The Federalist Party, anointed by most historians as the founding party of the new United States, shaped the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787. Their conservative and nationalist ideas were voiced in 85 newspaper essays, collected in “The Federalist Papers,” to counter arguments against the plan from those who wanted more democracy in the new government. 

America’s first official political party, Federalists dominated the government from 1789 to 1801. Founded by Alexander Hamilton, fronted by President John Adams, The Federalist Party favored plutocracy, a strong central government ruled by a few rich power brokers. Their 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts legalized deporting immigrants and stifling free speech. 

Drawing on deep Tory sympathies in New England, the Federalists advocated London’s agenda in America. They blocked Paris interests after the French Revolution. British leaders called the Federalists the “English Party” and “Oligarch Party.” Adams was seen as a monarchist after proposing hereditary succession for the U.S. presidency. 

The Federalist Party lost the 1800 election to the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson, who won votes by upholding states’ rights over Hamilton’s federal power, as with the central bank. Jefferson fought Hamilton’s autocratic claim of “implied powers” not granted in the Constitution. President Jefferson in 1802 invited Thomas Paine to return to America after his imprisonment in France by Robespierre, urged on by the American minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, a Federalist. 

Writing letters to the nation from New Rochelle and then Greenwich Village, Paine waged war against the Federalist usurpation of the American Revolution. He championed the principles of democracy. Federalists were his enemy as much as the British lords. Here are some of Paine’s analyses. 

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THOMAS Paine (1737-1809), author, editor, stay maker, excise man, small farmer, inventor, citizen of three countries, military courier, first US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and pamphleteer for the Enlightenment, not only built diplomatic bridges between countries at a time of conflict, but also forged plans for bridges of iron that would cross the chasm between geography and politics. As the moments of war, post-war reconstruction and currency crisis unfolded, Paine documented and unravelled politics for citizens living in an age of personal uncertainty and helped to erect a symbolic bridge into what he hoped would be an age of common sense and reason. 

Thomas Paine, the man, struggled with the dual tasks of earning a living and creating a body politic. During his lifetime Paine faced jealous political opponents (some half his age) who campaigned to ruin his career and personal life, and who prepared slanderous biographies to be published before and after his death. (Moncure D. Conway (1832-1907), American abolitionist, biographer and researcher of the Paine I manuscripts discusses the biographies of Paine in his volumes, The Lift of Thomas Pals, New York: G. Putnam, vol. 1, 1892, preface, pp. ix – xvi.) Nonetheless, Paine left a legacy as a writer and a proponent of democracy that survived through the widespread support of mechanics and working class people who supported his ingenuity, honesty, and promotion of Enlightenment causes (universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery, the demise of superstition, democratic government, the creation of full employment, a welfare system, and a retirement pension scheme). His writings, distributed as pamphlets and letters to the working class of the world, also reached the ears of presidents and reformers. Nineteenth and twentieth century supporters of Paine kept his legacy alive and extended the principles of the Enlightenment so that the bicentenary of Paine’s death on June 8, 1809 will be commemorated around the world this year. 

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. The bridge was never completed. His bridge design and his political proposals were however taken up by others in Paine’s three countries of residence (England, the United States and France) and eventually extended around the world. Paine’s political bridge spanned three countries on two continents during a period when countries had sunk themselves under the debt of war. Faced with costly domestic reconstruction, collapsing banks, and currencies dissolving in quicksand, governments are forced to find solutions to failing domestic economies. 

Thomas Paine, the bridge builder, faced his own difficulty of finding governments willing to invest in durable iron bridges to replace the wooden and stone bridges that were being swept away by strong water currents, ice and sand flows – an enduring problem for governments accustomed to short term solutions and temporary construction in an era of war. As a political reformer, Paine also tried to build bridges between regions of the world that had sunk into debt from military expenditure. The idea of political diplomacy for Paine became paramount and inseparable from governments investing in long-term civilian infrastructure projects. For this reason, the author of an early draft 775) of the American Declaration of Independence (1776) including a clause to abolish slavery, the Pennsylvania Constitution in 1776, and revisions to the French Constitution of 1791 became a designer of bridges for civilian use. (Paine’s draft of the 1776 Declaration of independence appeared in the Pennsylvania Journal on 18 October 1775 under the pennamo “Humanitas.” Paine arrived in America from England on 30 November 1774 and secured employment as a writer for the Pennsylvania Journal in 1775-6.)

Paine’s Schuylkill River bridge, designed for its fortitude, easy portability and repair, was to have thirteen columns to commemorate each of the thirteen states in the Union and was subsequently adapted to meet the political needs and practical engineering requirements of the three principal countries involved in the American War of Independence. Paine eventually offered his design to countries in northern Europe as he struggled to find an investor. The War had been an expensive war for all involved. Parliamentary reformers in England estimated that the expense from the English side alone had been £139,521,035 by 1781 and an additional £1,340,000 in compensation payments not including the £4,000 per year in stipends paid to loyalists from 1788. (Charles Bradlaugh, “The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick,” Freeihought Publishing Company 11-amts, London: Fredhought Publishing Company, 1880, p. 45.) The French incurred similar expenses for their part. In the aftermath of the war, Paine predicted the collapse of the international monetary system unless politicians rapidly learned the skills of political diplomacy and economic intervention.

Paine, an English republican, had become a supporter of American Independence and moved to the United States in 1774, one year prior to the War of Independence. He was to personally witness two revolutions in his lifetime – the American War of Independence and the French Revolution – and his contribution to American independence included serving as a government secretary, military courier and clerk to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in addition to helping build the Bank of North America, a citizens’ subscription bank founded in May 1780 with his own subscription of $500. The Bank became incorporated by Congress and then by the State of Pennsylvania on 1 April 1782. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. T p. 221.) The purpose of the bank was to help fund the wounded war veterans of George Washington’s army, but the bank came under attack when it became too large and was unable to repeal its charter. Paine wrote about the general economic collapse and saved the bank with the distribution of his pamphlet entitled, Dissertations on Government the Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money (1786), in which he pointed out that the greed of the banks had caused them to lend money without proper security and that public claims had been exorbitant. He also pointed out that the debt of the banks was to be passed on to the subscribers who owed 6% interest in perpetuity on their holding while the banks continued to invest their money at 10-12% and speculators received an additional 20-30% on their investments. Paine argued against the creation of a paper currency to see the country through the crisis. Paine was left with personal financial debt as a result of the collapse of the bank and could not pay his own 6% interest in perpetuity and thus embarked on his bridge project in 1785. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol.1, p. 219. John Keane alternatively suggests that Paine Muted to bridges in a “bout of restlessness” following the war (see Keane, p. 267) and Alfred Owen Aldridge suggests Paine emerged from the Bank difficulties a rich man who was freed up by his money to pursue the bridge designs. (see Aldridge, Man (Reason The Life of Thomas Paine, Philadelphia & New York 3.5. Lippincott Company, 1959, p. 108.) This author prefers Conway’s interpretation because Conway investigated the available evidence closer to Paine’s time, and did not rely on George Chalmer’s 1793 biography of Paine.) 

Moncure Daniel Conway, the American abolitionist and biographer of the Paine manuscripts, stated that Paine had been referred to in his day as a “living Declaration of Independence” and had urged Americans to turn their thoughts from war to public efforts of reconstruction. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life Thomas Paine, vol. I, p.245.) Paine was an Enlightenment inventor who had used his scientific knowledge to invent a smokeless candle, wheels for carriages, as well as wood planers and now presented the more ambitious project of an enduring bridge for public use. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, The Cobbett Papers, vol. Q, Appendix A, p. 456.) Paine corresponded with and met Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), as both a politician and an inventor; with John Trumbull (1756-1843), painter of the American Revolutionary War; and Benjamin West (1738-1820), then a court painter for George Ill. 

Paine’s design for a single span iron bridge emerged at the time when iron foundries had started to turn from war production (cannons and cannon balls) in the early 18th century to civilian production (cast iron water mains, water pipes, sewers, fire engines, canals, door hinges and locks, water wheels and garden fences) in the late 18th century. The new technologies of iron ore smelting and iron casting came about as a result of the exhaustion of the tree stock that had fuelled the wars and industry of Europe from the 17th century. New fuel was required to replace the dwindling tree stock and coal used in the refining of iron ore by smelting charcoal became an alternative. 

The first attempt to build a cast iron bridge is generally agreed to have taken place in Lyon, France in 1755. The next is believed to have been the Coalbrookdale Bridge (1777-1779) on the River Severn in England. By 1750 coke smelting had been established in Coalbrookdale, and the Coalbrookdale Company was able to build a bridge with a design by Thomas Farrols Pritchard (1723-1777) completed by Abraham Darby Ill (1750-1791) who worked with the Coalbrookdale Company. A shortage of pig iron meant that iron ore had to be imported from Norway, Spain, Sweden and Russia. There was, however, a plentiful supply of coal from the fossilized remains of the old tree stock of Europe and in America. 

By 1783 and the Treaty of Paris, the best American trees had been cut to build English warships. The domestic use of trees in the United States had been severely restricted during the colonial period and only in the late 18th century were trees even considered for use in major bridge building projects. Oak was considered the wood of choice. (John Keane, Torn Paine: A Political Life, Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1995, p. 267.) America therefore embarked on a period of wooden bridges at a time when Europe was infatuated with the idea of more durable iron bridges. Thomas Paine, in his designs for an iron bridge in America pointed out that wooden bridges were impractical for a climate of freezing temperatures, ice, sand, silt and mudfiows, and unstable river basins. Pennsylvania seemed a good state in which to erect his first iron bridge for both pragmatic and political reasons since it was a state both rich in coal and the first state to broker independence from Britain. (Moncure D. Conway, Addresses and Reprints, 18504907, Boston and New York: The Riverside Press, 1909, pp. 403-406.) In 1785 Paine had completed his plans for bridges over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, the Harlem River in New York State, the Thames River in London, and the Seine River in Paris. While he waited for acceptance of his designs in one place, he moved on to the next and tried to take with him a bridge of diplomacy while awaiting a practical bridge of peace. 

The success of the Coalbrookdale Bridge in England with its single 100 Y2 foot span over the Severn and a rise of 50 feet bearing 278 tons of cast iron on a thrust principle on strong masonry abutments demonstrated to Paine the success of the cast iron technology for a wide stream bridge with high arches to allow the passage of boats. The Coalbrookdale Bridge had proved that iron could provide a secure material capable of withstanding strong currents on a river basin of clay, rock or chalk. (F.W. Sims (Ed), The Public Works of Great Britain, London: John Weald Architectural Library, 1838, n.p.) Cast and wrought iron bridges proved easy to transport in sections, repairable and highly durable due to the diagonal tension of bow and string suspension and were subsequently initiated all over the world. (Capt. A.H.E. Boileau; Outline of a Series of Lectures on Iron Bridges Delivered at the Calcutta Mechanic’s Institute on 1841, Calcutta: Mechanics’ Institute, 1842, pp. 2-9; Hamilton Weldon Pendred, Iron Bridges of Moderate Span, London: Crosby Lockwood and Co., 1887, pp. I24,140-1.) Paine was just one proponent of iron bridges. When Paine began his iron bridge designs he, like others, knew that the Blackfriars Bridge in London had recently given way and two bridges over the Tyne in Northumberland (one by John Smeaton) had collapsed when the piers gave way in quicksand. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol_ 1, pp. 243, 254.)

Some biographers have credited Paine as the next pioneer of iron bridge design after Coalbrookdale although with the profusion of iron bridge designers in the period this is an unnecessary claim. Moncure Conway made no such claim and pointed out that the most enduring historians have not been concerned with hailing triumphal “firsts.” Conway presented Paine’s bridge design in more modest terms as simply an original iron bridge design, as this was Paine’s own description. Conway searched Paine’s patent of August 28, 1788 registered by Paine for “Constructing Arches, Vaulted Roofs, and Ceilings on principals new and different to anything hitherto practiced.” (John Keane records the patent date as August 26, 1788 in his volume, Tom Paine: A Political Life, p. 276.) Paine proposed the basic design of his bridge as a section of a circle with iron abutments “dividing and combining” like “the quills of birds, bones of animals, reeds, canes, Etc.” where the arch could be composed of any length “joined together by the whole extent of the arch and take the curvature by bending.” The patent was granted in September 1788. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, val. p. 242. For more on Paine’s bridge design see Moncure D. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896, vol. IV, pp. 440-449. See also Paul Collins, -The Arch Revolutionary,” New Scientist, 6.November 2004, pp. 50-51.) Conway pointed out that the 100-foot iron arch designed by Thomas M. Pritchard and erected over the River Severn at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, did not anticipate Paine’s design and that such arguments are not appropriate to the historical assessment of Paine’s contribution to democracy and design. Conway thought it more politically important to point out that Paine remained destitute most of his life despite his political contributions. Had Paine’s proposals for bridges been adopted they would have provided him with an income. As it turned out, Paine’s political opponents attacked his small personal finances and land holdings in the United States leaving him destitute. Paine had to be buried on the small remaining portion of his farm land and then exhumed and transported overseas when the land was sold on because Paine had been unable to secure a grave plot in the local Quaker’s yard. Meeting and knowing people in high places had not advantaged Paine personally. Paine was well aware that he was being ruthlessly exploited. He kept notably quiet in political meetings apart from discussions of corporation, and the tone of his correspondence to Thomas Jefferson and other politicians became droll as he realised governments were not going to invest in his iron bridges. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 243. )

Paine hired John Hall, a mechanic from Leicester who had worked with the Boulton and Watt steam engine manufacturers, with John Wilkinson at the Coalbrookdale Company, and with Samuel Walker of Walkers and Co. in Yorkshire. (John Keane, Toni Paine: A Political Life, p. 268.) Paine and Hall shared an interest in Pennsylvania politics and in Benjamin Franklin’s election as president of the state. Paine belonged to a number of societies including the Society for Political Inquiries that met in Benjamin Franklin’s library. The Society for Political Inquiries had 42 members while Paine was a member including George Washington, James Wilson, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, and George Clymer. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life Thomas Paine,vol.1, p. 225.) Hall assisted Paine with his model for a 400-foot single span iron bridge over the Schuylkill River. Paine completed the design and the mathematical side of the construction while Hall constructed the model to Paine’s specifications. 

Paine and Hall presented two models for the Schuylkill River Bridge to Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, and General Morris in New York. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol.1, p. 218.) One model was constructed in wood and the other in cast iron. The Schuylkill River models stood in Franklin’s garden for some time before finally resting in Charles Wilson Peale’s Museum of Natural History in Philadelphia. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. 11. p. 318 and Appatcrut A, The Cobbett Papers, p.456.) By the nineteenth century, only one dilapidated model remained in the Peale collection, and no other bridge model was extant. It is believed that the bridge most closely resembling Paine’s was the bridge over the River Wear at Sunderland in the north of England erected in 1796 by Thomas Wilson. While Wilson’s bridge lacked the same web design it did contain circular reinforcements similar to those proposed by Paine and demonstrated that Paine’s bridge could have seen its way into a completed project. The Wear Bridge stood 236 feet in width and 95 feet in height. It was unfortunate for Paine that his bridge designs were not commissioned for he had to move elsewhere in search of work. 

