TPNHA Editor’s Note

TPNHA is leading an international effort to expand and clarify the Paine Canon. We have attempted to mark those works that have come into question and are doubtful that they are the work of Paine. The Canon is expanding as new works and correspondence not previously in collected writings of Paine are located. Those new works are not yet posted here until it is decided how they will be released to the public.

“A Serious Thought”, signed only HUMANUS, was not written by Paine. As well as the testing, there is internal evidence that he was not the author, such as the absence of Paine’s use of natural law to argue in opposition to slavery, and the particular use of religious references. However the sentiments mirror Paine’s world view, which is why it was included in previous collections. However advanced author attribution software shows Paine is not the author:

The text is provided for your convenience.

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When I reflect on the horrid cruelties exercised by Britain in the East Indies—How thousands perished by artificial famine— How religion and every manly principle of honor and honesty were sacrificed to luxury and pride—When I read of the wretched natives being blown away, for no other crime than because, sickened with the miserable scene, they refused to fight—When I reflect on these and a thousand instances of similar barbarity, I firmly believe that the Almighty, in compassion to mankind, will curtail the power of Britain. And when I reflect on the use she has made of the discovery of this new world—that the little paltry dignity of early kings has been set up in preference to the great cause of the King of kings—That instead of Christian examples to the Indians, she has basely tampered with their passions, imposed on their ignorance, and made them tools of treachery and murder—And when to these and many other melancholy reflections I add this sad remark, that ever since the discovery of America she has employed herself in the most horrid of all traffics, that of human flesh, unknown to the most savage nations, has yearly (without provocation and in cold blood) ravaged the hapless shores of Africa, robbing it of its unoffending inhabitants to cultivate her stolen dominions in the West— When I reflect on these, I hesitate not for a moment to believe that the Almighty will finally separate America from Britain. Call it independence or what you will, if it is the cause of God and humanity it will go on.

And when the Almighty shall have blest us, and made us a people dependent only upon Him, then may our first gratitude be shown by an act of continental legislation, which shall put a stop to the importation of Negroes for sale, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom.

HUMANUS

Printed in the Pennsylvania Magazine, July, 1775.

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A SONG, WRITTEN EARLY IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Tune – “The gods of Greece.”

IN a chariot of light, from the regions of day,

The Goddess of Liberty came,

Ten thousand celestials directed her way,

And hither conducted the dame.

A fair budding branch from the gardens above,

Where millions with millions agree,

She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,

And the plant she named Liberty Tree.

The celestial exotic stuck deep in the ground,

Like a native it flourished and bore;

The fame of its fruit drew the nations around,

To seek out this peaceable shore.

Unmindful of names or distinctions they came,

For freemen like brothers agree;

With one spirit endued, they one friendship pursued,

And their temple was Liberty Tree.

Beneath this fair tree, like the patriarchs of old,

Their bread in contentment they ate,

Unvexed with the troubles of silver or gold,

The cares of the grand and the great.

With timber and tar they Old England supplied,

And supported her power on the sea:

Her battles they fought, without getting a groat,

For the honor of Liberty Tree.

But hear, O ye swains (’tis a tale most profane),

How all the tyrannical powers,

Kings, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain

To cut down this guardian of ours.

From the East to the West blow the trumpet to arms,

Thro’ the land let the sound of it flee :

Let the far and the near all unite with a cheer,

In defense of our Liberty Tree.

TPNHA Editor’s Note
TPNHA is leading an international effort to expand and clarify the
Paine Canon. We have attempted to mark those works that have come into
question and are doubtful that they are the work of Paine. The Canon
is expanding as new works and correspondence not previously in
collected writings of Paine are located. Those new works are not yet
posted here until it is decided how they will be released to the
public.

Frank Smith points out this essay was a chapter in a book in French written by a woman in France. Testing confirms this is not Paine, and Foner even indicates that in his introduction to it. But by August, 1775 Paine however had no influence in the Pennsylvania Magazine where it was published.

AN OCCASIONAL LETTER ON THE FEMALE SEX

O Woman! lovely Woman!

Nature made thee to temper man,

We had been Brutes without you.

