Evening star (Washington, D.C.), January 23, 1910
A Man First Advocate of Women’s Rights
AMERICA’S first advocate of women’s rights was not one of the “fair sex,” not an American, but an Englishman, Thomas Paine. Among the earliest writings of Paine we find him advocating more freedom for the “gentler sex,” and at the same time stating the position of men in no uncertain light. In one place he says:
“If we take a survey of the ages and of countries we shall find the women almost without exception, at all times, and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness. He has been at once their tyrant and their slave.”
Later on, recurring to women’s beauty, he writes:
“Even among people where beauty received the highest homage we find men who would deprive the sex of every kind of reputation. ‘The most virtuous woman,’ says a celebrated Greek, ‘is she who is least talked of.’ That morose man, while he imposes duties upon women, would deprive them of the sweets of public esteem, and in exacting virtues from them would make it a crime to aspire at honor.”
By far the most picturesque portion of his article, however, is that in which he gives what he considers would be the defense of a woman. Although over a century old, this plea might be given word for word and still be in accord with the platform orations of today. Paine makes her speak in this wise:
“How great is your injustice? If we have an equal right with you to virtue, why should we not have an equal right to praise? The public esteem ought to wait upon merit. Our duties are different from yours, but they are not therefore less difficult to fulfill, or of less consequence to society. They are the fountain of your felicity, and the sweetness of life. We are wives and mothers. ‘Tis we who form the union and the cordiality of families. ‘Tis we who soften that savage rudeness which considers everything as due to force, and which would involve man with man in eternal war, and we cultivate in you that humanity which makes you feel for the misfortunes of others, and our tears forewarn you of your own danger. Nay, you cannot be ignorant that we have need of courage not less than you. More feeble in ourselves, we have perhaps more trials to encounter. Nature assails us with sorrows, law and customs press us with constraint, and sensibility and virtue claim us with their continual conflict. Sometimes also the name of citizen demands from us the tribute of fortitude.
“When you offer your blood to the state think that it is ours. In giving it our sons and husbands we give more than ourselves. You can only die on the field of battle, but we have the misfortune to survive those whom we love most. Alas! while your ambitious vanity is unceasingly laboring to cover the earth with statues, with monuments and with inscriptions to eternize, if possible, your names and give yourselves an existence when this body is no more, why must we be condemned to live and die unknown? Would that the grave and eternal forgetfulness should be our lot. Be not our tyrants in all. Permit our names to be sometimes pronounced beyond the narrow circle in which we live. Permit friendship, or at least love, to inscribe its emblem on the tomb where our ashes repose and deny us not that public esteem which, after the custom of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing.”
Upholding the rights of women was not the only claim which Thomas Paine has to fame, and is perhaps the one of which he is the least recognized. It was his writings in connection with the American and French revolutions that gained for him a niche in fame’s temple.
Born at Thetford, Norfolk, England, January 29, 1737, he was the son of a staymaker and was brought up to become his father’s successor in business. This, however, did not meet with young Paine’s ideas, so he secured a position in the customs and also became manager for a tobacco manufactory. Even with these two sources of income, however, he was not able to keep out of debt, and in 1774 was dismissed. It was then that he came to America.
Although he had done practically nothing in a literary way before, he began to write as soon as he had settled here, and it was in a Philadelphia magazine, in August, 1775, when he was thirty-eight years of age, that the article on women’s rights appeared.
It was in the following year that he first earned recognition. This came with the appearance of a pamphlet entitled “Common Sense,” in which he set forth his views in regard to and his advocacy of the cause of the colonies against the mother country. This stand won him many enemies, but also some friends, among them being Washington and Franklin. Congress also showed a friendship for him, when at the close of the war he was appointed secretary to the committee on foreign affairs.
In 1787 he went to France and later to England, in both of which places he won many influential friends. In the latter place, however, where he wrote “The Rights of Man,” the enmity of the British government became so great that he was forced to flee to France. Here he again got into difficulties and was imprisoned, and was only released at the intercession of the American government. It was while he was in prison that he wrote the paper on “Deism,” scoring both atheism and Christianity, which brought forth such a storm of abuse.
Returning to America in 1802, he retired to private life, spending the last years of his life at New Rochelle. It was while making a visit to New York that, on June 8, 1809, he died in a house in Grove Street. With only his landlady, her daughters and a Quaker to follow, the man who had won international fame was buried a short distance from New Rochelle. It was several years before the grave was even noticed, but then a handsome monument was erected on the spot. When this was done, however, the grave no longer contained the remains of Paine, as William Cobbett had previously removed them to England and deposited them no one knows where.