In 1787 Paine returned to England and applied for a bridge patent in that country. Paine proposed a bridge design for the River Thames and approached iron men in the North of England to execute a model settling on Samuel Walker of Walkers and Co. near Sheffield who recommended that it be executed in wrought or cast iron. Paine proposed a bridge of 110 feet and built a model with money he and Peter Whiteside, an American Merchant in London, had raised. The model was built at the Rotherham works in Yorkshire and was erected in June 1790 at Leasing-Green (now Paddington Green). Visitors paid one shilling per person to help raise money for the project. In the meantime Paine went to Paris and proposed a bridge project there but was forced to return to London when Peter Whiteside’s business failed. Whiteside fell £620 in debt for his portion of the bridge and Paine and the American merchants Cleggett and Murdoch had to act as Whiteside’s bail. They paid his debt and as a result Paine lost the money for his aging mother’s stipend. He then recovered the money through visits to his bridge by Sir Edmund Burke, the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam of Wentworth House, Lord Lansdowne, Sir George Staunton and Sir Joseph Banks. However, no contracts for the bridge in England were forthcoming. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol.11, pp. 259-277.) Moncure Conway pointed out that while Paine continued to look for financial means in England and France and continued to promote the American cause overseas, “in truth America was silently publishing what they could out of a starving English staymaker.” (Moncure D. Conway, The Life ((Mantas Paine, vol. 1, pp. 244-245.) 

Paine continued to propose the benefits of iron bridges over wooden bridges and to request commissions from governments in France, England, the United States and Northern Europe. (Moncure. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 220.) Moncure Conway wrote of Paine, 

In setting the nation at once to a discussion of the principles of such government, he led it to assume the principles of independence; over the old English piers on their quicksands, which some would rebuild, he threw his republican arch, on which the people passed from shore to shore. He and Franklin did the like in framing the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776, by which the chasm of °Toryism” was spanned. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, 1892, vol. I, pp. 224-5) 

The Schuylkill River contract was not secured due to “the imperfect state of iron manufacture in America” according to a letter from Monsieur Chanut, one of Paine’s French contacts. ‘Something of the same kind might be said of the political architecture,” added Conway. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 226.) Instead, the State of Pennsylvania erected a wooden bridge over the Schuylkill River between 1798 and 1805. 

Paine travelled to France with a model of his Schuylkill River Bridge in 1787 that he presented to the French Academy of Sciences in the hope that he would gain the attention of backers there or in Northern Europe. He proposed an arch of 400-500 feet to span the Seine. The French Academy met with Paine and agreed to appoint a committee to report on his bridge. While awaiting the decision Paine entered into correspondence with Thomas Jefferson who was American Minister in Paris at the time. (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 228.) The French Academy returned a cautious response to Paine’s proposal, having examined iron bridge models. They agreed with him on material points and while generally favourable they expressed a preference to one of “our own” which turned out to be a less expensive and less enduring wooden bridge by Migneron de Brocqueville. (Montana D. Conway, Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 229.) The same correspondence from the French Academy expressed an interest in the famous bridge at Schaffhausen built by Grubenmann, a carpenter; the model shown to Paine by Perronet, the King’s architect.° Paine’s bridge was never built. Paine nonetheless continued constructing a diplomatic and political bridge of friendship across the channel and sent his design to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society in England. (Moncure D.Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. I, p. 230.)

Paine’s mother in England was now 91 years old and Paine desperately needed money to support her. While Paine’s bridge efforts had not come to fruition, Paine was granted honorary citizenship in France and elected Deputy for Pas-de-Calais to the National Convention in 1792. It is not known whether his monetary situation improved from the position but it saved him from imprisonment in England for having written The Rights of Man (1791- 2). (Moncure D. Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, vol. 1, p. 230.)

While Paine awaited decisions on his bridge he wrote Denton Emigre, an archaeological treatise on freemasonry and was nominated by the 1792 Convention to revise the 1791 French Constitution. However as the Legislative Assembly progressed and voting began to abolish the monarchy, Paine fell into disfavour for advocating that Louis XVI be tried by jury, followed by imprisonment or exile, rather than executed. Paine opposed the use of the death penalty, which he considered to be the weapon of the monarchy, and was in favour of a democratic peoples’ constitution that supported trial by jury. On 11 December 1792 Louis XVI was placed on trial before the Convention, and was sentenced to death by a political vote of 380 to 310 on 19 January 1793 and executed on 21 January 1793. (Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution 1789-1799, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977 (originally published as La Revolution Francaise, Presses Univasitaires de France, 1965.) Robespierre and his supporters in the Convention mistook Paine for a Girondist, which he was not. However, Paine was imprisoned for opposing the death penalty on December 25, 1793 and was only released on November 6, 1794 through the diplomatic work of General James Monroe, US Minister to France, who arranged for Paine to be granted American citizenship. While Paine was incarcerated he wrote, The Age of Reason (1794-5). 

In 1873 Gustav Courbet, artist and Minister of Fine Arts under the 1871 Commune explained to the American abolitionist Moncure Conway that he had little time to paint a commission of artworks for the Governor of Ohio since he had been wrongly forced to pay off the debt of the raising of the Vendome column in 1871. (Ellen L. Ramsay, Moncure D. Conway: Rationalism, and the Abolition of Slavery, London: Thomas Paine Society and The Freethought History Research Group, 2007, pp. 37-38.) Paine’s bridge plans were also interrupted by revolutions, imprisonment, economic turmoil, drafts of constitutions, advice to newly formed governments, and the writing of pamphlets including Common Sense (1776), The Age of Reason (1794-5) and The Rights of Man (1791-2). Such was the historical moment that public projects proposed by Enlightenment figures such as Paine only gradually pushed their way onto the world stage in the face of the rocky road of diplomacy and post-war reconstruction that had been temporarily undermined by the canon balls of war. 

Copyright 2008. Ellen R. Ramsay. 

ELLEN L RAMSAY BA, MA, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of art history currently on leave from York University and has published 215 articles on art, culture and politics. She is a member of the Thomas Paine Society in England. 

Selected Sources: 

Paul Collins, The Arch Revolutionary: New Scientist, 6 November 2004, pp. 50- 51. 

Moncure Daniel Conway (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Paine, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896. 

Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, New York: G.P. Putnam, 1892. 

John Gloag and Derek Bridgwater, A History of Cast iron in Architecture, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1948. 

John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. 

Thomas Paine. The Construction of Iron Bridges, June 13, 1803, Presented to the Congress of the United States from Bordentown on the Delaware, New Jersey. Reproduced in Thomas Paine, Collected Writings, New York, The Library of America, 1995, p. 422-428. 

Ellen L Ramsay, Moncure D. Conway Rationalism and the Abolition of Slavery, London: Thomas Paine Society and the Freethought Historical Research Group, 2007.

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“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the  sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women. Tyranny, like  hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us that, the harder  the conflict, the more glorious the triumph”. Thus wrote Thomas Paine in the first part of The American Crisis papers, two days before Christmas of 1776.  

Seven years later, in The American Crisis, Part XIII, he paraphrased his own  famous lines. “The times that tried men’s souls are over, and the greatest and  completest revolution the world ever knew gloriously and happily accomplished”.  

But alas, for Citizen Paine, the bitter trials of his own soul lay ahead – if by the phrase one means rejection, condemnation, banishment, trial, imprisonment,  illness, drunkenness and poverty.  

British born, this man, more than any other, crystallized the attitudes and emotions of the American colonists. His writings were their supreme inspiration to  revolt against English rule. Hailed for his achievement early on, how did he fall from grace and glory?  

The young Thomas Paine had sparse education and limited working  experience. He started as a corset maker in his father’s shop in Thetford,  England, at the age of 13. He failed at a succession of menial jobs before coming  to America in 1774 when he was 37. It is remarkable that this person of limited  background could have written a monumental pamphlet with such skill and power  as he did two years later in Common Sense.  

Reflecting on his creation, Paine tells us, “I saw an opportunity, in which I  thought I could do some good, and I followed exactly what my heart dictated. I  neither read books nor studied other people’s opinions. I thought for myself…”  

Before departing for America, after separating from his second wife, who  settled £35 on him and thus financed his journey, Paine had developed an intense  bitterness toward George III and the whole concept of royalty.  

At Lexington, in April 1775, American blood was shed. That incited Paine to  pour his bitterness against “the Royal Brute of Britain” into Common Sense. “I  rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever, and disdain  the wretch, with that pretended title of Father of His People can unfeelingly hear  of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul”.  

The new world brought a new career – journalism. Thomas wrote articles for a  magazine, signed by pseudonyms, as was the custom of the day. He met intelligent  men of like mind. Dr.Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams and  David Rittenhouse read the manuscript of Common Sense before publication,  offering few changes.  

Common Sense appeared in bookstalls on January 9, 1776, under the by-line,  “Written by an Englishman”. It was a sell-out. More copies were printed, and they  quickly spread through the colonies. Said Edmund Randolph in Virginia, “The public sentiment which a few weeks before had shuddered at the tremendous  obstacles with which independence was environed, over leaped every barrier”.  

“The country was ripe  for independence”, commented a contemporary,  “and only needed some body to tell the people so,  with decision, boldness and  plausibility”. And Paine, never overburdened with  modesty, declared, “I believe, by the end of the  year, the number of copies  printed and sold in  America was not short of  150,000. This was the greatest sale since the use of  letters”.  

Knowing that Paine was  short of money virtually his  entire life, we may wonder  why, with this best seller  (and more to come), he  wasn’t rich. While he be 

came sophisticated about fi nance, in an intellectual  and political sense, he  lacked any personal understanding of how to make and keep money. The hope for profit certainly did not  motivate him with Common Sense. He donated the first £30 that came from the  pamphlet “for the purchase of mittens for the troops ordered on that cold  campaign” (the failed attempt to capture Quebec).  

At first there was much speculation as to the author, but the truth came out  and Paine was immediately a hero to all who espoused independence.  Tom, the Englishman, now professed to be an American citizen. After the July  4 Declaration, Paine served as a war correspondent for Philadelphia newspapers.  The early phase of combat went against the Americans. When voluntary  enlistments expired on December 1, there were not adequate replacements.  Washington was in retreat at Trenton, and a British attack on Philadelphia seemed  imminent.  

Morale, both of civilians and soldiers, was at a low. Strong words were needed. Paine wrote, “in what I may call a passion of patriotism”, an essay named The  Crisis. The opening lines are the opening lines of this article. The closing lines  were an inspiration to stand and fight: 

This is our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and  fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils – a savaged country – a depopulated city – habitations without safety, and a slavery without  hope – our homes turned into barracks for bawdy Hessians, , and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

Paine restricted the printer to a two cents a copy price. Other publishers up  and down the coast reprinted the work, so it received a fast and wide circulation.  The second in the Crisis series appeared in the middle of January 1777. By  then confidence had returned. In April Crisis No.III attacked English sympathizers  and urged the Pennsylvania Assembly to pass a loyalty oath to the new  government, ‘Tories’, Pane wrote, ‘are a set of avaricious miscreants, motivated  only by avarice, downright villainy, and lust of personal power’. And as for the  pacifist Quakers, he had these invectives: They are ‘like antiquated virgins, they  see not the havoc deformity has made upon them, but pleasantly mistaking  wrinkles for dimples, conceive themselves yet lovely and wonder at the stupid  world for not admiring them’.  

It is an amusing irony that, when near death in 1809, Paine requested  permission to be buried in a Quaker graveyard. ‘I wish to be buried in your  burying ground. I could be buried in the Episcopal church, but they are so  arrogant, or in the Presbyterian, but they are so hypocritical’. The Quaker  congregation turned him down.  

Nominated by John Adams, with whom he later became bitter enemies, he was  appointed secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs. Adams saw that Paine  ‘had a capacity and ready pen, and understanding he was poor and destitute, I  thought we might put him into employment, where he might be useful and earn a  living’.  

In the next couple of years, inflation struck. By summer 1779 a paper dollar  issued by the Continental Congress was worth less than a copper penny. Hence  the phrase, ‘not worth a continental’. The war was going badly. Winter was terrible  and spring no better. General Washington expressed his desire in a letter to the  Executive Council of Pennsylvania: ‘Every idea you can form of our distress will  fall short of the reality. There is such a combination of circumstances to exhaust  the patience of the soldiery that it begins to be worn out, and we see in every line  of the army the most serious features of mutiny and sedition…Indeed, I have  almost ceased to hope’.  

In May of 1780, Charlestown was captured. The worst of times had come. There  was a desperate need of money for supplies and for bounties to pay volunteers. 

Thomas Paine had a plan. He told the wealthy Philadelphia merchants that ‘as  it is the rich that will suffer most by the ravages of an enemy it is not only duty but  true policy to do something spirited’. Robert Morris got involved, and with  pledges of some £300,000, the Bank of Pennsylvania was created, the first bank in  the United States. Congress backed the plan with the ‘full faith and credit’ of the  nation. ‘By means of this bank’, reported Paine, ‘the army was supplied through  the campaign and being at the same time recruited was enables to maintain its  ground’.  

The tide turned, and Cornwallis surrendered in October of 1781. The war was  not over, but the crisis was. Paine, meanwhile, was a journalist without a job. He  wrote to General Washington complaining about the country’s lack of appreciation of his contributions to the cause. Washington was sympathetic. He formed a  plan with Robert Morris and Robert Livingstone, newly appointed Secretary of  Foreign Affairs, to hire Paine to write for the government, a kind of staff  propagandist. He would be paid $800 a year from a secret fund. But the war  ended in 1783 and so did Paine’s job.  

With peace, Paine’s life lacked purpose, as well as money. He expected  somehow to be taken care of by a grateful nation, which he had served for seven  years. But the nation was now too busy enjoying tranquillity and readjusting to  life without battle. Paine wondered what to do. ‘Trade I do not understand. Land  I have none… But I have exiled myself from one country without making a home  of another’.  

On the advice of Robert Livingstone and Robert Morris, Paine petitioned  Congress for financial reward for his services. This failed, and he next tried asking  the states, one by one. The New York legislature gave him a small farm that had  been confiscated from a Tory in New Rochelle. In 1785 Pennsylvania awarded him  £500 as “temporary recompense”.  

The subject was revived in Congress by President Washington, who asked  Elbridge Gerry to help. Paine requested reimbursement for his expenditures since  coming to America, at least $6,000. Congress awarded him $3,000. These gifts he  considered far less than he deserved. Nevertheless, for the time, he was  comfortable financially.  