OTWAY.

IF we take a survey of 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.

Nature herself, in forming beings so susceptible and tender, appears to have been more attentive to their charms than to their happiness. Continually surrounded with griefs and fears, the women more than share all our miseries, and are besides subjected to ills which are peculiarly their own They cannot be the means of life without exposing themselves to the loss of it; every revolution which they undergo, alters their health, and threatens their existence. Cruel distempers attack their beauty-and the hour which confirms their release from those is perhaps the most melancholy of their lives. It robs them of the most essential characteristic of their sex. They can then only hope for protection from the humiliating claims of pity, or the feeble voice of gratitude.

Society, instead of alleviating their condition, is to them the source of new miseries. More than one half of the globe is covered with savages; and among all these people women are completely wretched. Man, in a state of barbarity, equally cruel and indolent, active by necessity, but naturally inclined to repose, is acquainted with little more than the physical effects of love; and, having none of those moral ideas which only can soften the empire of force, he is led to consider it as his supreme law, subjecting to his despotism those whom reason had made his equal, but whose imbecility betrayed them to his strength. “Nothing” (says Professor Miller, speaking of the women of barbarous nations) “can exceed the dependence and subjection in which they are kept, or the toil and drudgery which they are obliged to undergo. The husband, when he is not engaged in some warlike exercise, indulges himself in idleness, and devolves upon his wife the whole burden of his domestic affairs. He disdains to assist her in any of those servile employments. She sleeps in a different bed, and is seldom permitted to have any conversation or correspondence with him.”

The women among the Indians of America are what the Helots were among the Spartans, a vanquished people, obliged to toil for their conquerors. Hence on the banks of the Oroonoko, we have seen mothers slaying their daughters out of compassion, and smothering them in the hour of their birth. They consider this barbarous pity as a virtue.

“The men (says Commodore Byron, in his account of the inhabitants of South-America) exercise a most despotic authority over their wives, whom they consider in the same view they do any other part of their property, and dispose of them accordingly. Even their common treatment of them is cruel; for though the toil and hazard of procuring food lies entirely on the women, yet they are not suffered to touch any part of it till the husband is satisfied; and then he assigns them their portion, which is generally very scanty, and such as he has not a stomach for himself.”

Among the nations of the East we find another kind of despotism and dominion prevail-the Seraglio, and the domestic servitude of woman, authorized by the manners and established by the laws. In Turkey, in Persia, in India, in Japan, and over the vast empire of China, one half of the human species is oppressed by the other.

The excess of oppression in those countries springs from the excess of love.

All Asia is covered with prisoners, where beauty in bondage awaits the caprices of a master. The multitude of women there assembled have no will, no inclinations but his. Their triumphs are only for a moment; and their rivalry, their hate, and their animosities continue till death. There the lovely sex are obliged to repay even their servitude with the most tender affections; or, what is still more mortifying, with the counterfeit of an affection, which they do not feel. There the most gloomy tyranny has subjected them to creatures, who, being of neither sex, are a dishonor to both. There, in short, their education tends only to debase them; their virtues are forced; their very pleasures are involuntary and joyless; and after an existence of a few years-till the bloom of youth is over-their period of neglect commences, which is long and dreadful. In the temperate latitude where the climates, giving less ardor to passion, leave more confidence in virtue, the women have not been deprived of their liberty, but a severe legislation has, at all times, kept them in a state of dependence. One while they were confined to their own apartments, and debarred at once from business and amusement; at other times, a tedious guardianship defrauded their hearts, and insulted their understandings. Affronted in one country by polygamy, which gives them their rivals for their inseparable companions; enslaved in another by indissoluble ties, which often join the gentle to the rude, and sensibility to brutality. Even in countries where they may be esteemed most happy, constrained in their desires in the disposal of their goods, robbed of freedom of will by the laws, the slaves of opinion, which rules them with absolute sway, and construes the slightest appearances into guilt; surrounded on all sides by judges, who are at once tyrants and their seducers, and who, after having prepared their faults, punish every lapse with dishonor-nay, usurp the right of degrading them on suspicion! Who does not feel for the tender sex ? Yet such, I am sorry to say, is the lot of women over the whole earth. Man with regard to them, in all climates, and in all ages, has been either an insensible husband or an oppressor; but they have sometimes experienced the cold and deliberate oppression of pride, and sometimes the violent and terrible tyranny of jealousy. When they are not beloved they are nothing; and, when they are, they are tormented. They have almost equal cause to be afraid of indifference and of love. Over three-quarters of the globe nature has placed them between contempt and misery.

