influential  American colony, which included Dr.Benjamin West and John Trumbull. He was  also on good terms with English politicians Edmund Burke and Charles James  Fox.  

In the winter of 1788, John Adams, who had been American Minister to  England, returned to America and no official representative replaced him. Paine,  working closely with Jefferson, actually performed as the ex-officio Minister in  London.  

On July 14, 1789, the Bastille, symbol of royal tyranny, fell to the mob.  Lafayette, friend to both Paine and Jefferson, was made head of the National  Guard, an army of the people. Domestic order rapidly deteriorated, Inflation rose,  the price of bread skyrocketed. Some 7,000 women in angry protest tramped  through twelve miles of mud to Versailles. The King, on Lafayette’s prudent advice, distributed food from the royal supplies. The entire entourage marched  back to Paris and the royal family moved to the Tuilleries, effectively under house  arrest.  

In London, when Paine heard the news, he prepared to leave at once for Paris.  “A share in two revolutions”, he exulted, “is living to some purpose”.  In a ceremony in the gardens of the Louvre, General Lafayette presented  Paine with the key to the Bastille and asked him to give it to President  Washington. Lafayette translated Paine’s words to the crowd, “the principles of  America opened the Bastille”. Paine’s presence upstaged Gouverneur Morris, who was on a financial mission for Washington. Jealous and resentful, Morris described  Thomas as “inflated to the eyes and big with a litter of revolutions”.  Expecting France to write a constitution based on the American, Paine  returned to London for an exhibition of a revised edition of his bridge, now with  a span of 110 feet. Spectators were charged a shilling to see it. The exhibition  continued for months, but Paine did only slightly better than break even.  He began a series of journeys between England and France. Paine had no  qualms about advising the English that their time for democracy had come. A  spark was provided by Edmund Burke, the British parliamentary leader, who wrote  a defence of royal government called, Reflections on the Revolution in Franca  As soon as he read it, Paine began composing his reply. Burke had supported  the ideals of the American Revolution during its darkest hours and Paine had  been his great admirer. But now Burke attacked the principles of the French  Revolution as anarchist and destructive.  

Paine’s answer was Rights of Man, Part One, which he dedicated to George  Washington. Its essence was that all men have natural rights which cannot be  violated. Civil rights grow out of natural rights, and people may choose any form  of government they want. A true constitution must be “of the people, and for the  people and by the people” – a theme that would be powerfully reiterated 73 years  later.  

The institution of royalty was a violation of the natural rights of man, “It is by  distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased. A vast mass of  mankind are defraudedly thrown into the background of the human picture, to  bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet show of state and aristocracy…”  

This monumental work was published in England and Ireland, and a few  months later in America in 1791. An estimated two million copies were sold in  three countries. At three shillings apiece, Paine would have become wealthy had  he accepted the profits. He choose not to take pay for what he felt was his  obligation to society to tell the truth. So his share went to an obscure group called  The Society for Constitutional Information, which embraced the work as its bible.  The attack on the institution of monarchy rattled historic tradition and caused a  sensation in Great Britain. The author was regarded as a hero at one end of the  political spectrum, and at the other, as The Great Satan.  

Observed Paine, “…The same fate follows me here (in England) as I first  experienced in America, strong friends and violent enemies, but as I have got the  ear of the country, I shall go on, and at least show them, what is a novelty here, that there can be a person beyond the reach of corruption”. The work was openly  praised in America by Secretary of State Jefferson and James Madison. John  Adams disapproved, and President Washington was non-committal.  

Paine returned once more to France to work on the second part of Rights of  Man and to watch what he thought was to be the peaceful, bloodless, unfolding of  the French Revolution.  

He stayed at Lafayette’s home and he became friends with various leaders of  the uprising, including Maximilien Robespierre, who publicly endorsed Rights of  Mart. These two shared the same sentiments for freedom of religion, universal  suffrage, abolition of slavery everywhere, hostility to royal power and abolition of  the death penalty!  

Paine must have recognised that his hopes for non-violent solutions were  fading. Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette tried to leave Paris in disguise.  They and the entire royal family were caught and imprisoned. Lafayette was  thought to have permitted the escape attempt. The mob was developing and the  Parisian scene was in process of turning ugly.  

Thomas Paine returned to England, where an improved model of his bridge  was exhibited in 1792 to general approval. Its cost, however, was still prohibitive.  On display for a year, no buyers appeared. Thus ended Paine’s dream.  