He took leave from politics and immersed himself in designing an iron bridge.  His bridge would be constructed with a single arch combining thirteen sections  “in commemoration of the thirteen states”. There were then very few bridges in  America because the state of the art design was a combination of piers and low  arches which would then have been crushed by winter ice.  

Paine rented a loft in Philadelphia and began construction of a 13 foot model.  The finished product would require 520 tons of wrought iron and would span the  Schuykill River in Philadelphia. He presented his designs to Benjamin Franklin,  now returned from a decade in Paris, and David Rittenhouse. A committee of the  Pennsylvania Assembly examined the model on New Year’s day, 1787. Curiosity was  great, conviction mild.  

Paine estimated the cost at over $330,000, which was more than the state’s  annual budget. Such a project at a time when government debt was high was too impractical. Franklin suggested that Paine take the model to Europe. If he could  get approval from the Royal Society in London and the Royal Academy of  Sciences in Paris, it would aid his chances for government subsidy and perhaps  induce wealthy private investors to support the project.  

Benjamin Franklin called Thomas Paine “my adopted political son”, and he  wrote letters of recommendation to important persons in Paris. So in April 1787,  at the age of 50, Paine sailed from New York harbour bound for France, a crossing  which under the best of conditions took a month. Though he planned to return  soon, it would be 15 years before he again saw America.  

The French Revolution began May 25, 1787, the day before Paine debarked.  So intent was he on winning approval for the bridge, that he scarcely seemed  aware he had arrived at the onset of a revolution. At first the revolt unfolded  peacefully. Lafayette and other moderates hoped for a constitutional monarchy  with limited authority for the rulers.  

Paine was well known to French intellectuals as the spokesman of the  American Revolution, and he was welcomed as a hero. Thomas Jefferson was in  Paris as Minister, and his influence induced the Academy of Sciences to study  Paine’s bridge. They did approve his plan, but the bridge was never built.  

Paine moved on to London to seek endorsement from the Royal Society. He  returned to his home in Thetford and was reunited with his 91 year old mother.  Paine closely guarded a couple of secrets in his life. One was that over the years  from what little money he could spare, he had consistently sent sums to his  parents.  

While in Thetford he wrote a pamphlet titled Prospects on the Rubicon, in  which he, the expatriate Englishman, advises England to avoid a contemplated war  with Holland. War “has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes…I  defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the  farmer, and of all those on whom the real burden of taxes fall – but above all, I  defend the cause of humanity”.  

Endorsement of the bridge by the Royal Society was not forthcoming.  Undaunted, Paine set up a workshop with a firm of ironworkers in Rotherham,  Yorkshire. There, part of the time, he continued to work on bridge design and  other mechanical inventions. In London he was welcomed into the influential  American colony, which included Dr.Benjamin West and John Trumbull. He was  also on good terms with English politicians Edmund Burke and Charles James  Fox.  

In the winter of 1788, John Adams, who had been American Minister to  England, returned to America and no official representative replaced him. Paine,  working closely with Jefferson, actually performed as the ex-officio Minister in  London.  

On July 14, 1789, the Bastille, symbol of royal tyranny, fell to the mob.  Lafayette, friend to both Paine and Jefferson, was made head of the National  Guard, an army of the people. Domestic order rapidly deteriorated, Inflation rose,  the price of bread skyrocketed. Some 7,000 women in angry protest tramped  through twelve miles of mud to Versailles. The King, on Lafayette’s prudent advice, distributed food from the royal supplies. The entire entourage marched  back to Paris and the royal family moved to the Tuilleries, effectively under house  arrest.  

In London, when Paine heard the news, he prepared to leave at once for Paris.  “A share in two revolutions”, he exulted, “is living to some purpose”.  In a ceremony in the gardens of the Louvre, General Lafayette presented  Paine with the key to the Bastille and asked him to give it to President  Washington. Lafayette translated Paine’s words to the crowd, “the principles of  America opened the Bastille”. Paine’s presence upstaged Gouverneur Morris, who was on a financial mission for Washington. Jealous and resentful, Morris described  Thomas as “inflated to the eyes and big with a litter of revolutions”.  Expecting France to write a constitution based on the American, Paine  returned to London for an exhibition of a revised edition of his bridge, now with  a span of 110 feet. Spectators were charged a shilling to see it. The exhibition  continued for months, but Paine did only slightly better than break even.  He began a series of journeys between England and France. Paine had no  qualms about advising the English that their time for democracy had come. A  spark was provided by Edmund Burke, the British parliamentary leader, who wrote  a defence of royal government called, Reflections on the Revolution in Franca  As soon as he read it, Paine began composing his reply. Burke had supported  the ideals of the American Revolution during its darkest hours and Paine had  been his great admirer. But now Burke attacked the principles of the French  Revolution as anarchist and destructive.  

Paine’s answer was Rights of Man, Part One, which he dedicated to George  Washington. Its essence was that all men have natural rights which cannot be  violated. Civil rights grow out of natural rights, and people may choose any form  of government they want. A true constitution must be “of the people, and for the  people and by the people” – a theme that would be powerfully reiterated 73 years  later.  

The institution of royalty was a violation of the natural rights of man, “It is by  distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased. A vast mass of  mankind are defraudedly thrown into the background of the human picture, to  bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet show of state and aristocracy…”  

This monumental work was published in England and Ireland, and a few  months later in America in 1791. An estimated two million copies were sold in  three countries. At three shillings apiece, Paine would have become wealthy had  he accepted the profits. He choose not to take pay for what he felt was his  obligation to society to tell the truth. So his share went to an obscure group called  The Society for Constitutional Information, which embraced the work as its bible.  The attack on the institution of monarchy rattled historic tradition and caused a  sensation in Great Britain. The author was regarded as a hero at one end of the  political spectrum, and at the other, as The Great Satan.  

Observed Paine, “…The same fate follows me here (in England) as I first  experienced in America, strong friends and violent enemies, but as I have got the  ear of the country, I shall go on, and at least show them, what is a novelty here, that there can be a person beyond the reach of corruption”. The work was openly  praised in America by Secretary of State Jefferson and James Madison. John  Adams disapproved, and President Washington was non-committal.  

Paine returned once more to France to work on the second part of Rights of  Man and to watch what he thought was to be the peaceful, bloodless, unfolding of  the French Revolution.  

He stayed at Lafayette’s home and he became friends with various leaders of  the uprising, including Maximilien Robespierre, who publicly endorsed Rights of  Mart. These two shared the same sentiments for freedom of religion, universal  suffrage, abolition of slavery everywhere, hostility to royal power and abolition of  the death penalty!  

Paine must have recognised that his hopes for non-violent solutions were  fading. Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette tried to leave Paris in disguise.  They and the entire royal family were caught and imprisoned. Lafayette was  thought to have permitted the escape attempt. The mob was developing and the  Parisian scene was in process of turning ugly.  

Thomas Paine returned to England, where an improved model of his bridge  was exhibited in 1792 to general approval. Its cost, however, was still prohibitive.  On display for a year, no buyers appeared. Thus ended Paine’s dream.  

Ironically, in 1793, one Rowland Burdon improved on Paine’s design* and  raised £22,000 to build his version spanning 236 feet of the River Wear in  Northern England. This bridge was immediately acclaimed as “one of the most  daring structures ever erected in cast iron”.  

Rights of Man, Part Two, was released in London in February 1792, dedicated to  the Marquis de Lafayette. This was the call to arms. Paine openly urged the people  of Great Britain to revolt, to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic.  

The work, over 100 pages long, was a bombshell. The explosion rocked the  nation and was even more sought than Common Sense had been in America. In  England alone, a million and a half copies were sold, at a price limited by Paine to  three shillings. This volume became the best seller in the history of the country to  that time.  

In it Paine predicts that “monarchy and aristocracy will not continue seven  years longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe”. Revolutions are “the  order of the day”. His horizon for change expands to the entire western world.  “…the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted German and the  enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole are beginning to think. The present age  will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation  will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world”.  

Paine does a lot more than call for the overthrow of monarchies. He outlines a  series of proposals for what government should do for its citizens. The Paine ‘New  Deal’ called for the subsidisation of the poor, education of their children by the  state. Twenty shillings should be given to every needy woman immediately on the  birth of a child.  

Social security was part of his programme. At age fifty, a person should receive  six pounds a year, and at sixty, when “labour ought to be over, ten pounds until death”. Wages, which were government regulated, should be allowed a free  market.  

What really must have raised hackles on aristocratic necks were proposals for  graduated income tax on the wealthy and inheritance taxes to dismantle great  estates. A member of the upper class reacted with, “If Mr.Paine should be able to  rouse up the lower classes, their interference will probably be marked by wild  work, and all we now possess, whether in private property or public liberty, will be  at the mercy of a lawless and furious rabble”.  

In the spring of 1792, coal miners threatened a strike. Other labourers  demanded higher pay, better working conditions. Insurrection was in the air and  the government was clearly frightened. Declared Prime Minister William Pitt,  “Principles had been laid down by Mr. Paine, which struck at the hereditary  nobility, and which went to the destruction of monarchy and religion, and the  total subversion of the established form of government”.  

Thomas Paine was accused of seditious libel and ordered to appear for trial. ‘Mad Tom’ escaped by night, one jump ahead of the authorities. At Dover he  boarded the ferry for Calais, never again to return to his homeland.  

Just prior to his departure the Revolution in France heated up. A mob  marched on the Tuileries shouting “down with the fathead!” The Swiss Guard  opened fire and a thousand people were killed. The sans culottes, whose long  trousers identified them as working class, rallied round a new song, “Aux arms,  citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!” Lafayette denounced them and was arrested.  

The National Assembly declared a state of emergency. All priests who had  opposed the Revolution were given two weeks to leave the country. The  Commune, the revolutionary government of Paris, voted honorary citizenship to  Americans Thomas Paine, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George  Washington.  

On September 2, 1792, the people’s incendiary anger flared into a three-day  killing orgy. Some 1,300 aristocrats and priests were murdered in what came to be  known as ‘The September Massacres’. Electoral assemblies met to choose deputies  for a National Convention. Paine was welcomed as a hero, “Vive Thomas Paine!”  shouted the people of Calais when he landed. He was immediately invited to  represent Calais, along with Maximilien Robespierre.  

Paine was shocked when he learned of the September Massacres. Most of the  victims were murdered in prisons. Such action was anathema to him. “…A prison  is as sacred as an altar and those who violated a prison were capable of betraying  their own country”. Still, Paine felt that no one was better qualified for  government service than he, if the French wanted men skilled “in defending,  explaining, and propagating the principles of liberty”.  

When Paine appeared in the hall of the Legislative Assembly in Paris, the  deputies erupted into cheers. Factionalism was intense. Many different agendas  were represented. Paine was to learn, to his sorrow, that the French Revolution  was not the American Revolution revisited. This was a different culture with  different history and traditions.  

In the meantime he was put on trial in absentia in London. The government charged he was “a wicked, malicious, and ill-disposed person…who seditiously had  planned to traduce and vilify the government”. He was found guilty, thus giving  the government the right to suppress Rights of Man and all his other works, and he  was exiled from England forever. “Paine looks a little down at the news from  England”, snidely commented Gouverneur Morris, then Minister to France, at a  small dinner. “He has been burnt in effigy”.  

When King Louis was being judged, Paine proposed imprisonment and then  banishment. “Louis XVI is only a weak and narrow-minded man, badly reared. He  should be shown some compassion”.  

But the mood was not for compassion. The vote of the 707 members of the  Assembly took two days. By a majority of one vote, the decision was for death.  Three days later the king lost his head to the guillotine and Thomas Paine lost  support from the more radical deputies, like Marat, Danton and the man who was  once against the death penalty, Robespierre.  

France was embattled on many fronts. Prussian soldiers were moving towards  Verdun. In 1792 and 1793 the National Convention declared war against Prussia,  Austria, Holland, Spain and, finally, England. The monarchies of Europe were  understandably eager to topple the mad government of the sans culottes who  killed their king.  

In addition to attacks from outside there was an economic disaster at home.  Inflation and scarcity of food staples were widespread. The Convention created a  Committee of Public Safety, whose nine members were given carte blanche to end  the chaos.  

Paine fell out of favour. Disillusioned, and for his own safety, he retired to  St.Denis, where at first he drank himself into oblivion. His increasingly fiery nose  and ruddy face attested to that condition (though it was said he consumed “no  more than three quarts of rum a week”.  

In the fall of 1793, Paine was denounced as an Englishman, and England was  France’s enemy. Blood flowed in October. Marie Antoinette was guillotined.  Paine’s principal friends in the Assembly were driven through the streets to the  taunts of the sans culottes. Singing the Marseillaise they went to the chopping  block.  

Robespierre, now in power, turned his attention to “foreign conspirators”.  Paine continued to stay out of the way in St.Denis, where he was hard at work on a  new book. De-christianization was part of the creed of the Revolution, and Paine  held views on the subject that were akin to Robespierre’s. He accepted God and  life after death. He was a deist, believing that reason proved the existence of God,  but rejected divine revelation and the establishment of religious authority.  

Since Paine’s general view was consistent with that of the Revolution’s leader,  no effort was made to block the printing of the chapters of his new book as they  were sent into Paris to the publisher. The Age of Reason was a small work, mainly a  vitriolic attack on the Bible. 

“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the  voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting  vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more  consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God”. The devout shivered with anger at such blasphemy.  

When the soldiers came and took away his friends who boarded in the same  house in St.Denis, Paine sensed that his own time was near. Three days after  Christmas in 1793, the police escorted Citizen Thomas Paine to the Luxembourg,  formerly a palace, now remodelled to house up to 1,000 prisoners.  

In the Luxembourg inmates were free to wander about in the courtyard and  visit each other. Not free was the food. Paine again became a paying border. At first male and female prisoners were accommodated together, and Paine soon  found intimate companionship with an actress prisoner, but the genders were  separated after the prison acquired the reputation as Paris’ premier brothel.  

Paine assumed that incarceration would be brief, but the only effort to get him  out came from American friends in Paris, who applied to the Assembly for his  release as an American citizen.  

The case required delicate handling. True, Paine had come from America, but  he was born in England, an enemy country. On the other hand, it was a political  reality that France needed the United States for critical supplies. It would not be  politic to imprison a famous American without proper cause.  

But no such direction came from President Washington. Why he did not  interfere is still a matter for speculation. The contention that he didn’t know what  had happened to Paine is unlikely. In any event, there was no pressure on Minister  Gouverneur Morris, nor from him, to do anything. Morris expressed his contempt.  

“In the best of times”, he said, “he had a larger share of every other sense  than common sense, and lately the intemperate use of ardent spirits had, I am  told, considerably impaired the small stock, which he originally possessed”. Morris  felt that since Paine had been a member of the French government he could no  longer legally claim to be an American citizen.  

