Our collection of articles, records and reviews about Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine.
More than a change of “persons and measures”, the nascent United States embodied in one nation of free and independent states a change of principles and synthesis of ideas that marked out a position on which to freely apply the lever of reason. We see this in hindsight.
Although both lives have been well chronicled (albeit separately), I hope there may be merit in a short selective account of the most salient features of the common radical ground shared by the two great writers, and its inspiration, a comparison that has attracted scant attention.
How dared Thomas Paine, a man whose formal education had ended at thirteen, who had failed as a skilled craftsman, as a teacher, as a shopkeeper, as a street preacher, as a petty customs official in the Excise, dismissed and a debtor and bankrupt, even dare to think about government?
Read “The Citizen Tom Paine” about Thomas Paine, a stirring call to arms for the democracy lovers worldwide. Explore the lyrics of Martin Green in this revolutionary poem about a man who galvanized patriots and championed liberty and independence against British rule and much besides.
Dr Richard Price was a man of many parts: preacher, moral philosopher, commentator on actuarial and public finance, and ardent campaigner for civil liberties. This essay focuses, for the most part, on his latter activities. One of the most influential radical thinkers of his day, though now little known beyond historians.
Richard Price, Dd., Fsa: Champion Of Civil Liberty Read Post »
Anyone who looks at William Hone’s life in the round will discover some failings, notably a lack of a consistent sense of direction. His radical period was short lived, and he had neither the literary genius of Thomas Paine nor Henry Hunt’s rapacity to rouse an audience.
In his book, Professor Jack Fruchtman writes that there is insufficient evidence to answer the question: “It has long been questioned whether Paine was a member of the Masons. There is no definitive proof either way. There is no specific date known on which he joined nor a specific lodge.”
Those studying the reaction by Americans to Thomas Paine’s ideas, and, perhaps, to him as an individual, will find the judicious selection of works reprinted herein of immense value. Of course, there are works that one feels should have been included, but where does this process end, another six volumes?
Thomas Paine’s bridge of diplomacy, both as a practical bridge and as a symbolic bridge between nations and political eras, centred on his proposal for a single span iron bridge braced by strong abutments cast from nature in the design of a spider’s web.
Thomas Paine called himself a citizen of the world and as if to sustain this claim was an active revolutionary in Britain, France and America. If any one of his contemporaries deserves the title more it is William Duane.
BOOK REVIEW: Transoceanic Radical: William Duane Read Post »
The first three years in America were critical to Thomas Paine’s development as a political thinker. They marked his change from being an unknown individual to a man who could influence world events and they were part of the preparation for his later great work The Rights of Man.
Paine’s ideas about his own national consciousness evolved from this time onward in ways that paralleled the way in which Americans were thinking about themselves. In 1776, he understood that a true national consciousness had to move beyond politics and constitution making.
