The New York Times, June 7, 1925. PAGE NUMBERS 187, 198
EDISON SPEAKS FOR TOM PAINE
Praises Revolutionary Patriot Whose Name Was Long Under a Cloud
By JAMES C. YOUNG.
OF all the men who contributed to the birth of American liberty and helped safeguard the cradle for future ages, Thomas Paine is the least appreciated, the most misunderstood and the object of greatest calumny. Thus Thomas A. Edison summed up the attitude of Paine’s countrymen toward the firebrand of the Revolution.
Sitting in the broad library of his plant in Orange, N. J., the inventor, now in his seventy-ninth year, discussed Paine as a familiar companion of his reading hours. He has taken a sympathetic interest in the erection of a memorial in New Rochelle, near Paine’s old home, and the efforts under way to render honors so long withheld or grudgingly extended. But Mr. Edison maintains the view that truth is eternal and assuredly will rise again, though crushed to earth. He sees in Paine a dominant figure whose service to the nation and mankind must be accorded recognition in something approaching the measure of Paine’s gifts. And he believes that the day of belated honors draws nearer.
“Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen,” said Mr. Edison, tapping the desk with an emphatic finger. “Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, ‘the United States of America.’ But it is hardly strange. Paine’s teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.
“We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the field were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.
“I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine’s writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it. Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales.”
Paine and the Constitution.
Mr. Edison paused, with a gesture that suggested he was content to leave Paine in the keeping of Time. This afforded opportunity to ask if he believed Paine to be the author of the Constitution, as is often stated.
“I hardly think that any one man wrote the Constitution,” said the inventor, “but the Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine’s theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation’s leaders when they framed the Constitution.
“Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine.
“We may look in other directions, where the trace is plainer, easier definitely to establish, for evidences of his influence. Paine, you know, came over to the Colonies after meeting Franklin in London. He had encountered numerous misfortunes, and Franklin gave him letters to friends back home which resulted in his becoming editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine in January of 1775. It is highly interesting that circumstance should have brought him to America at that time and placed him in such a position. Paine had little education, in the school sense of the term, but he had read avidly and written a great deal before meeting Franklin. Once placed at the editor’s desk of a new American periodical, he found time and opportunity exactly suited to his spirit and his genius.
“The Pennsylvania Magazine began to bristle—so much so that its owner, and the cooler heads of Philadelphia, were worried by Paine’s writings. Looking back to those times we cannot, without much reading, clearly gauge the sentiment of the Colonies. Perhaps the larger number of responsible men still hoped for peace with England. They did not even venture to express the matter that way. Few men, indeed, had thought in terms of war.
“Then Paine wrote ‘Common Sense,’ an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which has not been answered and which never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession.
“In ‘Common Sense’ Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. It must be remembered that ‘Common Sense’ preceded the Declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the war. It is possible that we should have had the Revolution without Tom Paine. Certainly it could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.”
Read Paine at 13.
This recital pointed to studious hours with Paine. Mr. Edison admitted his lifelong interest in the patriot.
“My father had a set of Tom Paine’s books on the shelf at home,” he said. “I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.
“I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man. Perhaps he gained strength from the fact that the springs of his wisdom lay within himself, and he spoke so clearly because the man’s spirit yearned to reach other spirits.
“Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters—seldom in any school of writing.
“Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object. Yet he has left us such stirring lines as those of ‘The Crisis,’ where he says: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.’ Even an unappreciative posterity knows that line, but we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration: ‘The world is my country; to do good my religion.’ “
Mr. Edison pointed out that Paine had a progressive genius. Such contributions as “Common Sense” and the papers making up “The Crisis” might have fixed his name securely. But the Revolution safely over, and the young nation assured of its life, Paine grew restless. He entertained a great conception of returning to England and stirring there a revolution which should parallel that in the Colonies. So bold was this design that it frightened some of his old associates.
But the conception beckoned to Paine with an irresistible lure. At a moment when his companions of the council table and field—where he had served as aide-de-camp to General Greene—were ascending to high station, Paine neither sought nor received special honors. He had had difficulties as Secretary to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and lost the place. All of his biographers agree that despite great services he was looked upon as a somewhat erratic man, extremely restless, animated by a great yearning.
The magnet of liberty had drawn the needle of world interest to France. So Paine embarked for Paris, fortified with substantial gifts of money secured in part from Congress through the agency of Washington. Looking back across the years, it would seem even to a casual reader that the strong, calm Washington understood Paine better than did most men of his own time, and endeavored to recompense his services as best he might.
Arriving in Paris, Paine joined the revolutionary spirits of the political clubs and soon had a part in that train of events which was to end in 1793. But Paine departed for England meanwhile, cherishing his great design of a revolution there. He wrote in a fugitive sort of way, without any particular opportunity or success. Then came Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” a document arraigning the whole program of liberty, defending monarchies everywhere, and bringing Burke a certain fame which Romilly termed shameful.
The “Reflections” had another effect. They moved Paine to answer. Once more he dipped his flaming pen in the spring of liberty and produced “The Rights of Man.”
“Again we see the spontaneous genius at work,” observed Mr. Edison, “and that genius busy at his favorite task—liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, ‘The Rights of Man’ compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke’s effort in his ‘Reflections.’
“Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His readers were so great, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him. ‘Tom Paine is quite right,’ said Pitt, the Prime Minister, ‘but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.’
“Here we see the progressive quality of Paine’s genius at its best. ‘The Rights of Man’ amplified and reasserted what already had been said in ‘Common Sense,’ with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.
“So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre’s enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.
“But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of ‘The Age of Reason’ and now turned his time to the last part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events ‘The Age of Reason’ appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle—a noble gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
“Paine suffered then, as now, he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others. He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
“His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds—or on persons devoted to them—have served to darken history, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
“When Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a dirty little atheist he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with ‘The Rights of Man’ he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But ‘The Age of Reason’ cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen—a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.”
Extent of Paine’s Genius.
Mr. Edison said that he believed that Paine’s political teachings, and particularly a true estimate of his part in the Revolution, should be taught to all school children, without regard for his religious views. “His real services are not even a matter of common knowledge,” continued Mr. Edison. “The French called him the Washington of the ‘father of republics’ in contrast to our own unthinking word of opprobrium—’atheist.’ If Rousseau in his ‘Contract Social’ laid the foundation, Paine in his ‘Rights of Man’ reared the temple.
“But his contributions to American life are much wider. He was one of the early and stanch advocates of the franchisement of the slaves. He first suggested justice to women, old age pensions, protection for animals, and many other measures bespeaking a warm humanity. These measures included the education of poor children at public expense, something virtually unknown in his day. He advocated the Federal Union of States on the present basis along with many other principles of what is now called enlightened government.
“I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty.
“Traduers have said that he spent his days in the tavern in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man, a drunken reprobate. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the shafts of his detractors. These attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how deeply prejudice, once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of something bad.
“The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberties—who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause—can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.”