Weeks and then months passed. Paine languished. He grew increasingly angry  and frustrated. Why had his friends at home deserted him? Why did the french  want to detain him?  

Robespierre feared that if Paine were allowed to return to America, his pen  might provoke a sword. If Paine wrote of what he saw in France, it could  potentially damage the Franco-American entente. At the same time, it could cause  a storm if Paine were guillotined. Robespierre concluded that the best solution  was to neutralize the dangerous author, i.e., keep him imprisoned. “I neither saw,  nor heard from, anybody for six months”, lamented Paine.  

The problems of the French government intensified and their desperation was  reflected in the prison. Discipline was harsh, freedom of movement curtailed.  Almost every night up to 50 inmates were carted off to the guillotine. Paine’s  friends were victims, one after another. He constantly expected to be next.  

His strength of character and courage came to the fore in the ordeal. A  survivor said of him later, “His cheerful philosophy under the certain expectation  of death, his sensibility of heart, his brilliant powers of conversation, and his  sportive vein of wit, rendered him a very general favourite with the companions of  misfortune, who found a refuge from evil in the charms of his society. He was the  confidante of the unhappy, the counsellor of the perplexed; and to his sympathizing friendship many a devout victim in the hour of death confided the  last cares of humanity, and the last wish of tenderness”.  

With it all, he kept writing, he produced essays, poetry, a revision of Rights of  Man and even an Essay on the Character of Robespierre.  

On June 10, 1794, the Convention abolished the rights of accused to have  counsel or witnesses. Judges could only acquit or condemn to death. So began  ‘The Great Terror’ which prevailed for 47 days. The guillotine claimed 1,376  people. “What rendered the scene more horrible was that they were generally  taken away at midnight, so that every man went to bed with the apprehension of  never seeing his friends or the world again”.  

The strain of the ordeal finally broke Paine’s health. He almost died from a  fever, which persisted for five weeks. Only the constant care of two English  doctors, fellow prisoners, pulled him through.  

‘The Great Terror’ ended with the fall of Robespierre, July 27, 1794. “The  monster to be erased from the list of men”, as a surviving official described him,  was brought to the Luxembourg, but the jailor would not admit him. Neither  would any other jailer in the city. The ‘monster’ was fittingly erased by his  favourite device, the guillotine, the next day.  

Again, Paine wrote to the Committee of Public Safety asking for his release. No  response, Then a piece of good news, Gouverneur Morris was being replaced as  Minister by James Monroe. Desperate, Paine immediately wrote to him, at last, a  response.  

No question in Monroe’s mind that Thomas Paine was an American citizen.  “By being with us through the Revolution, you are of our country, as absolutely as  if you had been born there; and you are no more of England, than every native of  America is”. Monroe met with the appropriate French committees and on  November 4, 1794, after more than ten months in prison, Thomas Paine was  released. James Monroe wrote to Secretary of State Jefferson that, in spite of his  lengthy incarceration, and his age, nearly 58, and a persistent abscess in his side,  Paine was in “good spirits”.  

Monroe, twenty years Paine’s junior, was in awe of this hero of the American  Revolution. Out of respect, he invited him to stay at his house for a while. A year  later Monroe wrote that he feared Thomas would stay “till his death or departure  for America, however remote either one or the other event may be”.  

In a state of extreme weakness, likely brought on by the open wound in his  side and his incessant drinking, Paine poured out his wrath against George  Washington for having not tried to rescue him from prison. He addressed a long  letter to James Madison, then representing Virginia in the House of Representatives. “I owe this illness (from which I have not much prospect of recovering)  partly to Robespierre and partly to Mr. Washington… I ought not to have suspected  Mr. Washington of treachery, but he had acted towards me the part of a cold  blooded traitor”.  

Monroe insisted he not send the letter. Paine agreed with reluctance, but later  the obsession with Washington inflamed him further, and he had An Open letter to  George Washington carried to Philadelphia, where it was published in 1796 by Benjamin Franklin Bache, Ben Franklin’s son-in-law.  

His words directly to Washington were bitter and unrestrained. “And as to you,  Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the  day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide  whether you are an apostate or an imposter; whether you have abandoned good  principles, or whether you ever had any”.  

Washington appears to have taken little notice of this diatribe. The letter  caused Monroe some embarrassment, so, after a year and a half, he finally asked  Paine to move.  

At this stage of his life, Paine wanted out of France. But where would he go?  He probably would have preferred England, but there, since Rights of Man, he was  a convicted felon, exiled for life.  

Most of America would never forgive him for the outburst against Washington.  And his attack on the Bible in The Age of Reason made him anathema to the devout  in America, as well as France and England. When this volume reached America, an  outraged John Adams declared, “The Christian religion is, above all the religions  that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom,  virtue, equity, and humanity, let the blackguard Paine say what he will”.  

Unwanted in England or America, only tolerated in France, Thomas Paine was,  in essence, a man without a country. Lacking a clear-cut choice of destination, he  spent the next eight years living as a house guest of friends or as a boarder in an  assortment of homes in and around Paris. He began a ‘brief’ stay with the family  of Nicolas de Bonneville, a printer and journalist. Five years later the original ‘Man  Who Came to Dinner’ was still there.  

He wrote essays prolifically, but without much impact, and he re-appeared  before the French Assembly, urging the members not to forget the original  principles of the Revolution.  

At the time the letter shown here was written, May 23, 1802, Paine was the  house guest of Citizen Tenobio. Paine’s penchant for letter writing seemed always  at the disposal of his friends. He did not hesitate to espouse their causes, personal  or political, . No doubt in this way he was giving thanks for hospitality.  

The letter is addressed to ‘Citoyen’ Skipworth. In 1792 the Paris Commune  had decreed that this title henceforth be used instead of ‘monsieur’. Fulwar Skipworth, Jefferson’s nephew, was the American Consul General in Paris and a  good friend. 

The letter read as follows:  

Plessis Piquet  

30 Florial

Dear my friend,

My friend Tenobio at whose place I now am, has directed his banker in London, Hammersly, to invest the balance of accounts due to him, in American Bank shares, which he has done, and in his letter to him of April 30 says, “We are about to send the necessary deeds to America to have the stock transferred in your name, the  interest thereon may be received there in Amsterdam or in London as best suit yourself, but we wish to have your directions that we may give our orders accordingly and at the same time.  

It is necessary to send the original deed to America of an attested copy of it, should the original deed rest in the hands of Tenobio? If an attested copy be sent, can more than one be sent in the case at accident, as is done in 1st, 2d, 3d bills of Exchange. Be so kind as to give me your opinion upon this case and add a word of  America new if you have any. When you are mounted on your Rosinata and can make a stretch thus far we shall be glad to see you. You can tell us what pigs and cows are worth as Tenobio is going to buy some. give my Compts. to Mr. Purveyance.  

The contents of the letter are perhaps surprising, revealing the financial sophistication of a man of little property. Yet we know that Paine was familiar with banking from his association with Robert Morris in forming the Bank of Philadelphia and later as a proponent of the Bank of North America. 

He astutely asks  whether documents should be sent in sets, like bills of exchange, to insure that at  least one makes it through the transporting process, Tenobio’s decision to buy  American bank shares (perhaps influenced by Paine?) is also interesting. Though  the options for securities investments were few, such shares would have been the  growth stocks of the day, and quite speculative.  

Paine was pleased to learn that friend Thomas Jefferson had defeated John  Adams in the latter’s bid for a second term in 1800. Jefferson offered to provide  passage to America for Paine on a government ship. Again, Thomas equivocated.  He stayed in France.  

Part of his hesitation was a genuine fear that his vessel might be stopped on  the high seas by a British warship, which is exactly what happened when James  Monroe was en route home. British sailors boarded his ship and “searched every  part of it, and down to the hold, for Thomas Paine”. About five months after the Skipworth letter, he finally decided to pack his bags for the journey from  Havre-de-Grace. Thomas Paine, now 65, arrived in Baltimore in October 1802. He  was greeted with a mixed reception, but was mostly the object of scorn and  contempt.  

The great men he had known, for the most part, deserted him. Mainly  Jefferson, among the political powers of the day, maintained friendship – but that  from a distance. Other notable who remained loyal were Robert Fulton, with  whom he had earlier collaborated on ideas for a steam boat, and painters Charles  Wilson Peale and John Wesley Jarvis. True to form, Paine moved into young Jarvis’  house for five months, where the artist sculpted a bust of him and later a death  mask.  

During the remaining declining years, Paine wrote incessantly. He addressed  eight public letters ‘To the Citizens of the United States’. In these he attacked the  Federalists and John Adams. He supported Jefferson’s Republican position for a weak federal government and is acknowledged to have been influential in  Jefferson’s re-election in 1804.  

Paine moved from home to home in Philadelphia and New York. His writings  continued on a variety of subjects, from the cause of yellow fever to the need for  more gunboats. His audience diminished, but he still attracted companions with  his ongoing humour and wit.  

One of them chided him, “Mr. Paine, here you sit, in an obscure,  uncomfortable dwelling, powdered with snuff and stupefied with brandy; you, who  were once the companion of Washington, Jay and Hamilton, are you now deserted  by every good man; and even respectable deists cross the street to avoid you”. To  which Paine replied, “I care not a straw for the opinions of the world”. This was  not true, but it was too late to curry the world’s favour.  

A tumble down the stairs in 1806 precipitated further physical decline. But the  old bird was tough, and he died hard over the next three years. Painful external  ulcers, and other complications, finished the great man finally on June 8, 1809. He  was 72.  

His first biographer, one James Cheetham, a publisher and an enemy, wrote a  comment which the nation’s press re-printed, “I am unacquainted with his age,  but he had lived long, done some good, and much harm”. Thus did America turn  the last page on her most famous and influential writer.  

Sources:  

Adkins, N.F. Paine – Common Sense and Other Political Writings.  

Edwards, S. Rebel! A Biography of Tom Paine.  

Fruchtman, J. Jr. Thomas Paine, Apostle of Freedom. New York, 1994.  

Hawke, D.F. Paine. New York, 1974.  

Republished by permission of the National Society of Autograph Collectors

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PAINE by David Freeman Hawke. Harper and Row, New York. S15.00 

Perhaps the point made in this book which struck me with most force occurred when the author was discussing the controversy between Edmund Burke and Paine. Paine refers to the view of some individuals he does not name who considered Burke “a madman.” This, says Professor Hawke, was a case of stooping to “character assassination” on the part of Paine (p.220). Six pages later in the opening paragraph of the next chapter, a Mr. Hodge, in conversation with Gouverneur Morris, describes Paine, with whom he lodged, “as being a little mad,” which Morris considered was “not improbable.” Hawke who described the similar comment from Paine as “character assassination” pointedly fails to use the same term to describe Hodge’s assertion and Morris’s agreement. The bias in this cannot be escaped from. Had it been an isolated incident in Professor Hawke’s five hundred page biographical study of Thomas Paine we may well have passed it by and simply noted it, however, it is not the exception but rather the rule, for time and time again the author appears to deliberately go out of his way to insert some reference to what he sees as Paine’s faults, failings and weaknesses. 

Now I am the last person to wish to have Paine presented as some plaster saint who never did wrong and never upset anyone. Paine made many an enemy, and in a large number of cases can only blame himself for it. Some of his habits probably irritated others, and perhaps he should have been rather more diplomatic than he was. In short, Paine was very human with all the deficiencies that implies. But does not the same apply to others? To read Hawke one would imagine that Paine had all the faults while his other famous contemporaries, particularly the Americans, possessed all the virtues. Only Paine, it seems, got drunk; indeed, on this latter point I seriously doubt whether I could name another biographical study of Paine in which we meet so many references to Paine being a drunkard. Paine, one gathers, required an ample supply of rum and water to enable him to write properly- (p.14-5), the fact that this tale originated with a bitter critic of Paine is of no concern to Professor Hawke anymore than the fact that he openly contradicts it a few pages further on, when Paine is shown to like to do his writing after a long walk, with no mention of rum and water – indeed the passage refers to his moderation in drinking habits! (p.71) Paine is described as being untidy in his habits, but at least he shares this failing with Edmund Burke (p.189). Paine, though, is quoted by Hawke as being, “physically repulsive” (p.384), an opinion not borne out by any of the portraits I have seen of Paine, including those reproduced in this book. Paine is mean money wise (p.376), a strange comment to make of a man who surrendered the vast profits from the sale of Common Sense and the Crisis series to his country when it desperately needed funds; and, need anything by now to surprise us? Paine lacked a deep concern and affection for America and his patriotism was questionable (pp.33,193 and 335). I will not continue the catalogue, it is enough to say that Hawke as often as not accepts these charges at face value and makes no attempt to assess their standing or probe the reasons for them being made, however, in fairness to him I do not think he shares the opinion as to Paine’s lack of patriotism to America. Hawke does, though, call into question any attempt by Paine’s friends to defend him against charges of being a drunk, thus of the claim that Paine only drank “three quarts of rum a week,” Hawkes says the statement was being “protective of the old gentleman’s reputation” (p.391). 

Thomas Paine was in fact a problem, seemingly as much to biographers like Hawke as he was to the people who led the colonists. He had the unfortunate trait of being at one and the same time an honest man in politics and an idealist. Paine placed reason in place of ruthlessness and had too much faith in hIs fellows. He was used, and it is doubtful whether he appreciated the fact. When the revolution succeeded Paine became a liability, happily, to quote William Kenry, “‘of the lesser sort’ who led the war, the “lesser sort” did not demand a more equal share of America’s earthly treasure (Annales du C.R.A.A.3.1. 1974. p.22). Paine could have become the articulate spokesman for the “lesser sort” had he remained in America, and so posed a genuine threat to the new establishment, for Paine was of the ordinary people and knew their problems from personal experience. Paine, one suspects, was encouraged to leave America, in order to pursue his interest in technology where facilities were better. Once out of the way it was easy to destroy his reputation, a process in which Paine unfortunately lent an unwitting hand.

The Hawke biography of Paine is not without its merits, the particular strength it has being in the material incorporated into it on the background to Paine’s life in America. This alone makes it worth having, however, its treatment of Paine’s early life in England is rather too superficial to make it have much value, and some errors creep in, an example being the description of Samuel Ollive as a Quaker. He was not. One wonders, too, why Rights of Man is continually referred to as The Rights of Man, except in the index. There is no excuse for such an elementary blunder.

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(Arising out of the last TPS Bulletin, Summer 1977)

AS ONE OF Paine’s biographers who did point out not only the dangers of the Excise service through public dislike and evasion of the duties (in particular the tea duties), and also the importance of Paine’s continued association with George Lewis Scott in showing his dismissal was not considered as on serious grounds, I welcome George Hindmarches article and most valuable further discoveries. They support my own theory, based also upon research into the Lewes parish records and the New Shoreham by-election of 1770, that Paine’s political and sociological attitudes were already well-formed before he went to America. The revelation of the widespread and semi-official nature of his attempts at Excise reform reinforces this. The evidence is partly circumstantial, but I am sure Mr. Hindmarch is right in his general thesis. 