“The melting desires, or the fiery passions,” says Professor Ferguson, “which in one climate take place between the sexes, are, in another, changed into a sober consideration, or a patience of mutual disgust. This change is remarked in crossing the Mediterranean, in following the course of the Mississippi, in ascending the mountains of Caucasus, and in passing from the Alps and the Pyrenees to the shores of the Baltic.

“The burning ardors and torturing jealousies of the seraglio and harem, which have reigned so long in Asia and Africa, and which, in the southern parts of Europe, have scarcely given way to the differences of religion and civil establishments, are found, however, with an abatement of heat in the climate, to be more easily changed, in one latitude, into a temporary passion, which engrosses the mind without enfeebling it, and which excites to romantic achievements. By a farther progress to the north it is changed into a spirit of gallantry, which employs the wit and fancy more than the heart, which prefers intrigue to enjoyment, and substitutes affection and vanity where sentiment and desire have failed. As it departs from the sun, the same passion is further composed into a habit of domestic connection, or frozen into a state of insensibility, under which the sexes at freedom scarcely choose to unite their society.”

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.

If a woman were to defend the cause of her sex, she might address him in the following manner:

“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 fountains 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. 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 sorrow, law and custom press us with constraint, and sensibility and virtue alarm 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 our 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 to 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 esteem of one’s self, is the sweetest reward of well doing.”

All men, however, it must be owned, have not been equally unjust to their fair companions. In some countries public honors have been paid to women. Art has erected them monuments. Eloquence has celebrated their virtues, and history has collected whatever could adorn their character.

Philip Foner’s introduction:

These lines were written to be recited before the Headstrong Club of Lewes, England. They were first published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of July, 1775, and were preceded by a foreword in which Paine stated: “The following story, ridiculous as it is, is a fact. A farmer at New Shoreham, near Brighthelmstone, in England, having voted at an election for a Member of Parliament, contrary to the pleasure of three neighboring justices, they took revenge upon his dog, which they caused to be hung, for starting a hare upon the road. The piece has been very little seen, never published, nor any copies taken.”

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THREE Justices (so says my tale)

Once met upon the public weal.

For learning, law, and parts profound,

Their fame was spread the county round;

Each by his wondrous art could tell

Of things as strange as Sydrophel;

Or by the help of sturdy ale,

So cleverly could tell a tale,

That half the gaping standers by

Would laugh aloud. The rest would cry.

Or by the help of nobler wine,

Would knotty points so nice define,

That in an instant right was wrong,

Yet did not hold that station long,

For while they talk’d of wrong and right,

The question vanish’d out of sight.

Each knew by practise where to turn

To every powerful page in Burn,

And could by help of note and book

Talk law like Littleton and Coke.

Each knew by instinct when and where

A farmer caught or kill’d a hare;

Could tell if any man had got

One hundred pounds per ann. or not;

Or what was greater, could divine

If it was only ninety-nine.

For when the hundred wanted one,

They took away the owner’s gun.

Knew by the leering of an eye

If girls had lost their chastity,

And if they had not-would divine

Some way to make their virtue shine.

These learned brothers being assembled,

(At which the county feared and trembled),

A warrant sent to bring before ’em,

One Farmer Shorty who dwelt at Shoreham,

Upon a great and heavy charge,

Which we shall here relate at large,

That those who were not there may read,

In after days, the mighty deed:

Viz.

“That he, the ‘foresaid Farmer Short,

Being by the devil moved, had not

One hundred pounds per annum got;

That having not (in form likewise)

The fear of God before his eyes,

By force and arms did keep and cherish,

Within the aforesaid town and parish,

Against the statute so provided,

A dog. And there the dog abided.