Ironically, in 1793, one Rowland Burdon improved on Paine’s design* and  raised £22,000 to build his version spanning 236 feet of the River Wear in  Northern England. This bridge was immediately acclaimed as “one of the most  daring structures ever erected in cast iron”.  

Rights of Man, Part Two, was released in London in February 1792, dedicated to  the Marquis de Lafayette. This was the call to arms. Paine openly urged the people  of Great Britain to revolt, to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic.  

The work, over 100 pages long, was a bombshell. The explosion rocked the  nation and was even more sought than Common Sense had been in America. In  England alone, a million and a half copies were sold, at a price limited by Paine to  three shillings. This volume became the best seller in the history of the country to  that time.  

In it Paine predicts that “monarchy and aristocracy will not continue seven  years longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe”. Revolutions are “the  order of the day”. His horizon for change expands to the entire western world.  “…the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted German and the  enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole are beginning to think. The present age  will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation  will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world”.  

Paine does a lot more than call for the overthrow of monarchies. He outlines a  series of proposals for what government should do for its citizens. The Paine ‘New  Deal’ called for the subsidisation of the poor, education of their children by the  state. Twenty shillings should be given to every needy woman immediately on the  birth of a child.  

Social security was part of his programme. At age fifty, a person should receive  six pounds a year, and at sixty, when “labour ought to be over, ten pounds until death”. Wages, which were government regulated, should be allowed a free  market.  

What really must have raised hackles on aristocratic necks were proposals for  graduated income tax on the wealthy and inheritance taxes to dismantle great  estates. A member of the upper class reacted with, “If Mr.Paine should be able to  rouse up the lower classes, their interference will probably be marked by wild  work, and all we now possess, whether in private property or public liberty, will be  at the mercy of a lawless and furious rabble”.  

In the spring of 1792, coal miners threatened a strike. Other labourers  demanded higher pay, better working conditions. Insurrection was in the air and  the government was clearly frightened. Declared Prime Minister William Pitt,  “Principles had been laid down by Mr. Paine, which struck at the hereditary  nobility, and which went to the destruction of monarchy and religion, and the  total subversion of the established form of government”.  

Thomas Paine was accused of seditious libel and ordered to appear for trial. ‘Mad Tom’ escaped by night, one jump ahead of the authorities. At Dover he  boarded the ferry for Calais, never again to return to his homeland.  

Just prior to his departure the Revolution in France heated up. A mob  marched on the Tuileries shouting “down with the fathead!” The Swiss Guard  opened fire and a thousand people were killed. The sans culottes, whose long  trousers identified them as working class, rallied round a new song, “Aux arms,  citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!” Lafayette denounced them and was arrested.  

The National Assembly declared a state of emergency. All priests who had  opposed the Revolution were given two weeks to leave the country. The  Commune, the revolutionary government of Paris, voted honorary citizenship to  Americans Thomas Paine, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George  Washington.  

On September 2, 1792, the people’s incendiary anger flared into a three-day  killing orgy. Some 1,300 aristocrats and priests were murdered in what came to be  known as ‘The September Massacres’. Electoral assemblies met to choose deputies  for a National Convention. Paine was welcomed as a hero, “Vive Thomas Paine!”  shouted the people of Calais when he landed. He was immediately invited to  represent Calais, along with Maximilien Robespierre.  

Paine was shocked when he learned of the September Massacres. Most of the  victims were murdered in prisons. Such action was anathema to him. “…A prison  is as sacred as an altar and those who violated a prison were capable of betraying  their own country”. Still, Paine felt that no one was better qualified for  government service than he, if the French wanted men skilled “in defending,  explaining, and propagating the principles of liberty”.  

When Paine appeared in the hall of the Legislative Assembly in Paris, the  deputies erupted into cheers. Factionalism was intense. Many different agendas  were represented. Paine was to learn, to his sorrow, that the French Revolution  was not the American Revolution revisited. This was a different culture with  different history and traditions.  

In the meantime he was put on trial in absentia in London. The government charged he was “a wicked, malicious, and ill-disposed person…who seditiously had  planned to traduce and vilify the government”. He was found guilty, thus giving  the government the right to suppress Rights of Man and all his other works, and he  was exiled from England forever. “Paine looks a little down at the news from  England”, snidely commented Gouverneur Morris, then Minister to France, at a  small dinner. “He has been burnt in effigy”.  

When King Louis was being judged, Paine proposed imprisonment and then  banishment. “Louis XVI is only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared. He  should be shown some compassion”.  