I would disagree with him to some extent on the nature of the English so-called “mob” riots of the 18th century. Hogarth is not a reliable reflector, for his was, like Draohnsonla, a highly conservative and pro-establishment political point of view, as his savage anti-Wilkes cartoons demonstrate. Paine would have got a far fairer view of the North Briton controversy from the local Lewes journal, and must have been personally associated with Wilkes’ lawyer, Sergeant Glynn, in the New Shoreham election. It is even possible he met Wilkes when Wilkes was received with enthusiasm in Lewes on his tour the same year. More research, I believe, is still possible here into Paine’s English life generally. 

As for the Gordon Riots of 1780, the exhaustive researches of Professor George Rude (Paris and London in the 18th Century: Studies in Popular Protest) have demonstrated clearly that these were not only anti-Catholic but also political. No lives were taken by the rioters, and some of the houses between those of politically disliked non-Catholics such as Lord Mansfield. The burning of Newgate was at least partly to release political prisoners. Dickens’ description in Barn & Budge of the “sober workmen” drawn into the riots was therefore a true one; and Wilkes, as a magistrate, in helping to put them down lost the support of a number of City aldermen who were politically involved. 

One reason for anti-Catholic feeling was the proposed Catholic Relief Bill, In granting civil rights, would make Catholics eligible for tiro army, thus helping to prolong the now unpopular American War. There was also the usual resentment against poor Irish emigrants undercutting wages.

James Betka in his review of Eric Loner’s book, Tom Paine and Revolution in America, is equally wrong in suggesting Hogarth’s notorious Gin Lame illustrates the life of London’s ‘Everyman.’ The dregs of the poor, especially as depicted by the cartoonist, are never representative of the main body even of a working class, and the weavers, tailors and other artisans who formed committees. Throughout the 18th century were, like Paine’s Excise petitions, part of incipient trade unionism, and their protest not always as riotous as the government liked to present. 

There is still such that might be learned about influences on Paine while in London as well as Lewes, but Professor Betka’s theory that Paine was largely repeating (or indeed had read) the many sources among political writers he mentions seems to me untenable, and certainly unproved. He denied reading even Locke, and his own style in general is very different from the North Briton, whose scurrilous tone he probably did know well. Basically, although be makes mistakes on the English radical movement (naming Major Cartwright as the most “revolutionary’ of its exponents and not seeming aware of the far more radical Dr. John Jebb), and overstates the case of Paine’s artisan connections as opposed to his middle class ones, I believe Professor Loner is right that Paine did forge a literary style direct enough to reach the people, both American and English, in a way his political theorist or satirist predecessors had never done, some cartoonists accepted. The proof is not only the widespread sale and influence of Common Sense, but the way Rights of Man, far more than the works of any other 18th century writer, penetrated the London revolutionary societies, including the working-class London Corresponding Society, and the later Chartist movement. 

The point is Paine was a born writer, with the clarity of expression and picturesque grasp of imagery missing from most writers of political and economic theory, and I suspect Professor Betka’s own prose and economic analyses would have been largely unintelligible to him. 

Of course it is true that any writer, in particular a political writer, assimilates and reflects the ideas current in his time; and the influence of those In the 18th century, as I have often pointed out, reached right back to the Levellers and English deists, as well as the French philosophers, Paine’s originality in presenting and developing these ideas, with practical suggestions as to their implementation, and imaginative us of language still remain. 

It is a pity if Professor Betka’s review of some of Loner’s theories prevents Paineites from reading Loner’s book, for it does, for the English reader, present many little-known facts about Paine’s Philadelphia associates and environment that could not but have had sane influence on his attitude and American writings. The references to Paine, as Professor Betka points out, hardly justify his prominent position in the book’s title, but Erik Loner has presented an interesting, well-researched social background picture which cannot be ignored in Paine’s development, any more than his English backgrounds can be ignored. 

Professor Betka himself makes an often-repeated but quite unprovable assumption when he says only Paine’s “English enemies” called him “Tom.” Late in the 19th century, a British socialist workman objected to the diminutive as deliberately downgrading Paine’s status as man and writer, and thus seems to have started this myth; but there is evidence at least some friends in his own time used “Tom* affectionately, and indeed it is inconceivable that anyone christened Thomas, at any period in this country, could avoid this. 

As my own book on the Pre-Raphaelites, reviewed in the same issue of the Bulletin, points out, although Paine’s works seem to have by-passed later middle class socialist writers such as Ruskin and Carlyle, and William Morris shoved no particular awareness of him, some knowledge of Paine’s works probably reached Morris in the end, through old Chartists who attended his lectures at working class meetings, and through Walter Crane, his Kelmscott Press assistant. Crane had been an apprentice of the Chartist engraver, W.J. Linton, who in 1842 wrote a brief life of Paine. 

I cannot agree with J.A. Hadwick that Morris was essentially a “middle-class” socialist: his Marxist dedication was total and he associated with working-class socialists on their own level, in a way that divided him from the Fabians and other intellectuals in the rising Labour movement. Dr. E.P. Thompson and Morris’ latest Marxist biographer, Jack Lindsay, as well as associates of Morris at the time, make this quite clear.

I hope, too, Miss Hadrick in her generous review of my book does not really intend to suggest that I maintain the Pre-Raphaelite mid-Victorian revolt was the first in the world of art. Both my book on Paine and this new one, Artists and Writers in Revolt, mention Blake’s radical rebellion. He was, of course, a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelites, who did much to revive his reputation, as they also revived that of Keats. 

Finally, Gordon Hone is wrong to perpetuate the legend that Paine “fled” from England in September, 1792, and was thereafter offered the Calais deputyship in the new French Convention. In fact, as Rickman’s biography and French evidence make clear, Paine was offered four deputyships, of which he chose Calais, and the French government representative Audibert came over to England to accompany him. There is no indication at all that these offers were made to help Paine avoid the December trial, In fact the French districts also voted deputyships to Dr. Joseph Priestley and other known foreign sympathisers with the Revolution. It does appear the English police agents got wind of Paine’s intended departure and naturally tried to stop him; they turned up at Rickman’s house after he had gone.

As I remarked in my biography, Paine, confronted with the French offers, made a sensible choice in accepting in all the circumstances. There is no evidence at all that he would otherwise have attempted to avoid the trial; and indeed later he expressed doubts about the wisdom of his decision, for it did ultimately affect his reputation in England. 

With regard to Paine’s imprisonment in the Luxembourg, this was not as a direct result of his voting (with many others) against the execution of Louis XVI but because after the outbreak of war with England all British subjects were incarcerated as enemy aliens (Mary Wollstonecraft’s American lover registered her at the American Embassy as his wife so that she could avoid this). Paine then and later based his appeal on the strong protest that he was no longer a British but an American subject: a fact denied by the then royalist American representative in Paris, Paine’s enemy Gouverneur Morris. When James Monroe succeeded Morris, Paine’s release was soon obtained; but later in America he was once infamously denied the right to vote because he was not, it was claimed, an American citizen! 

It is necessary to make this clear because the English claim that Paine was a “traitor” had no substance in Paine’s own mind. He always, after emigration in 1774, looked on himself as an American citizen. Once the War of Independence was ended no other English emigrant who had fought in the War, to my knowledge, was accused of being a “traitor” to his country of origin. But Paine was a dangerous political writer and the ‘traitor” myth is maintained in certain Establishment historical circles to this day, although the official accusation even at his trial was merely of “seditious libel” (i.e. a censorship matter).

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IN December 1788, Gouverneur Morris left America with many business plans, financial schemes, and a muted desire to impose his will on the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic. Before leaving, he had asked Washington for letters which would introduce him only to those persons “….who in your opinion may be useful to me.” In return he offered his services to Washington in this manner: am about shortly to take my departure from Philadelphia for the kingdom of France, and I expect to visit both Holland and England. When I desire to be favoured with your commands, it is not the mere ceremonious form of words, which you may every day meet from every man you meet, and which you may know better than any man how to estimate at its true value. Whether I can be useful to you in any way, I know not; but this I know that you may command my best endeavors.” (J.Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, Boston, 1832. Vol.l. p.293.) It may have been hesitation or subtle humour, but Washington for the moment commanded Morris simply to buy him a watch in London. Nonetheless, the political and economic aspects of Morris’s mission were to grow with the intensity of the French Revolution. 

Both these aspects were also apparent in the storm that broke over his appointment as American Ambassador to France. Monroe, in voting against the nomination, said, “He is a man of monarchy. He is not fit to be employed in this country 9r in France…. He went to Europe to sell lands and certificates.” (M.Conway,Life and Correspondence of Rufus Kin: New York, 1894. Vol. l. p.421.) Jefferson also protested 8 the proposed appointment of “….this high flying monarchist who closed his eyes and spirit to facts that were against his desires, who considered his wishes to be the truth and who had constantly poisoned the president’s head.” (P.L.Ford, Writings of Jefferson, New York, 1892. Vol. l. p.188.)

Across the Atlantic, LaFayette wrote to Washington that Morris was an aristocrat who had constantly expressed principles contrary to the Revolution, thus making him unfit for the post of American Ambassador. It was an opinion the LaFayette family continued to hold in spite of the services rendered them by Morris. Madame Wayette wrote in 1797 that although Morris “….saved my life he is an extreme aristocrat, and would willingly be a. counter revolutionary. I would be careful about confiding to him our present and future secrets.” (A. Maurois, Adrienne, ou la Vie de Mme. de LaFayette, Paris, 1961. Vol.11. p.358.)

Soon after Morris’s nomination, Louis Otto, French charge d’affaires in Philadelphia, wrote to his home office: “The secrecy with which the Senate covers its deliberations serves to veil personal interest which reigns there in all its strength.” And he added of Gouverneur Morris “He is entirely devoted to his correspondent (Robert Morris) with whom he has Iievn: c’Cte:tantiY.zonnected in his business and opinion…. He is perhaps the most eloquent and ingenious man of his country, but his – countrymen themselves distrust his talents. They admire but fear him.” (Archives des Affaires Estrangeres, Paris. Etats-Uhis, Vol. 35. Folder 301.) Otto ended by warning that Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris were working to replace the French alliance with an English one. 

In spite of this opposition, Morris’s appointment passed the Senate in January 12, 1792. But, then, he had powerful and ambitious men pressing for his appointment: Senator Johnson of Connecticut, Robert Morris, and Alexander Hamilton — all men who either had financial interest in fostering Morris’s diplomatic career oversaw in him one who would help them to shape-American foreign policy.’ (Julian P. Boyd, Number 7. Alexander Hamilton’s Secret Attempts to Control American Foreign Policy, Princeton, N.J., 1964. p.29.) Indeed, Morris’s actions for the rest of his stay in Europe justified the worse fears of his opponents. 

One of the first to congratulate Morris was James Swan, an American merchant and speculator in Europe, who added in his letter dated:, Paris, February 1792, “The beef and pork and timber affairs rest when they were on your arrival, and with your advice or consent I shall take steps with the Committee of Marine as will force the order giving power to the minister.” (Swan to Marris. Feb.1792, Gouverneur Morris Papers, Columbia University Special Collections. Hereafter Morris Papers.) It is probable that Morris gave his advice or consent, for soon after Swan obtained, with the aid of LaFayette, remunerative contracts to furnish the French Navy with stores and salt meat provisions. 

This association lasted for many years and took Morris and Swan through those grey passages where politics and financial intrigue entangled to plague the revolutionary government. Morris continued his political intriguing during his tenure as Ambassador, and there is good reason to believe that he did not permit his financial activity to lag. 

Interestingly enough, many of the men who, with Morris, were involved in defending Louis XVI and the monarchy on the eve of the August 10th Insurrection were the same men who worked closely with Morris in financial schemes. It was a certain M.Bremond who assisted. Morris in much of this activity. Bremond, a Provençal, was associated with Morris as early as 1789 when Bremond sent him a_report on French finances which he had written for the Controller General, de Lambert. Both men were associated in many schemes including land speculations in America, and speculation in the French debt to German princes. (Morris Papers, Bremond Memoire. See also Gouverneur Morris, Diary of the French Revolution, Boston, 1939.  Vol.11. Pp.175-195, 211-263, 269-345.) Before the 10th of August, however, Bremond ran errands for Morris, bought the correspondence of the Jacobins for him, and introduced him to such men of affairs as the bankers Schweizer and Jeanneret. Morris thought it important enough to note in his diary, January 17,1792, “Bremond reads to me a memoire upon Switzerland written by Mr.Schweizer.” It was these bankers who were entrusted with the 5000 louis d’or which the King of France had allotted for the abortive counter-revolutionary measures on 10 August 1792. Schweizer later turned up as a business partner of James Swan, who also had commercial ties with Gouverneur Morris. 

For the moment, though, Morris was involved, against the advice of Washington, in counselling Louis XVI as how to flee France and how to put down the coming insurrection of August 10th. (Morris, op. cit., Vol.11, p.476.) On the 22nd of July, Monciel, minister to the King, brought to the home of Morris 547,000 livres, “of which by the second of August, 539,0% livres were already being used according to the orders of the King.” (Ibid. p.477.) The gold was divided into purses of twenty louis and was to be used to buy men willing to fight for the King, “preferably among the Marseillais,” for they would be the least suspected. Some of these men were already lodged in Bremond’s home. The plan was for these Federds from Marseille 11 “to repair to certain places and there to fight under their chiefs.” (Ibid.) Morris, in the meantime, with the aid of Monciel, prepared an address to be used to harangue the mercenaries before the battle. Morris also helped write a letter intended as a message from the King to the section of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau which, Morris noted, “will, it is supposed, give his majesty that Faubourg.” (Ibid. p.488.)

Morris’s efforts in behalf of the King and the monarchy came to nothing as the insurrection of August 10th broke over Paris. Royalists and their supporters were scattered, many taking refuge in Morris’s home. Brernond, of course, was forced to flee, but for a moment he hesitated between the offer made to him by the Fededres still lodged in his home to take him to southern France, and his first impulse to flee to England. He chose the latter, obtaining a passport with the help of the bankers Schweizer and Jeanneret, and left for England on the night of September 17. Before he left, however, he took the 5000 louis d’or and put them in the hands of Schweizer and Jeanneret. He also gave them 2000 louis of his own, “leaving them free to employ them in useful speculation.” (Morris Papers, Bremond Memoire.)