That he, this dog, did then and there

Pursue, and take, and kill a hare;

Which treason was, or some such thing,

Against our SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING.”

The constable was bid to jog,

And bring the farmer-not the dog.

But fortune, whose perpetual wheel

Grinds disappointment sharp as steel,

On purpose to attack the pride

Of those who over others ride,

So nicely brought the matter round,

That Farmer Short could not be found,

Which plunged the bench in so much doubt

They knew not what to go about.

But after pondering pro and con,

And mighty reasonings thereupon,

They found, on opening of the laws,

That he, the dog aforesaid, was

By being privy to the fact,

Within the meaning of the act,

And since the master had withdrawn,

And was the Lord knows whither gone,

They judged it right, and good in law,

That he, the dog, should answer for

Such crimes as they by proof could show,

Were acted by himself and Co.

The constable again was sent,

To bring the dog; or dread the event.

Poor Porter, right before the door,

Was guarding of his master’s store;

And as the constable approach’d him,

He caught him by the leg and broach’d him;

Poor Porter thought (if dogs can think)

He came to steal his master’s chink.

The man, by virtue of his staff,

Bid people help; not stand and laugh;

On which a mighty rout began;

Some blamed the dog, and some the man.

Some said he had no business there,

Some said he had business everywhere.

At length the constable prevail’d,

And those who would not help were jaiPd;

And taking Porter by the collar,

Commanded all the guards to follow.

The justices received the felon,

With greater form than I can tell on,

And quitting now their wine and punch,

Began upon him all at once.

At length a curious quibble rose,

How far the law could interpose,

For it was proved, and rightly too,

That he, the dog, did not pursue

The hare, with any ill intent,

But only followed by the scent;

And she, the hare, by running hard,

Thro’ hedge and ditch, without regard,

Plunged in a pond, and there was drown’d,

And by a neighboring justice found;

Wherefore, though he the hare annoy’d,

It can’t be said that he destroy’d;

It even can’t be proved he beat her,

And “to destroy” must mean “to eat her.”

Did you e’er see a gamester struck,

With all the symptoms of ill luck ?

Or mark the visage which appears,

When even Hope herself despairs?

So look’d the bench, and every brother

Sad pictures drew of one another;

Till one more learned than the rest

Rose up, and thus the court address’d:

“Why, Gentlemen, I’ll tell ye how,

Ye may clear up this matter now,

For I am of opinion strong

The dog deserves, and should be hung.

I’ll prove it by as plain a case,

As is the nose upon your face.

“Now if, suppose, a man, or so,

Should be obliged, or not, to go

About, or not about, a case,

To this, or that, or t’ other place!

And if another man, for fun,

Should fire a pistol (viz.) a gun,

And he, the first, by knowing not

That he, the second man, had shot,

Should undesign’dly meet the bullet,

Against the throat (in Greek) the gullet,

And get such mischief by the hit

As should unsense him of his wit,

And if that, after that he died,

D’ye think the other may n’t be tried?

Most sure he must, and hang’d, because

He fired his gun against the laws:

For ‘t is a case most clear and plain,

Had A not shot, B had not been slain:

So had the dog not chased the hare,

She never had been drown’d-that’s clear.”

This logic, rhetoric, and wit,

So nicely did the matter hit,

That Porter, though unheard, was cast,

And in a halter breathed his last.

The justices adjourned to dine,

And whet their logic up with wine.

THE OLD BACHELOR IV

Reflections on unhappy Marriages

from the Pennsylvania Magazine, June, 1775

THOUGH ’tis confessed on all hands that the weal or woe of life depends on no one circumstance so critical as Matrimony; yet how few seem to be influenced by this universal acknowledgement, or act with a caution becoming the danger!

Those that are undone this way, are the young, the rash and amorous, whose hearts are ever glowing with desire, whose eyes are ever roaming after beauty; these doat on the first amiable image that chance throws in their way, and when the flame is once kindled, would risk eternity itself to appease it. — But, still like their first parents, they no sooner taste the tempting fruit, but their eyes are open’d; the folly of their intemperance becomes visible; shame succeeds first, and then repentance; but sorrow for themselves soon returns to anger with the innocent cause of their unhappiness. Hence flow bitter reproaches, and keen invectives, which end in mutual hatred and contempt. Love abhors clamour and soon flies away, and happiness finds no entrance when love is gone. Thus for a few hours of dalliance, I will not call it affection, the repose of all their future days are sacrificed; and those who but just before seem’d to live only for each other, now would almost cease to live, that the separation might be eternal.

