The Washington herald (Washington, D.C.), June 13, 1909, (Fourth Part)
TOM PAINE, PATRIOT
Press Agent of the American Revolution.
A little more than one hundred years ago Thomas Paine died, and the vestry of Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church at New York refused to permit the burial of his body in the churchyard, declaring that he was a heretic. He was buried on the old farm given him by Congress, and afterward the body was stolen and carried to England. At New Rochelle recently a monument to the memory of Paine was dedicated with appropriate ceremony, and it was recalled that the man to whose memory the shaft was erected contributed much to the cause of American independence. With his musket on his shoulder he marched and fought in Washington’s army, enduring all the privations of the common soldiers who were his companions, while by the light of the camp fire he wrote with forceful pen, stirring the hearts of the discouraged, ill-clad, and half-starved patriots in arms and kindling the fire of enthusiasm in the breasts of those who performed equally great duties in the field of politics and statesmanship, writes Henry Barrett Chamberlain, in the Chicago Record-Herald.
An extraordinary career was that of Paine. He was the son of a Quaker staymaker, and was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, in 1737. Erratic in disposition, he earned a living as an exciseman, a teacher in English, and acquired a reputation in local affairs as a writer of petitions, one of which attracted the attention of Benjamin Franklin. He was thirty-eight years of age when he came to America, bringing letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin to the leaders of the Revolution. His opportunity to be of service to the country in a large way came when the leaders were dispirited and disposed to effect a compromise with Great Britain. He set the colonists aflame with a pamphlet entitled “Common Sense,” a telling array of arguments for separation, and for the establishment of the republic, conveyed in strong, direct, unqualified language. The last paragraph from the introduction, written at Philadelphia, February 14, 1776, affords an idea of his style:
“The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling, of which class, regardless of party censure, is the author.”
It is generally admitted at this day that Paine’s pamphlet was a turning point in the struggle, that it aroused and consolidated public feeling and swept the timid ones along with the tide. The New York Assembly appointed a committee to answer it, but the committee adjourned after deciding that it was unanswerable. “The Crisis” is, of course, the best known to the average American reader, and the opening sentence, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” became a battle cry.
Paine’s literary efforts were rewarded by his appointment in the first Congress to be secretary of the committee on foreign affairs. When independence was established he returned to England determined “to reopen the eyes of the people to the madness and stupidity of the government.” His chief effort was the writing of “The Rights of Man” as an answer to Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The first part appeared in 1791, and had an enormous circulation before the English government took measures to suppress the publication. This but intensified the curiosity of the people and Paine was finally indicted for treason. He was permitted to go to France, but was pronounced an outlaw.
In 1802 Paine returned to the United States, where he occupied himself until his death, in 1809, with financial questions and mechanical inventions.
That Paine’s newspaper writing was considered of value was shown by the action of Luzerne, then French Minister to this country, in engaging him at a salary of $1,000 a year to inspire “the people with sentiments favorable to France and the alliance,” Paine at the time being secretary to the committee on foreign affairs. While this may not put him in a favorable light, because of his government employment, it was not considered a betrayal of trust and has never been specially urged against him. Besides it is quite certain that Paine believed in the French alliance and had frequently expressed himself to that effect in public.
Whether or not the man to whom the cause of American independence owed some of its earliest and most potent inspirations would have had a different reputation in the opinion of the present generation had he not written “The Rights of Man” and “The Age of Reason” is still a mooted question. In his Gouverneur Morris, the late President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, in depicting those turbulent days in France when Morris was minister, says:
“One man had a very narrow escape. This was Thomas Paine, the Englishman who had at one period rendered such a striking service to the cause of American independence, while the rest of his life had been as ignoble as it was varied. He had been elected to the convention, and, having sided with the Gironde, was thrown into prison by the Jacobins. He at once asked Morris to demand him, as an American citizen, a title to which he, of course, had no claim. Morris refused to interfere too actively, judging rightly that Paine would be saved by his own insignificance, and would serve his own interests best by keeping still. So the filthy little atheist had to stay in prison, where he amused himself with publishing a pamphlet against Jesus Christ. There are infidels and infidels; Paine belonged to the variety—whereof America possesses at present one or two shining examples—that apparently esteems a bladder of dirty water as the proper weapon with which to assail Christianity. It is not a type that appeals to the sympathy of an onlooker, be said onlooker religious or otherwise.”
Harsh words these, but no more bitter than those of many other writers who have had occasion to denounce the man as a drunkard and a libeler, the man to whom George Washington wrote on September 10, 1783, these words:
“I have learned since I have been at this place (Rocky Hill) that you are at Bordentown. Whether for the sake of retirement or economy, I know not. Be it for either, or both, or whatever it may, if you will come to this place and partake with me I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works, and who with much pleasure subscribes himself your sincere friend.”
As to the atheism of Paine there is disagreement, but these expressions from his writings give cause for reflection before classing him as such:
“I believe in the equality of man and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”
“The work of God is the creation which we behold.”
“My own opinion is that those whose lives have been spent in doing good and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy will be happy hereafter.”
“The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in doing good to each other.”
“I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life.”
“My religion, and the whole of it, is the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy.”
It is, perhaps, unfortunate that Paine’s name has been so persistently exploited as that of a man whose claim to fame rests upon the mistaken notion that he was merely a ribald scoffer against revealed religion. Had he never meddled with religious controversy he would have been remembered as one of the founders of the nation. He had a high reputation when he crossed the Atlantic to stir up the people of the Old World against monarchy and aristocracy, taking as his motto, “Where liberty is not, there is my country.”
To his book, written in the second year of the French republic, and published in Paris in 1794 by Barrois, entitled “The Age of Reason, Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology,” is credited the action of a large number of the people of extreme views and vigor in debate. The dedication of this book was “To my fellow-citizens of the United States of America,” and continued:
“I put the following work under your protection. It contains my opinion upon religion. You will do me the justice to remember that I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be from mine. He who denies to another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.”
Whatever the controversies on the part of religionists concerning Paine, that he was one of the greatest political writers of his time is hardly to be questioned; that he had a considerable part in the formation of the Declaration of Independence is the belief of some of the best authorities; that he did as much as any one man in keeping alive the interest of the people in the cause of the American Revolution is evidenced by the tributes accorded by the men of his time.
Said John Adams:
“It has been very generally propagated through the continent that I wrote the pamphlet, ‘Common Sense.’ I could not have written anything in so manly and striking a style.”
In a letter to Paine, James Monroe said:
“It is not necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen—I speak of the great mass of the people—are interested in your welfare. They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution and the difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they revive its several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict. The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained and I trust never will stain our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important services in our Revolution, but as being on a more extensive scale the friend of human right and a distinguished and able advocate in favor of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent.”
“No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language,” said Thomas Jefferson, while George Washington gave him unqualified support and encouragement, expressing, among others, this sentiment of his worth as a factor in the cause of the Revolution:
“A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning contained in the pamphlet ‘Common Sense,’ will not leave numbers at a loss to decide on the propriety of a separation.”
Misunderstood, erratic perhaps, but a man of intellectual force, Thomas Paine, “caught in the political cyclones” of a century big in events and set at the center of its revolutions, performed the task at which he set himself with an energy which proved effective in the cause of liberty. No man did more according to his ability and few have received less at the hands of the people served. It has long been the fashion to abuse his memory and to belittle his great activities. It is well that a century after his death a generation sufficiently far removed from the old controversies seeks to give some slight honor to the memory of the great publicist, the man who may be rightfully called the press agent of the American Revolution.