These bankers were admirably placed and, much like Morris, mixed financial and political affairs to such an extent that their influence went beyond banking circles. (J.Bouchary, Les Manieurs d’Argent a Paris a la Fin du 18 eme Siecle, Paris, 1939. p.10. (Mr.Bouchary writes: “6e furent surtout les manieurs d’argent ttrangers qui eurent une activitd extra-financiere; ce furent les Claviere, les Boyd, 1es Frey, les Guzmann, les Proli, les Schweizer….et quelgues autres qui tenterent d’entrafl-ier la France dans des aventures, soit en soutenant des contre-revolutionnaires, en formant des troubles a l’intdrieur elri dressant l’une contre l’autre.„ les faction; soit en faisant proposer des motions ultra-revolutionnaire au en poussant A la guerre contre les autres puissances europdennes.”)) As early as 1789 they were lending money to the French government through Bremond. (Morris Papers, Bremond Memoire) Their influence with the revolutionary government eventually developed so that they were sent on a political mission to Switzerland as agents of the Committee of Public Safety. Morris knew their worth, when in 1791 he ; recommended them to William Short in Holland, who was negotiating the American debt for, “They have great strength both with the Court and 41b the Assembly. (Morris, op.cit. Vol.11. p.158.)

In his long report covering the period from 1789 to 1795 sent to Morris, Bremond described his insistent efforts to recover the 5000 louis d’or. The report indicates that Bremond was interested in speculating on furniture and other goods confiscated from emigres. In spite of Bremond’s pleas, the bankers apparently tied up all- of Bremond’s 7000 louis (5000 of Louis XVI’s and 2000 of his own) in their own affairs. And indeed they were- in a good position for such affairs, for when Bremond went to Switzerland in 1794, he found them there, “charges d’une mission politique du comite de salut_public;” At the same time, these bankers were in the business of buying the confiscated property of French emigres, shipping it to Switzerland, and then on to England, where it was sold excellent prices on the fluctuation of which Bremond and M. Rougemont kept them informed. (Denis de Rougement was an associate of Frangois Jeanneret in 1785. Bouchary. op.cit., p.104.) They dealt in furniture, paintings, books, lace, and bric—a—brac. Towards the end of May 1794, however, an agent of these bankers, a M. Gattey, who was the bookstore owner in Paris, was arrested and his shop with books valued at 150,000 livres belonging to Schweizer and Jeanneret were put under scelles. (Morris Papers, Bremond Memoire.)

Bremond became quite frantic, for not only did the return of his money now depend on the sale of these goods, but M.Gattey had now been arrested. Bremond must have known that Gattey’s bookstore was a meeting place for many political groups, including the ultra—royalist Salon Francais. The frantic tone of his writing indicates that he might have known that Gattey was in the pay of d’Antraigues, head of the Royalist spy ring. (J.Chaumie, Le Reseau d’Antraigues et la Contre-Revolution — 1791-1793, Paris, 1965. Pp.46, 115.) The bankers seemed little concerned about this, although Jeanneret Sr., writing to Bremond on June 23,1794, from Switzerland, complained that his commercial affairs “n’ont pas de succes.” It was Bremond who gave them advice on how to save their property. In all this, Bremond was not only in touch with the bankers, but he must also have been in touch with Morris, for he was one of the first to know when horris had asked for a passport. And as early as August, he wrote to 2u Jeanneret Jr. that, “The Ambassador was about to leave . France.” (Morris Papers, Bremond Memoire)

Yet it was not until after the 9th of Thermidor that the activities resumed. And this we know, curiously enough, not through Bremond, but from another source. James Swan, who was now in partnership with Schweizer, apparently had been in Paris and in touch with Morris in 1794. For Swan wrote on October 11,1794, three days before Morris left for Switzerland: 

“Dear Sir, In our letter of the 2nd.inst. we mentioned that we should be two-thirds interested in all rules or contracts. We mean by that only, in the contracts, as the word sales, is an error in the hurry of writing. – In any speculation you may make, we agree to be one half interested. Enclosed we send you a copy of an arrete of the comite de salut public, taken a few days since by which we are authorized to export seven million in specie value, which we shall do immediately in Barins, Muslins, Muslinettes and other British Manufactured Dry Good for 500,000. In sugars Rum and other prize goods – for 2,500,000. In super fine broad cloths for 500,000. 1000 tons eau de vie de Cognac for 1,400,000. Bordeau, a la cognac for 1,000,000. 1000 wines for 1,000,000 of whatever may be wanting or not quickly to be got of these articles, we shall supply in Bijoux, and silversmiths works, in fine linens, Cambricks, laces,etc. – James Swan and Schweizer”

The enclosed copy of the arrete of the comity de salut public, dated 15 Vendemiaire An 3 – or 6 October 1794, read:

“On the report of the commission of commerce and provisions the committee of public safety degrees

Article 1

The commercial house of Swan and Schweizer and Co. is authorized to export and sell to the account of the Republic for 7 million in metal value merchandise made up of wines, eaux de vie, luxury items and enemy prizes.

Article :11

The produce of the sale will be used to buy and import grains, wheat, rice, dry legumes, preserved meats.” 

The decree was signed by “les mares du Comite de Salut Public: “R. Lindetieur de la Marne, Treilhard (A number of men on the Committee had particular interests in the goods of the emigres: Treilhard in 1793 had been sent to Manly, residence of the Capet family where he apparently stripped it of everything including the iron grills of the park, and sent to Paris “furniture rich in galoons and broidery of,. gold and silver;” adding that they would bring better prices in Paris. Ancien Moniteur, Vol. XVIII (October 23, 1793), p.173.), Delmas, Merlin (99) (This number 99 appears in the manuscript beside Merlin’s name. It may have been a code number.) Thuriot. (Morris Papers, Swan to Morris. Letter quoted as found in the Papers.)”

The economic association no doubt proved beneficial to both men. A year later, Swan wrote from America, where Schweizer was also at the time, asking Morris if he would plead the cause of American merchants whose ships had been taken by the British as prizes. Swan offered 1000 pounds for every ship released. 

When this possibility of making money is added to his desire to influence political affairs, one understands why Morris remained in Europe four years after his recall as Minister to France. After all, it was for financial and political reasons that he had come in the first place.

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IN the midst of the controversy over Silas Deane’s negotiations with the French government, the most sensational political scandal of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine brought forth several satirical pieces in verse and prose under a new pseudonym, Comus. Deane had been accused by his fellow commissioner Arthur Lee of using his official position for person- al gain. Although Congress instituted various official investigations, Deane’s case was virtually tried in the newspapers, and Paine as Common Sense served as public prosecutor. 

For a year after Deane’s appeal to the public for vindication in December, 1778, the newspapers carried literally hundreds of letters and essays supporting or attacking him. The controversy grew to comprise not only Deane’s foreign negotiations, but all forms of war profiteering, real and alleged. Paine, at the outset became Deane’s most vociferous accuser and, in turn, the butt of retaliatory attacks by the Deane supporters. By adopting a new pseudonym, Comus, Paine was enabled to proliferate his offensives to attack his enemies openly and soberly under his customary pseudonym, Common Sense, and to ridicule them under one that was unknown. In this way, he was sure to get a sympathetic hearing from those who were indifferent or even antagonistic to his reputation, as well as from those who habitually followed his lead. Common Sense and Comus sound somewhat alike, and it is not strange that Paine should have thought of Comus as an alternative pen name. Also, he was aware of the classical association of Comus with fun and revelry, for he consistently reserved this pseudonym for works of satire and burlesque. 

From a belletristic standpoint, one of the most interesting works in Paine’s entire career is an essay signed Comus in the Pennsylvania Packet (March 16,1779) in which Paine ridicules the prose style of two literary Congressmen in the Deane camp, William Henry Drayton of South Carolina, and Gouverneur Morris of New York. 

Before discussing the content of this essay, however, it is necessary to show that Comus was actually Thomas Paine. First of all, Paine used the pseudonym Comus at another stage of his career – on his return to America after his ten-year sojourn in France as member of the French Convention, as journalist and amateur diplomat. On August 23,1804, he published in the Philadelphia Aurora a burlesque of Federalist eulogies of Alexander Hamilton under the title “Nonsense from New York.” This was signed Comus. In two extant personal letters to publishers Paine admits authorship, Writing to Elisha Babcock, publisher of the Hartford American Mercury, August 27,1804, he refers to “a piece of mine signed Comus and entitled Nonsense from New York, “. and writing to William Duane, publisher of the Aurora, September 19, 1804, he complains, “In the last piece I sent you signed Comus, you abridged some of the expressions.” 

Identification of the Revolutionary satire on the style of Drayton and Morris is almost as precise, although it comes from one of Paine’s enemies rather than Paine himself. Four months after the essay by Comus, an anonymous poem appeared in another newspaper (Pennsylvania Evening Post, July 16,1779), abusing Paine for his defense of the Lees against Silas Deane: 

HAIL mighty Thomas! In whose works are seen 

A mangled Morris and distorted Deane; 

Whose splendid periods flash for Lees defense, 

Replete with every thing but common sense. 

Both of Paine’s pseudonyms are introduced, the notorious Common Sense and the unknown Comus: 

In pity tell, by what exalted name 

Thou would’st be damned to eternal fame. 

Shall Common Sense, or Conus greet thine ear 

A piddling poet, or puft pamphleteer. 

And the identification is completed by an allusion to the particular essay ridiculing literary style: 

And Eager to traduce the worthiest men, 

Despite the energy of Drayton’s pen. 

This couplet could hardly refer to anything but the essay in question, for Drayton, unlike Morris, remained relatively untouched by personal controversy, he was not a prolific writer, and condemnation of an opponent’s literary style was a rare weapon in Revolutionary polemics. It is scarcely conceivable that there existed another take-off by Paine or anyone else on Drayton’s writing.

Paine’s main affair was with Morris, a personal enemy, and he probably included Drayton in his squib only because Drayton served with Morris on many committees of Congress and also belonged to the Deane faction. Both Drayton and Morris had recently composed answers to British proclamations, Drayton a pamphlet reply to a speech of George 111, and Morris a newspaper reply to a speech by Governor George Johnstone, recently sent to America as a joint commissioner to treat with the colonies. His title of governor was one of courtesy, presumably applied because he had once been appointed governor of West Florida. 

Paine described the productions of George 111 and Drayton as “a dead match of dulness to dulness,” but otherwise limited his satire to a single sentence in Drayton’s pamphlet and to its physical appearance: “ornamented like an ale-house-keeper’s sign, with the letters W.H.D.” Paine felt that the terms in which Drayton opened his address to the King were ludicrous: “Your royal voice to your Parliament on the 27th of November last, has at length, reached the ears of freemen on the western shore of the Atlantic.” Paine exposed the absurdity of referring to the passage of the King’s voice across the Atlantic to the ears of America, a journey which had required nine days but should have taken only four hours, according to Paine’s estimate of the velocity of sound. 

Paine dismissed Drayton with the N.B., “The Devil backs the King of England, and S. Deane backs W.H.D. because he has good ‘ears,’ and they are not ‘shut.” This is a reference to Deane’s plaint at the outset of his cause celebre that the ears of Congress had been shut against him. 

Two years before writing this criticism of Drayton’s rhetoric, Paine in his Crisis No.3 had publicly praised one of Drayton’s other works, his charge to the grand jury for the district of Charleston in April, 1776. Paine said that it was written “in an elegant masterly manner” and described it along with the address of the convention of New York as”pieces, in my humble opinion, of the first rank in America,” one of the rare passages in Paine’s works in which he pays tribute to a fellow author. His approbation is understandable, however, for Drayton in his charge had not only supported the principles of Paine’s Common Sense, but had also warmly praised the work. 

Paine was in a sense repaying a debt. Later, when he found Drayton associated with his opponents, the Deane faction, Paine changed his opinion of his literary style. 

In turning to Gouverneur Morris, Paine opened up the full force of his satire. He was affected to forget Morris’ surname and spelled his given name as “Governeer.” Since Morris had written against Governor Johnstone, Paine was able to deride the mighty contention between Governor and the Governor. Johnstone in his speech had declared that “the maxim of dying in the last ditch was his principle,” and Morris had undertaken to ridicule the application of the maxim to the American war. Paine, without saying anything in Johnstone’s favour, sought to reduce Morris’ literary achievement to pretentious flummery.

Since Paine’s essay is fundamentally an analysis of literary humor, one may logically raise the question, why, in the midst of the rancorous controversy over Silas Deane during which Paine wrote at least thirty or forty disputatious pieces for the newspapers, did he take time to write at length on a purely literary subject? There is a measure of truth in the explanation which Paine himself offered to account for the vigor of his satire on the works of rival authors: “not only because such gasconade productions take away from that character of modern and serious fortitude which America has hitherto supported, and that without even giving wit in its place; but because they have a tendency to introduce a false taste among youth, who are too apt to be catched by the extravagance of a figure without considering its justness.” It may seem inconsistent for Paine to be supporting “modern and serious fortitude” in a work devoted exclusively to burlesque. Also, a large proportion of Paine’s other work, both during the Revolution and after, consists of unrelieved satire. It may be that he recognized a distinction between subjects of national importance and others of merely local or individual significance and considered that only the latter could be treated in a comic or frivolous vein. 

Paine may also have singled out Drayton and Morris because they were joint authors of a Congressional report, Observations on the American Revolution, which Paine disapproved of because it slighted the importance of the military action at the very beginning of the war. Four days after his Comus essay, Paine published a serious condemnation of the material, in this report, which he signed with his usual pseudonym, Common Sense. 

Paine used still other pseudonyms in addition to Comus and Common Sense. An opponent in the Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 7, 1777) described him as a”voluminous author,” appearing to the public “in three characters” a “Proteus of a being, who can not only change his shape and appearance, but can divide and subdivide his own identity.” According to this critic, the maneuvering of Paine, a “self-created multitude of an author,” resembled the tactics of General Burgoyne, who allegedly changed his ground when he could not maintain a post. 

At first glance, it may seem surprising that Paine’s contemporaries should have been aware of his identity as Comus, but that the circumstance should not have been registered in literary history until the twentieth century is still more surprising. Actually, this can easily be accounted for. Even before the end of the Revolution Paine spoke of collecting and publishing his literary works, and the project remained in his mind throughout his life, but he was never able to carry it out. And even had he made the attempt, it probably would have been difficult after his return from France to reassemble the newspapers of the Revolutionary decade in which his multitudinous essays had appeared. No collection of his miscellaneous works appeared during his lifetime, and that which appeared after his death, and on which all subsequent editions are based, was composed largely on the authority of one of Paine’s later acquaintances in New York. In addition to the Comus pieces, there are scores of Paine’s newspaper essays which have never been collected or identified in print. Paine did not even supervise a complete edition of his Crisis papers. The version which appears in editions of his works was not assembled by Paine himself, and even to this day there are various doubts about which of his writings he intended to represent as No.10. 