But hold, says the man of phlegm and oeconomy, all are not of this hasty turn — I allow it — there are persons in the world who are young without passions, and in health without appetite: these hunt out a wife as they go to Smithfield for a horse; and inter-marry fortunes, not minds, or even bodies: In this case the Bridegroom has no joy but in taking possession of the portion, and the bride dreams of little beside new cloths, visits and congratulations. Thus, as their expectations of pleasure are not very great, neither is the disappointment very grievous; they just keep each other in countenance, live decently, and are exactly as fond the twentieth year of matrimony as the first. — But I would not advise any one to call this state of insipidity happiness, because it would argue him both ignorant of its nature, and incapable of enjoying it. — Mere absence of pain will undoubtedly constitute ease; and, without ease, there can be no happiness: Ease, however, is but the medium, through which happiness is tasted, and but passively receives what the last actually bestows; if therefore the rash who marry inconsiderately, perish in the storms raised by their own passions, these slumber away their days in a sluggish calm, and rather dream they live, than experience it by a series of actual sensible enjoyments.

As matrimonial happiness is neither the result of insipidity, or illgrounded passion, surely those, who make their court to age, ugliness, and all that’s detestable both in mind and body, cannot hope to find it, tho’ qualified with all the riches that avarice covets, or Plutus could bestow. Matches of this kind are downright prostitution, however softened by the letter of the law; and he or she who receives the golden equivalent of youth and beauty, so wretchedly bestowed, can never enjoy what they so dearly purchased. The shocking incumbrance would render the sumptuous banquet tasteless, and the magnificent bed lothsome; rest would disdain the one, and appetite sicken at the other; uneasiness wait upon both; even gratitude itself would almost cease to be obliging, and good-manners grow such a burden, that the best bred or best-natured people breathing, would be often tempted to throw it down.

But say we should not wonder that those who either marry gold without love, or love without gold, should be miserable; I can’t forbear being astonished, if such whose fortunes are affluent, whose desires were mutual, who equally languished for the happy moment before it came, and seemed for a while to be equally transported when it had taken place: If even these should, in the end, prove as unhappy as either of the others! And yet how often is this the melancholy circumstance! As extasy abates, coolness succeeds, which often makes way for indifference, and that for neglect: Sure of each other by the nuptial band, they no longer take any pains to be mutually agreeable; careless if they displease, and yet angry if reproached; with so little relish for each other’s company that anybody’s else is welcome, and more entertaining. Their union thus broke, they pursue separate pleasures; never meet but to wrangle, or part but to find comfort in other society. After this the descent is easy to utter aversion, which having wearied itself out with heart-burnings, clamours, and affronts, subsides into a perfect insensibility; when fresh objects of love step in to their relief on either side, and mutual infidelity makes way for mutual complaisance, that each may be the better able to deceive the other.

I shall conclude with the sentiments of an American savage on this subject, who being advised by one of our countrymen to marry according to the ceremonies of the church, as being the ordinance of an infinitely wise and good God, briskly replied, “That either the Christians’ God was not so good and wise as he was represented, or he never meddled with the marriages of his people; since not one in a hundred of them had anything to do either with happiness or common sense. Hence, continued he, as soon as ever you meet you long to part; and, not having this relief in your power, by way of revenge, double each other’s misery. Whereas in ours, which have no other ceremony than mutual affection, and last no longer than they bestow mutual pleasures, we make it our business to oblige the heart we are afraid to lose; and being at liberty to separate, seldom or never feel the inclination. But if any should be found so wretched among us, as to hate where the only commerce ought to be love, we instantly dissolve the band: God made us all in pairs; each has his mate somewhere or other; and ’tis our duty to find each other out, since no creature was ever intended to be miserable.”