But the mood was not for compassion. The vote of the 707 members of the  Assembly took two days. By a majority of one vote, the decision was for death.  Three days later the king lost his head to the guillotine and Thomas Paine lost  support from the more radical deputies, like Marat, Danton and the man who was  once against the death penalty, Robespierre.  

France was embattled on many fronts. Prussian soldiers were moving towards  Verdun. In 1792 and 1793 the National Convention declared war against Prussia,  Austria, Holland, Spain and, finally, England. The monarchies of Europe were  understandably eager to topple the mad government of the sans culottes who  killed their king.  

In addition to attacks from outside there was an economic disaster at home.  Inflation and scarcity of food staples were widespread. The Convention created a  Committee of Public Safety, whose nine members were given carte blanche to end  the chaos.  

Paine fell out of favour. Disillusioned, and for his own safety, he retired to  St.Denis, where at first he drank himself into oblivion. His increasingly fiery nose  and ruddy face attested to that condition (though it was said he consumed “no  more than three quarts of rum a week”.  

In the fall of 1793, Paine was denounced as an Englishman, and England was  France’s enemy. Blood flowed in October. Marie Antoinette was guillotined.  Paine’s principal friends in the Assembly were driven through the streets to the  taunts of the sans culottes. Singing the Marseillaise they went to the chopping  block.  

Robespierre, now in power, turned his attention to “foreign conspirators”.  Paine continued to stay out of the way in St.Denis, where he was hard at work on a  new book. De-christianization was part of the creed of the Revolution, and Paine  held views on the subject that were akin to Robespierre’s. He accepted God and  life after death. He was a deist, believing that reason proved the existence of God,  but rejected divine revelation and the establishment of religious authority.  

Since Paine’s general view was consistent with that of the Revolution’s leader,  no effort was made to block the printing of the chapters of his new book as they  were sent into Paris to the publisher. The Age of Reason was a small work, mainly a  vitriolic attack on the Bible. 

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the  voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting  vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more  consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God”. The devout shivered with anger at such blasphemy.  

When the soldiers came and took away his friends who boarded in the same  house in St.Denis, Paine sensed that his own time was near. Three days after  Christmas in 1793, the police escorted Citizen Thomas Paine to the Luxembourg,  formerly a palace, now remodelled to house up to 1,000 prisoners.  

In the Luxembourg inmates were free to wander about in the courtyard and  visit each other. Not free was the food. Paine again became a paying border. At first male and female prisoners were accommodated together, and Paine soon  found intimate companionship with an actress prisoner, but the genders were  separated after the prison acquired the reputation as Paris’ premier brothel.  

Paine assumed that incarceration would be brief, but the only effort to get him  out came from American friends in Paris, who applied to the Assembly for his  release as an American citizen.  

The case required delicate handling. True, Paine had come from America, but  he was born in England, an enemy country. On the other hand, it was a political  reality that France needed the United States for critical supplies. It would not be  politic to imprison a famous American without proper cause.  

But no such direction came from President Washington. Why he did not  interfere is still a matter for speculation. The contention that he didn’t know what  had happened to Paine is unlikely. In any event, there was no pressure on Minister  Gouverneur Morris, nor from him, to do anything. Morris expressed his contempt.  

“In the best of times”, he said, “he had a larger share of every other sense  than common sense, and lately the intemperate use of ardent spirits had, I am  told, considerably impaired the small stock, which he originally possessed”. Morris  felt that since Paine had been a member of the French government he could no  longer legally claim to be an American citizen.  

Weeks and then months passed. Paine languished. He grew increasingly angry  and frustrated. Why had his friends at home deserted him? Why did the french  want to detain him?  

Robespierre feared that if Paine were allowed to return to America, his pen  might provoke a sword. If Paine wrote of what he saw in France, it could  potentially damage the Franco-American entente. At the same time, it could cause  a storm if Paine were guillotined. Robespierre concluded that the best solution  was to neutralize the dangerous author, i.e., keep him imprisoned. “I neither saw,  nor heard from, anybody for six months”, lamented Paine.  

The problems of the French government intensified and their desperation was  reflected in the prison. Discipline was harsh, freedom of movement curtailed.  Almost every night up to 50 inmates were carted off to the guillotine. Paine’s  friends were victims, one after another. He constantly expected to be next.  

His strength of character and courage came to the fore in the ordeal. A  survivor said of him later, “His cheerful philosophy under the certain expectation  of death, his sensibility of heart, his brilliant powers of conversation, and his  sportive vein of wit, rendered him a very general favourite with the companions of  misfortune, who found a refuge from evil in the charms of his society. He was the  confidante of the unhappy, the counsellor of the perplexed; and to his sympathizing friendship many a devout victim in the hour of death confided the  last cares of humanity, and the last wish of tenderness”.  