The Crisis, of course, had ineffably greater influence than the Comus piece satirizing Drayton and Morris, but the latter gives us a new insight into the human side of Revolutionary polemics and reveals that Paine had formulated conscious aesthetic principles for his writings.

References 

1. The relationship of the international aspects of the Deane affair to local Philadelphia profiteering is discussed in A.0.Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (London, 1960), 64-77.
2. Richard Gimbel, “New Political Writings by Thomas Paine,” Yale University Library Gazette, XXX (January, 1956), 98.
3. Typescript in Thomas Paine Historical Association from Gable Sale, New York, No.544, Feb.14,1924. 
4. I have been unable to find any other traces of Drayton’s pamphlet. He wrote a similar one in the previous year: The Genuine Spirit of Tyranny, exemplified In the Conduct of the Commissioners, Sent by the King of Great-Britain…. (Poughkeepsie (1778) (Evans: 15784(a))).
5. Pennsylvania Packet, Mar. 11, 1779. 
6. Ibid., Dec. 5, 1778.
7. Ibid., Mar. 20, 1779. 
8. For circumstances of the communication of Paine’s manuscripts, see H.T. Meserole, “W.T.Sherwin: A Little-Known Paine Biographer,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XLIX (1955), 271-272. The exchange described by Meserole led to the publication of Richard Carlile’s The Political and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Paine (London, 1819 (1820)). 

Reprinted from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXV.No.1. (1961).

The post Thomas Paine And Comus  appeared first on .

PAINE WRITINGS LEGEND

Major Works
American Revolution
American Politics & Government
Essays
English Affairs
French Revolution
Other
Poetry
Religion
Letters
Recently Discovered
Works Removed

1772

To Oliver Goldsmith December 21, 1772

Case of the Excise Officers

1775

A Serious Thought

Liberty Tree

An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex

Farmer Short’s Dog Porter: A Tale

Reflections on Unhappy Marriages

Duelling

Reflections on Titles

The Dream Interpreted

Cupid and Hymen

African Slavery in America

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin Esqr. March 4th, 1775

The Death of General Wolfe

Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive

An Account of the Burning of Bachelors’ Hall

New Anecdotes of Alexander the Great

Useful and Entertaining Hints

A Dialogue between General Wolfe and General Gage

The Snowdrop and the Critic

The Magazine in America

1776

The Crisis I

To Anonymous August 16, 1776

Dialogue between the Ghost of General Montgomery and an American Delegate

Four Letters on Interesting Subjects

A Fifth Forester Letter

The Forester’s Letters

Epistle to Quakers

Common Sense

1777

To Timothy Matlack Oct. 30, 1777

The Crisis IV

To William Bingham July 16, 1777

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. July 9th, 1777

To Richard Henry Lee July 1, 1777

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin LL.D. June 20th, 1777

Candid and Critical Remarks on a Letter Signed Ludlow

The Crisis III

To the People

Retreat across the Delaware

The Crisis II

1778

The Affair of Silas Deane

To Henry Laurens December 15, 1778

A Serious Address To The People Of Pennsylvania On The Present Situation Of Their Affairs

The Crisis VII

To Benjamin Franklin October 24, 1778

The Crisis VI

To his Excellency George Washington June 5th, 1778

To Henry Laurens Spring 1778

To the Honorable Benjamin Franklin, Esqr. May 16, 1778

To the Honorable Benjamin Franklin May 16, 1778

To Henry Laurens April 11, 1778

The Crisis V

1779

To the Printer of the Pennsylvania Packet

To the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania October 11, 1779

To the Supreme Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania September 28th, 1779

To his Excellency Joseph Reed, Esq. Sept. 18th, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens September 14, 1779

Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries

To the Honorable Congress of the United States June 17, 1779

To the Continental Congress May 25, 1779

To Hon. John Jay May 20, 1779

To the Hon. John Jay April 23, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States April 21, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States April 3, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States March 30, 1779

Response to *Observations on the American Revolution*

To Benjamin Franklin March 4, 1779

To Major-General Greene January 31, 1779

To his Excellency George Washington January 31, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens January 17, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens January 14, 1779

To the Congress of the United States January 8, 1779

To the Congress of the United States January 7, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States January 6, 1779

To M. Gerard January 2, 1779

1780

Public Good

To the Honorable Members of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania November 3rd, 1780.

The Crisis Extraordinary

To Major-General Nathanael Greene September 9, 1780

The Crisis IX

To the Honorable Joseph Reed June 4, 1780

To Blair McClenaghan May, 1780

The Crisis VIII

Emancipation of Slaves

The American Philosophical Society

1781

To his Excellency George Washington November 30, 1781

To Honorable Robert Morris November 26, 1781

To Jonathan Williams, Merchant November 26, 1781

To Colonel [John] Laurens October 4, 1781

To the Honorable Robert Morris, Esqr. September 20, [1781]

To his Excellency Thomas McKean [August or September, 1781]

To Benjamin Franklin May 28, 1781

To James Hutchinson March 11th, 1781

To Major-General Nathanael Greene January 10, 1781

To Benjamin Franklin (May) 1781

1782

Six Letters to Rhode Island

To Robert Morris December 7, 1782

Letter to the Abbe Raynal

To Robert Morris November 20, 1782

The Crisis XII

Epitaph on General Charles Lee

To his Excellency George Washington September 7, 1782

To Robert Morris September 6, 1782

A Supernumerary Crisis

The Crisis XI

Response to an Accusation of Bribery

The Necessity of Taxation

To his Excellency George Washington March 17th, 1782

To Honorable Robert Morris March 17th, 1782

The Crisis X

To Honorable Robert Morris, Esq. March 1782

To Robert Morris February 20, 1782

To Honorable Robert Morris, Esq. January 24, 1782

1783

A Supernumerary Crisis II

To James Duane December 3, 1783

To Robert Morris October 14, 1783

To George Washington October 13, 1783

To his Excellency George Washington October 2, 1783

Hail Great Republic!

To a Committee of the Continental Congress October, 1783

To his Excellency George Washington September 21, 1783

The Address of the Citizens of Philadelphia

To his Excellency George Washington July 22, 1783

To W. Wallace Junior June 30th, 1783

To his Excellency Elias Boudinot June 20th, 1783

To Doctor Benjamin Rush June 13th, 1783

To his Excellency Elias Boudinot June 7th, 1783

The Crisis XIII

To Robert Morris January 23, 1783

1784

To Honorable General Irwin, Vice-President November 27th, 1784

To His Excellency George Washington April 28, 1784

To General Lewis Morris February 16th, 1784

1785

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin December, 31 1785

To Mr. Claypoole (Pennsylvania Packet) December, 1785

To the Congress of the United States September 28, 1785

To the Congress of the United States September 27, 1785

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, ESQ., September 23, 1785

To Temple Franklin Sept. 23, 1785

To a Committee of Congress September 1785

To the Continental Congress August 13, 1785

1786

To George Clymer, Esquire Nov 19th, 1786

To the Honarable Thomas Fitzsimmons November 19th, 1786

Attack On Paper Money Laws

To John Hall September 22, 1786

On the Affairs of The State

To Daniel Clymer, Esqr. September 1786

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin, Esquire June 6th, 1786

To a Member of the Pennsylvania Council June, 1786

Dissertations on Government

To Mr Henry Claypoole (Pennsylvania Packet) January, 1786

1787

To George Clymer, Esquire December 29, 1787

To the Right Honorable the Marquis of Lansdowne Sept. 21, 1787

Prospects on the Rubicon

To George Clymer August 15, 1787

To The Royal Academy of Sciences July 21, 1787

To Benjamin Franklin June 22, 1787

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin March 31, 1787

The Society for Political Inquiries

1788

Some Of The Letters Paine Wrote To Jefferson During 1788–1789 Concerning The Iron Bridge

To Thomas Jefferson December 16, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 15, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 9, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 7, 1788

Specification of Thomas Paine

To Thomas Jefferson May, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson February 19, 1788

1789

Some Of The Letters Paine Wrote To Jefferson During 1788–1789 Concerning The Iron Bridge

To George Washington, 16 October 1789

To Thomas Jefferson September 18, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson September 15, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson July 13, [1789]

To Thomas Jefferson June 18, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson June 17, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson May 1789

To Anonymous May 1, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson April 10, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson February 26th, 1789 & March 12, 1789

To Benjamin West March 8, 1789

To Thomas Walker, Esqr. February 26th, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson February, 16th, 1789

To Kitty Nicholson Few January 6, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson [1789]

To Anonymous [1789]

1790

To Thomas Jefferson September 28, 1790

To William Short June 28, 1790

To William Short June 23 and 25, 1790

To William Short June 22, 1790

To William Short June 4, 1790

To William Short June 1, 1790

To His Excellency George Washington May 31, 1790

To His Excellency George Washington May 1790

To Anonymous April 16, 1790

To Benjamin Rush March 16, 1790

1791

To John Hall November 25, 1791

Thoughts on the Establishment of a Mint in the United States

To William Short November 2, 1791

Address and Declaration

To His Excellency George Washington July 21, 1791

To Abbe Sieyes July 8, 1791

To Messiurs Condorcet, Bonneville, and Lanthenas 1 June, 1791.

Rights of Man Appendix

Rights of Man Part the First

1792

To Citizen Le Brun December 4, 1792

On the Propriety of Bringing Louis XVI to Trial

To the English Attorney General (Archibald MacDonald) November 11, 1792

To the French National Convention October 22, 1792

An Essay for the Use of New Republicans

To Benjamin Mosley October 1, 1792

Address to the People of France

Letter Addressed to the Addressers

To The Sheriff of the County of Sussex

Letters to Onslow Cranley

Letters on the Prosecution of Rights of Man

Answer to Four Questions

To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge (2)

To the English Attorney-General

To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge

To J.S. Jordan February 16, 1792

To George Washington February 13, 1792

To Thomas Jefferson February 13, 1792

Rights of Man Author’s Notes

Rights of Man Part the Second

1793

The Age of Reason — Part I

To Thomas Jefferson October 20, 1793

To Citizen Barrere September 5, 1793

Citizen of America to Citizens of Europe

To George Jacques Danton May 6, 1793

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1793

To Doctor James O’Fallon February the 17, 1793

Shall Louis XVI be Respited?

To John King January 3, 1793

Plan of a Declaration

To Citizen Barrere 1793

Observations on the Situation of the Powers

1794

The New Covenant

To James Monroe November 2, 1794

To James Monroe October 20, 1794

To James Monroe October 13, 1794

To James Monroe October 4, 1794

To James Monroe [October 1794]

To James Monroe September 14, 1794

To James Monroe August 25, 1794

To James Monroe August 18, 1794

To James Monroe August 16, 1794

To the French National Convention August 7, 1794

Forgetfulness

To Gouverneur Morris February 24, 1794

From the Castle in the Air

1795

To Daniel Isaacs Eaton December 4, 1795

To Gilbert Wakefield, A.B. November 19, 1795

The Age of Reason — Part II

To James Madison September 24, 1795

To Bache August 5, 1795

The Constitution of 1795

Observations on Jay’s Treaty

Dissertation on the First Principles of Government

To Samuel Adams March 6, 1795

To James Monroe [1795]

1796

To James Monroe August 15, 1796

To a French Minister August 13, 1796

Contentment

Letter to George Washington

The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance

Letters on the Bank

Agrarian Justice

1797

To Citizen Barras December 29, 1797

The Eighteenth Fructidor

The Recall of Monroe

Prosecution of the Age of Reason

To M. Tallyrand [1797]

Worship and Church Bells

To Thomas Jefferson May 14, 1797

Age of Reason Letters

To James Madison April 27, 1797

To Thomas Jefferson April 1, 1797

To Anonymous March 4, 1797

To Colonel John Fellows January 20, 1797

To M. Tallyrand [September 1797]

1798

To Citizen President Spring 1798

To the Council of the Five Hundred January 28, 1798

1799

Notes On Thomas Muir, 1765-1799  

To General Brune November, 1799

Star in the East

1800

What is Love?

To Thomas Jefferson October 6, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 4, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 1, 1800 – No. 2

To Thomas Jefferson October 16, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 1, 1800 – No. 1

To Anonymous July 1800

To Citizen Skipwith Spring 1800

1801

To Thomas Jefferson November 4, 1801

On the Means of generating Motion for Mechanical Uses

To Thomas Jefferson June 25, 1801

To Thomas Jefferson June 9, 1801

The Existence of God

1802

To Thomas Jefferson Dec 25, 1802

To the Citizens of the United States

To Madame Bonneville November 15, 1802

To Thomas Jefferson November, 1802

To Consul Roth July 8, 1802

An Essay on Dream

To Thomas Jefferson March 17, 1802

To Elihu Palmer February 21, 1802, since the Fable of Christ

1803

To Elisha Babcock 1803-10-10

To Thomas Jefferson September 23, 1803

To James Madison August 6, 1803

To John C. Breckenridge Aug. 2, 1803

To Thomas Jefferson August 2, 1803

To Charles W. Peale July 29th, 1803

Lines, Extempore

To James Monroe July, 1803

The Construction of Iron Bridges

Of Caine And Abel

Of the Old and New Testament

To Thomas Clio Rickman March 8, 1803

Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff

From Mr. Paine to Mr. Jefferson

To Thomas Jefferson January 12, 1803

Examination of the Prophesies

My Private Thoughts on a Future State

To Samuel Adams January 1, 1803

To the Editor of the National Intelligencer January 1, 1803

1804

Connecticut has no Constitution

To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana

Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut

To the Members of the Society

To Elisha Babcock 1804-08-27

Nonsense from New York

Remarks on Gouverneur Morris’s Funeral Oration on General Hamilton

To the people of Connecticut

To Col. John Fellows July 9, 1804

To Mr. Hyer March 24, 1804

To the People of England on the Invasion of England

To Citizen Skipwith March 1, 1804

Prospect Papers

1805

To Thomas Jefferson September 30, 1805

To the Citizens of Pennsylvania on the Proposal for Calling a Convention

To John Fellows July 31, 1805

Another Callender

To John Fellows July 9, 1805

Remarks on English Affairs

To Elisha Babcock July 2, 1805

On the Origin of Freemasonry

Constitutions, Governments, and Charters

To John Fellows April 22, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1805 – No. 2

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1805 – No. 1

To Mr. Hulbert of Sheffield March 12, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson January 25, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson January 1, 1805

1806

Thomas Paine On Yellow Fever 

Remarks on the Political and Military Affairs of Europe

Liberty of the Press

A Challenge to the Federalists

To Andrew Dean, August 15, 1806

The Cause of the Yellow Fever

To William Duane April 23, 1806

To Anonymous March 20, 1806

To John Inskeep February 10, 1806

To Thomas Jefferson January 30, 1806

1807

To James Monroe, December 30, 1807

Cheethem and his Tory Paper

On the Question Will There be War?

Of the Comparative Powers and Expense of Ships of War

To George Clinton May 4, 1807

To Joel Barlow May 4, 1807

To James Madison May 3, 1807

Three Letters to Morgan Lewis

Of Gunboats

Of the English Navy

1808

To Thomas Jefferson July 8, 1808

To the People of New York

To the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, March 7, 1808

To the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, February 28, 1808

To the Honorable Senate of the United States, January 21, 1808

1809

The Will of Thomas Paine

Predestination

The post Predestination appeared first on .

PAINE WRITINGS LEGEND

Major Works
American Revolution
American Politics & Government
Essays
English Affairs
French Revolution
Other
Poetry
Religion
Letters
Recently Discovered
Works Removed

1772

To Oliver Goldsmith December 21, 1772

Case of the Excise Officers

1775

A Serious Thought

Liberty Tree

An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex

Farmer Short’s Dog Porter: A Tale

Reflections on Unhappy Marriages

Duelling

Reflections on Titles

The Dream Interpreted

Cupid and Hymen

African Slavery in America

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin Esqr. March 4th, 1775

The Death of General Wolfe

Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive

An Account of the Burning of Bachelors’ Hall

New Anecdotes of Alexander the Great

Useful and Entertaining Hints

A Dialogue between General Wolfe and General Gage

The Snowdrop and the Critic

The Magazine in America

1776

The Crisis I

To Anonymous August 16, 1776

Dialogue between the Ghost of General Montgomery and an American Delegate

Four Letters on Interesting Subjects

A Fifth Forester Letter

The Forester’s Letters

Epistle to Quakers

Common Sense

1777

To Timothy Matlack Oct. 30, 1777

The Crisis IV

To William Bingham July 16, 1777

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. July 9th, 1777

To Richard Henry Lee July 1, 1777

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin LL.D. June 20th, 1777

Candid and Critical Remarks on a Letter Signed Ludlow

The Crisis III

To the People

Retreat across the Delaware

The Crisis II

1778

The Affair of Silas Deane

To Henry Laurens December 15, 1778

A Serious Address To The People Of Pennsylvania On The Present Situation Of Their Affairs

The Crisis VII

To Benjamin Franklin October 24, 1778

The Crisis VI

To his Excellency George Washington June 5th, 1778

To Henry Laurens Spring 1778

To the Honorable Benjamin Franklin, Esqr. May 16, 1778

To the Honorable Benjamin Franklin May 16, 1778

To Henry Laurens April 11, 1778

The Crisis V

1779

To the Printer of the Pennsylvania Packet

To the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania October 11, 1779

To the Supreme Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania September 28th, 1779

To his Excellency Joseph Reed, Esq. Sept. 18th, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens September 14, 1779

Peace and the Newfoundland Fisheries

To the Honorable Congress of the United States June 17, 1779

To the Continental Congress May 25, 1779

To Hon. John Jay May 20, 1779

To the Hon. John Jay April 23, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States April 21, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States April 3, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States March 30, 1779

Response to *Observations on the American Revolution*

To Benjamin Franklin March 4, 1779

To Major-General Greene January 31, 1779

To his Excellency George Washington January 31, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens January 17, 1779

To the Honorable Henry Laurens January 14, 1779

To the Congress of the United States January 8, 1779

To the Congress of the United States January 7, 1779

To the Honorable Congress of the United States January 6, 1779

To M. Gerard January 2, 1779

1780

Public Good

To the Honorable Members of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania November 3rd, 1780.

The Crisis Extraordinary

To Major-General Nathanael Greene September 9, 1780

The Crisis IX

To the Honorable Joseph Reed June 4, 1780

To Blair McClenaghan May, 1780

The Crisis VIII

Emancipation of Slaves

The American Philosophical Society

1781

To his Excellency George Washington November 30, 1781

To Honorable Robert Morris November 26, 1781

To Jonathan Williams, Merchant November 26, 1781

To Colonel [John] Laurens October 4, 1781

To the Honorable Robert Morris, Esqr. September 20, [1781]

To his Excellency Thomas McKean [August or September, 1781]

To Benjamin Franklin May 28, 1781

To James Hutchinson March 11th, 1781

To Major-General Nathanael Greene January 10, 1781

To Benjamin Franklin (May) 1781

1782

Six Letters to Rhode Island

To Robert Morris December 7, 1782

Letter to the Abbe Raynal

To Robert Morris November 20, 1782

The Crisis XII

Epitaph on General Charles Lee

To his Excellency George Washington September 7, 1782

To Robert Morris September 6, 1782

A Supernumerary Crisis

The Crisis XI

Response to an Accusation of Bribery

The Necessity of Taxation

To his Excellency George Washington March 17th, 1782

To Honorable Robert Morris March 17th, 1782

The Crisis X

To Honorable Robert Morris, Esq. March 1782

To Robert Morris February 20, 1782

To Honorable Robert Morris, Esq. January 24, 1782

1783

A Supernumerary Crisis II

To James Duane December 3, 1783

To Robert Morris October 14, 1783

To George Washington October 13, 1783

To his Excellency George Washington October 2, 1783

Hail Great Republic!

To a Committee of the Continental Congress October, 1783

To his Excellency George Washington September 21, 1783

The Address of the Citizens of Philadelphia

To his Excellency George Washington July 22, 1783

To W. Wallace Junior June 30th, 1783

To his Excellency Elias Boudinot June 20th, 1783

To Doctor Benjamin Rush June 13th, 1783

To his Excellency Elias Boudinot June 7th, 1783

The Crisis XIII

To Robert Morris January 23, 1783

1784

To Honorable General Irwin, Vice-President November 27th, 1784

To His Excellency George Washington April 28, 1784

To General Lewis Morris February 16th, 1784

1785

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin December, 31 1785

To Mr. Claypoole (Pennsylvania Packet) December, 1785

To the Congress of the United States September 28, 1785

To the Congress of the United States September 27, 1785

To Honorable Benjamin Franklin, ESQ., September 23, 1785

To Temple Franklin Sept. 23, 1785

To a Committee of Congress September 1785

To the Continental Congress August 13, 1785

1786

To George Clymer, Esquire Nov 19th, 1786

To the Honarable Thomas Fitzsimmons November 19th, 1786

Attack On Paper Money Laws

To John Hall September 22, 1786

On the Affairs of The State

To Daniel Clymer, Esqr. September 1786

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin, Esquire June 6th, 1786

To a Member of the Pennsylvania Council June, 1786

Dissertations on Government

To Mr Henry Claypoole (Pennsylvania Packet) January, 1786

1787

To George Clymer, Esquire December 29, 1787

To the Right Honorable the Marquis of Lansdowne Sept. 21, 1787

Prospects on the Rubicon

To George Clymer August 15, 1787

To The Royal Academy of Sciences July 21, 1787

To Benjamin Franklin June 22, 1787

To His Excellency Benjamin Franklin March 31, 1787

The Society for Political Inquiries

1788

Some Of The Letters Paine Wrote To Jefferson During 1788–1789 Concerning The Iron Bridge

To Thomas Jefferson December 16, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 15, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 9, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson September 7, 1788

Specification of Thomas Paine

To Thomas Jefferson May, 1788

To Thomas Jefferson February 19, 1788

1789

Some Of The Letters Paine Wrote To Jefferson During 1788–1789 Concerning The Iron Bridge

To George Washington, 16 October 1789

To Thomas Jefferson September 18, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson September 15, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson July 13, [1789]

To Thomas Jefferson June 18, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson June 17, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson May 1789

To Anonymous May 1, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson April 10, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson February 26th, 1789 & March 12, 1789

To Benjamin West March 8, 1789

To Thomas Walker, Esqr. February 26th, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson February, 16th, 1789

To Kitty Nicholson Few January 6, 1789

To Thomas Jefferson [1789]

To Anonymous [1789]

1790

To Thomas Jefferson September 28, 1790

To William Short June 28, 1790

To William Short June 23 and 25, 1790

To William Short June 22, 1790

To William Short June 4, 1790

To William Short June 1, 1790

To His Excellency George Washington May 31, 1790

To His Excellency George Washington May 1790

To Anonymous April 16, 1790

To Benjamin Rush March 16, 1790

1791

To John Hall November 25, 1791

Thoughts on the Establishment of a Mint in the United States

To William Short November 2, 1791

Address and Declaration

To His Excellency George Washington July 21, 1791

To Abbe Sieyes July 8, 1791

To Messiurs Condorcet, Bonneville, and Lanthenas 1 June, 1791.

Rights of Man Appendix

Rights of Man Part the First

1792

To Citizen Le Brun December 4, 1792

On the Propriety of Bringing Louis XVI to Trial

To the English Attorney General (Archibald MacDonald) November 11, 1792

To the French National Convention October 22, 1792

An Essay for the Use of New Republicans

To Benjamin Mosley October 1, 1792

Address to the People of France

Letter Addressed to the Addressers

To The Sheriff of the County of Sussex

Letters to Onslow Cranley

Letters on the Prosecution of Rights of Man

Answer to Four Questions

To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge (2)

To the English Attorney-General

To the Chairman of the Society for Promoting Constitutional Knowledge

To J.S. Jordan February 16, 1792

To George Washington February 13, 1792

To Thomas Jefferson February 13, 1792

Rights of Man Author’s Notes

Rights of Man Part the Second

1793

The Age of Reason — Part I

To Thomas Jefferson October 20, 1793

To Citizen Barrere September 5, 1793

Citizen of America to Citizens of Europe

To George Jacques Danton May 6, 1793

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1793

To Doctor James O’Fallon February the 17, 1793

Shall Louis XVI be Respited?

To John King January 3, 1793

Plan of a Declaration

To Citizen Barrere 1793

Observations on the Situation of the Powers

1794

The New Covenant

To James Monroe November 2, 1794

To James Monroe October 20, 1794

To James Monroe October 13, 1794

To James Monroe October 4, 1794

To James Monroe [October 1794]

To James Monroe September 14, 1794

To James Monroe August 25, 1794

To James Monroe August 18, 1794

To James Monroe August 16, 1794

To the French National Convention August 7, 1794

Forgetfulness

To Gouverneur Morris February 24, 1794

From the Castle in the Air

1795

To Daniel Isaacs Eaton December 4, 1795

To Gilbert Wakefield, A.B. November 19, 1795

The Age of Reason — Part II

To James Madison September 24, 1795

To Bache August 5, 1795

The Constitution of 1795

Observations on Jay’s Treaty

Dissertation on the First Principles of Government

To Samuel Adams March 6, 1795

To James Monroe [1795]

1796

To James Monroe August 15, 1796

To a French Minister August 13, 1796

Contentment

Letter to George Washington

The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance

Letters on the Bank

Agrarian Justice

1797

To Citizen Barras December 29, 1797

The Eighteenth Fructidor

The Recall of Monroe

Prosecution of the Age of Reason

To M. Tallyrand [1797]

Worship and Church Bells

To Thomas Jefferson May 14, 1797

Age of Reason Letters

To James Madison April 27, 1797

To Thomas Jefferson April 1, 1797

To Anonymous March 4, 1797

To Colonel John Fellows January 20, 1797

To M. Tallyrand [September 1797]

1798

To Citizen President Spring 1798

To the Council of the Five Hundred January 28, 1798

1799

Notes On Thomas Muir, 1765-1799  

To General Brune November, 1799

Star in the East

1800

What is Love?

To Thomas Jefferson October 6, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 4, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 1, 1800 – No. 2

To Thomas Jefferson October 16, 1800

To Thomas Jefferson October 1, 1800 – No. 1

To Anonymous July 1800

To Citizen Skipwith Spring 1800

1801

To Thomas Jefferson November 4, 1801

On the Means of generating Motion for Mechanical Uses

To Thomas Jefferson June 25, 1801

To Thomas Jefferson June 9, 1801

The Existence of God

1802

To Thomas Jefferson Dec 25, 1802

To the Citizens of the United States

To Madame Bonneville November 15, 1802

To Thomas Jefferson November, 1802

To Consul Roth July 8, 1802

An Essay on Dream

To Thomas Jefferson March 17, 1802

To Elihu Palmer February 21, 1802, since the Fable of Christ

1803

To Elisha Babcock 1803-10-10

To Thomas Jefferson September 23, 1803

To James Madison August 6, 1803

To John C. Breckenridge Aug. 2, 1803

To Thomas Jefferson August 2, 1803

To Charles W. Peale July 29th, 1803

Lines, Extempore

To James Monroe July, 1803

The Construction of Iron Bridges

Of Caine And Abel

Of the Old and New Testament

To Thomas Clio Rickman March 8, 1803

Reply to the Bishop of Llandaff

From Mr. Paine to Mr. Jefferson

To Thomas Jefferson January 12, 1803

Examination of the Prophesies

My Private Thoughts on a Future State

To Samuel Adams January 1, 1803

To the Editor of the National Intelligencer January 1, 1803

1804

Connecticut has no Constitution

To the French Inhabitants of Louisiana

Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut

To the Members of the Society

To Elisha Babcock 1804-08-27

Nonsense from New York

Remarks on Gouverneur Morris’s Funeral Oration on General Hamilton

To the people of Connecticut

To Col. John Fellows July 9, 1804

To Mr. Hyer March 24, 1804

To the People of England on the Invasion of England

To Citizen Skipwith March 1, 1804

Prospect Papers

1805

To Thomas Jefferson September 30, 1805

To the Citizens of Pennsylvania on the Proposal for Calling a Convention

To John Fellows July 31, 1805

Another Callender

To John Fellows July 9, 1805

Remarks on English Affairs

To Elisha Babcock July 2, 1805

On the Origin of Freemasonry

Constitutions, Governments, and Charters

To John Fellows April 22, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1805 – No. 2

To Thomas Jefferson April 20, 1805 – No. 1

To Mr. Hulbert of Sheffield March 12, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson January 25, 1805

To Thomas Jefferson January 1, 1805

1806

Thomas Paine On Yellow Fever 

Remarks on the Political and Military Affairs of Europe

Liberty of the Press

A Challenge to the Federalists

To Andrew Dean, August 15, 1806

The Cause of the Yellow Fever

To William Duane April 23, 1806

To Anonymous March 20, 1806

To John Inskeep February 10, 1806

To Thomas Jefferson January 30, 1806

1807

To James Monroe, December 30, 1807

Cheethem and his Tory Paper

On the Question Will There be War?

Of the Comparative Powers and Expense of Ships of War

To George Clinton May 4, 1807

To Joel Barlow May 4, 1807

To James Madison May 3, 1807

Three Letters to Morgan Lewis

Of Gunboats

Of the English Navy

1808

To Thomas Jefferson July 8, 1808

To the People of New York

To the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, March 7, 1808

To the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, February 28, 1808

To the Honorable Senate of the United States, January 21, 1808

1809

The Will of Thomas Paine

Predestination

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