With it all, he kept writing, he produced essays, poetry, a revision of Rights of  Man and even an Essay on the Character of Robespierre.  

On June 10, 1794, the Convention abolished the rights of accused to have  counsel or witnesses. Judges could only acquit or condemn to death. So began  ‘The Great Terror’ which prevailed for 47 days. The guillotine claimed 1,376  people. “What rendered the scene more horrible was that they were generally  taken away at midnight, so that every man went to bed with the apprehension of  never seeing his friends or the world again”.  

The strain of the ordeal finally broke Paine’s health. He almost died from a  fever, which persisted for five weeks. Only the constant care of two English  doctors, fellow prisoners, pulled him through.  

‘The Great Terror’ ended with the fall of Robespierre, July 27, 1794. “The  monster to be erased from the list of men”, as a surviving official described him,  was brought to the Luxembourg, but the jailor would not admit him. Neither  would any other jailer in the city. The ‘monster’ was fittingly erased by his  favourite device, the guillotine, the next day.  

Again, Paine wrote to the Committee of Public Safety asking for his release. No  response, Then a piece of good news, Gouverneur Morris was being replaced as  Minister by James Monroe. Desperate, Paine immediately wrote to him, at last, a  response.  

No question in Monroe’s mind that Thomas Paine was an American citizen.  “By being with us through the Revolution, you are of our country, as absolutely as  if you had been born there; and you are no more of England, than every native of  America is”. Monroe met with the appropriate French committees and on  November 4, 1794, after more than ten months in prison, Thomas Paine was  released. James Monroe wrote to Secretary of State Jefferson that, in spite of his  lengthy incarceration, and his age, nearly 58, and a persistent abscess in his side,  Paine was in “good spirits”.  

Monroe, twenty years Paine’s junior, was in awe of this hero of the American  Revolution. Out of respect, he invited him to stay at his house for a while. A year  later Monroe wrote that he feared Thomas would stay “till his death or departure  for America, however remote either one or the other event may be”.  

In a state of extreme weakness, likely brought on by the open wound in his  side and his incessant drinking, Paine poured out his wrath against George  Washington for having not tried to rescue him from prison. He addressed a long  letter to James Madison, then representing Virginia in the House of Representatives. “I owe this illness (from which I have not much prospect of recovering)  partly to Robespierre and partly to Mr. Washington… I ought not to have suspected  Mr. Washington of treachery, but he had acted towards me the part of a cold  blooded traitor”.  

Monroe insisted he not send the letter. Paine agreed with reluctance, but later  the obsession with Washington inflamed him further, and he had An Open letter to  George Washington carried to Philadelphia, where it was published in 1796 by Benjamin Franklin Bache, Ben Franklin’s son-in-law.  

His words directly to Washington were bitter and unrestrained. “And as to you,  Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the  day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide  whether you are an apostate or an imposter; whether you have abandoned good  principles, or whether you ever had any”.  

Washington appears to have taken little notice of this diatribe. The letter  caused Monroe some embarrassment, so, after a year and a half, he finally asked  Paine to move.  

At this stage of his life, Paine wanted out of France. But where would he go?  He probably would have preferred England, but there, since Rights of Man, he was  a convicted felon, exiled for life.  

Most of America would never forgive him for the outburst against Washington.  And his attack on the Bible in The Age of Reason made him anathema to the devout  in America, as well as France and England. When this volume reached America, an  outraged John Adams declared, “The Christian religion is, above all the religions  that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom,  virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will”.  

Unwanted in England or America, only tolerated in France, Thomas Paine was,  in essence, a man without a country. Lacking a clear-cut choice of destination, he  spent the next eight years living as a house guest of friends or as a boarder in an  assortment of homes in and around Paris. He began a ‘brief’ stay with the family  of Nicolas de Bonneville, a printer and journalist. Five years later the original ‘Man  Who Came to Dinner’ was still there.  

He wrote essays prolifically, but without much impact, and he re-appeared  before the French Assembly, urging the members not to forget the original  principles of the Revolution.  

At the time the letter shown here was written, May 23, 1802, Paine was the  house guest of Citizen Tenobio. Paine’s penchant for letter writing seemed always  at the disposal of his friends. He did not hesitate to espouse their causes, personal  or political, . No doubt in this way he was giving thanks for hospitality.  

The letter is addressed to ‘Citoyen’ Skipworth. In 1792 the Paris Commune  had decreed that this title henceforth be used instead of ‘monsieur’. Fulwar Skipworth, Jefferson’s nephew, was the American Consul General in Paris and a  good friend. 

The letter read as follows:  

Plessis Piquet  

30 Florial

Dear my friend,

My friend Tenobio at whose place I now am, has directed his banker in London, Hammersly, to invest the balance of accounts due to him, in American Bank shares, which he has done, and in his letter to him of April 30 says, “We are about to send the necessary deeds to America to have the stock transferred in your name, the  interest thereon may be received there in Amsterdam or in London as best suit yourself, but we wish to have your directions that we may give our orders accordingly and at the same time.  

It is necessary to send the original deed to America of an attested copy of it, should the original deed rest in the hands of Tenobio? If an attested copy be sent, can more than one be sent in the case at accident, as is done in 1st, 2d, 3d bills of Exchange. Be so kind as to give me your opinion upon this case and add a word of  America new if you have any. When you are mounted on your Rosinata and can make a stretch thus far we shall be glad to see you. You can tell us what pigs and cows are worth as Tenobio is going to buy some. give my Compts. to Mr. Purveyance.  

The contents of the letter are perhaps surprising, revealing the financial sophistication of a man of little property. Yet we know that Paine was familiar with banking from his association with Robert Morris in forming the Bank of Philadelphia and later as a proponent of the Bank of North America. 

He astutely asks  whether documents should be sent in sets, like bills of exchange, to insure that at  least one makes it through the transporting process, Tenobio’s decision to buy  American bank shares (perhaps influenced by Paine?) is also interesting. Though  the options for securities investments were few, such shares would have been the  growth stocks of the day, and quite speculative.  

Paine was pleased to learn that friend Thomas Jefferson had defeated John  Adams in the latter’s bid for a second term in 1800. Jefferson offered to provide  passage to America for Paine on a government ship. Again, Thomas equivocated.  He stayed in France.  

Part of his hesitation was a genuine fear that his vessel might be stopped on  the high seas by a British warship, which is exactly what happened when James  Monroe was en route home. British sailors boarded his ship and “searched every  part of it, and down to the hold, for Thomas Paine”. About five months after the Skipworth letter, he finally decided to pack his bags for the journey from  Havre-de-Grace. Thomas Paine, now 65, arrived in Baltimore in October 1802. He  was greeted with a mixed reception, but was mostly the object of scorn and  contempt.  

The great men he had known, for the most part, deserted him. Mainly  Jefferson, among the political powers of the day, maintained friendship – but that  from a distance. Other notable who remained loyal were Robert Fulton, with  whom he had earlier collaborated on ideas for a steam boat, and painters Charles  Wilson Peale and John Wesley Jarvis. True to form, Paine moved into young Jarvis’  house for five months, where the artist sculpted a bust of him and later a death  mask.  

During the remaining declining years, Paine wrote incessantly. He addressed  eight public letters ‘To the Citizens of the United States’. In these he attacked the  Federalists and John Adams. He supported Jefferson’s Republican position for a weak federal government and is acknowledged to have been influential in  Jefferson’s re-election in 1804.  

Paine moved from home to home in Philadelphia and New York. His writings  continued on a variety of subjects, from the cause of yellow fever to the need for  more gunboats. His audience diminished, but he still attracted companions with  his ongoing humour and wit.  

One of them chided him, “Mr. Paine, here you sit, in an obscure,  uncomfortable dwelling, powdered with snuff and stupefied with brandy; you, who  were once the companion of Washington, Jay and Hamilton, are you now deserted  by every good man; and even respectable deists cross the street to avoid you”. To  which Paine replied, “I care not a straw for the opinions of the world”. This was  not true, but it was too late to curry the world’s favour.  

A tumble down the stairs in 1806 precipitated further physical decline. But the  old bird was tough, and he died hard over the next three years. Painful external  ulcers, and other complications, finished the great man finally on June 8, 1809. He  was 72.  

His first biographer, one James Cheetham, a publisher and an enemy, wrote a  comment which the nation’s press re-printed, “I am unacquainted with his age,  but he had lived long, done some good, and much harm”. Thus did America turn  the last page on her most famous and influential writer.  

Sources:  

Adkins, N.F. Paine – Common Sense and Other Political Writings.  

Edwards, S. Rebel! A Biography of Tom Paine.  

Fruchtman, J. Jr. Thomas Paine, Apostle of Freedom. New York, 1994.  

Hawke, D.F. Paine. New York, 1974.  

Republished by permission of the National Society of Autograph Collectors

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